it’s that time of year again! kablpomo is almost here. i think i might also attempt nanowrimo, but i’m not sure yet.
but, back to the task at hand.
what would you, dear blog, like to see as far as kablpomo goes? any themed posts? remember, i SHOULD be writing a post every day.
i’ll be here for a while, i guess, so it was time for home improvements.
i bought a nice buffet a couple weeks ago that fits perfectly in my dining room; i wanted to stain it, but nate decided that he loved it as it (even though it doesn’t really match the rest of our furniture). so it replaced the hutch in the dining room, and i got a ginormous mirror from tjmaxx that will go over it.
the garage has been painted white and shelving is up! woo! it’s nice to have all our junk off the floor and space to park now. just one last top shelf to put up, and some lower shelves for little junk, maybe a foot wide instead of two feet like the upper shelving.
and i got a Fleck Water Softener! thank god! my skin felt like sandpaper, and winter would’ve only made it worse. so excited!
dreary day here in southern minnesota. the rain just sort of drizzled its way across the hours, and the sun never made an appearance. it wasn’t so cold that it was scarf weather, but with the rain, a jacket was called for. good there was no wind.
my endeavors to get back to central minnesota stalled out. i feel better about that part of the state; the lakes are calling to me from their far away places. but i have to keep telling myself that home is not necessarily a place; wherever nate and the cats are – that’s home.
so continuing to do a little poking around here and there, maybe a nudge up and over. this obviously wasn’t meant to be. i sound fatalistic in ways, but i’m trying to carpe that diem as much as i can.
in the meantime, i will reverse my exit behavior and get myself in gear. i do like what i do.
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
this book is just lovely. liz gilbert has a way of parsing out exactly what a person needs to hear in the most lightly light-hearted, concise sprinkling of words i’ve ever read. i feel like she is the fairy godmother of inspiration and get-your-butt-in-gearedness.
while she focuses on writing as example most of the time (she is a writer, after all), anyone can read this if s/he feels stagnant in life or lacking that particular something. she focuses on big magic, the fleeting inspiration that most people ignore, and the steps a person needs to walk through to have the gumption to recognize it for what it is and grab it.
you may call it hooey, hippy-dippy, new-age phoney baloney, but anyone who’s been hit by the big magic can tell you it’s out there; it’s up to you to take it up on its offer. take up this book if you think you want to take that step.
View all my reviews
and suddenly it’s fall.
the dust from the combines cutting their way through the corn fields is so thick on the rural roads, it’s like fog. it smells of dried grass, starch, and autumn. the valleys are heavy with the corn dust, with the lights of the giant tractors blinking in the dark like UFOs. the time is ripe for harvesting, and farmers make the most of the time, hauling corn from the fields into the early hours of the mornings.
because the first hard frost came late (last night), the leaves are browner than normal, even though the conditions throughout the summer were perfect for a spectacular fall foliage showing (lots of rain). spots of yellow, orange, and red poke through the drabness here and there, and they help shout out the season.
the roadside stands boasting pumpkins for $3 are picked over, the only pumpkins left being the oddly shaped and not-quite orange. gardens are cleared out of usable vegetables, with the only exceptions being hardy veggies like broccoli, brussels sprouts, leeks, onions, carrots, and the like. the defeated tomatoes that were so boastful during july and august are now nothing but darkened, wasted stalks with any leftover fruits littering the ground: squashed, deflated, wrinkled, and decaying.
the summer’s been well for hay, and the corn stalks have been rolled into bales. the entire growing season has been great: seeds went in early, the rain was relatively steady, and september was warm into october. the minnesota harvest is set to be a record-breaking one.
ready for winter.
when you walked into our house in austin, a pretty small farmhouse now that i think about it, and hooked a right after entering, you found yourself in the living room. along the south wall were built-in shelving units for books, the TV, VHS, and a sliding door with holes on either end that housed the records.
my dad is a huge proponent of the LP. among the beatles, carly simon, the last little unicorn, and other psychedelic covered records, the stars of the show were the neil diamond albums.
even when we got our cassette player and the huge stack of time-life 50s tapes, my siblings and i still broke out the neil diamond albums, especially tap root, which included cracklin’ rosie, i am the lion, and the best song ever, soolaimon. i couldn’t tell you how many times we listened to that album, dancing around the living room. the only song that may have topped it might have been “wild goose,” and that’s only because we decided to run around in circles 500 times while the song played.
