Dangerous Liaisons in Squirrel Hill

I seem pretty good lately at assaulting myself.  I don't know why I've become extra clumsy these past two weeks, but it feels like my body, and sharp, roughened, or heavy objects, yearn to be together and will do whatever it takes, however painful, to achieve the union.

Part of the injuries are the inevitable result of trying to pack up an apartment in a small, increasingly crowding space.  Those instances are how I bruised both sides of my right knee (on two different days),  my hip, and scratched my leg.

The rest have just been 1) brain absenteeism, however, which I put down to the heat and to the act of packing being so boring that I can't bear to be mentally there while it's happening; and 2) an overestimation of how much brawn I've picked up at the gym lifting my 5 lb. weights.

Here's a running inventory of my injuries thus far:

• bruised knees
• bruised hip
• bruises and individual burst blood vessels on the insides of both arms from carrying, and occasionally dropping, boxes
• raw skin on fingers from trying to scrape double-sided tape off the wall with an old PetSmart reward card
• red rash and sore throat muscles where the edge of a flatscreen TV tried to decapitate me; I, however, remain alive--you fail, TV!

My goal for the moment is just to avoid