when we moved to new london, i’m not sure what happened, but our excellent record player bit the dust. it was a great player; you could stack 5 LPS on it and it would drop them as each record finished. it was a great player around christmas time, when we would play our time-life albums nonstop. for a short while, there was no record player in the house, and i think after enough cajoling and complaining about the CD version of time-life christmas music not being quite the same, my dad picked up another player. it only plays one album at a time, but the christmas albums are worth that.
anyway, back to neil.
i liked mr. diamond so much, i made sure to buy his greatest hits on CD when i moved out of the house for college. while i may have been embarrassed to admit to liking singers from that era back in gradeschool (seriously, nothing embarrassed me more than saying the beatles was my favorite band in 3rd grade – in 1987…), now i’m happy to say that yes, i listen to neil diamond.
it was 85º outside today, while the wind blew and the somewhat-turned leaves on the trees held tenuously to their homes. is it fall? is it summer? when winter blows in, will we know it and be prepared?
it was a perfect couple of days for nerdcon. jane and i walked down nicollet ave. and marquette more than once to get some food and kill some time. the event itself was a pretty great event in general. friday was better than saturday (less people and the mainstages were much funnier). the breakout sessions we did go to were great and got us both fired up for writing. (when we could get in.)
i have a feeling next year it will be held in a different location; i think the only one i’d be willing to travel to would be denver. but we’ll see what goes.
i had a couple ideas for some blog posts for kablpomo in november or whenever (depending on when some inspiration strikes).
i’m also considering nanowrimo for the first time in a few years. the thing about nanowrimo is that once i commit, i’m doing the whole shebang. there’s no 40,000 words. no 20,000 words. it’s all or nothing.
the thing is, creative nonfiction is the type of writing i prefer over fiction, so topics are a little different. travelogue? more food writing? i’ve already attacked corn syrup. i could do travel writing about the black hills or something. i’m not sure i could eke out 50,000 words on it, but i could try and then end with some fabulous anti-corn propaganda.
what say you, kablpomo followers?
i have really neglected my poor little blog this past year, and especially the past few weeks. after last year, when i blogged every day, this seems like a huge departure, and i’m not quite sure why i haven’t kept up with it.
but today jane i went to nerdcon:stories, and we attended a couple sessions specifically about writing, which made me super excited about nanowrimo, for one. and also about kablpomo! november is close approaching! so, any ideas for either would be welcome.
more on nerdconlater! (i hope!)
today, liz, jane, and i went to red wing and lake city to get our shop on! i took some pics while we were there.
my adrenaline levels may have dipped close to normal levels. close.
after months of planning and worrying and anxiety over my job and others’ jobs and logistics and etc. etc., the big event for my work is done. last week was just nasty. we had an event on monday, thursday, friday, and saturday. i worked 11 hours on saturday alone and had almost 30 hours of overtime on that timesheet. the last timesheet also had overtime on it.
the past two days, our office has closed ON TIME, which has been practically unheard of in the past two months at least. possibly four. it’s just weird to leave the office at 4:30 and have it be completely empty.
so, i’m finally able to do my actual job for a little while, which will be super nice!
eventually i should have a weekend to do nothing, also, but that’s not happening any time soon.
this weekend my sisters and i are antiqueing down the mississippi river, and i’m hoping we can hope to wisconsin and check out the laura ingalls wilder museum in pepin. i’m excited for this!
next weekend is liz’s oktoberfest party, which i may or may not go to (haven’t decided yet).
after that is NERDCON which i’m SUPER SUPER excited for. two days of writing stuff!
the 17th is the zombie pub crawl, which i also haven’t decided if i’m going to yet. charlie’s willing to go, and i’m trying to get liz to go, too, even though she thinks she’s going to have no fun since she can’t drink. her costume would be epic, though!
meanwhile, it’s pumpkin season even though this month has been peculiarly warm. it hasn’t even gotten close to freezing at night yet, which is bizarre for late september. the forecast is looking out into october already, and the lows at night are mid-50s. i’m not complaining since i’m not a fan of cold, but it’s just weird.
and, on a final note, as a reward for all my overtime i put in this past month or so, i’m expanding my tree tattoo to include some sumac and pine trees. got to make an appt!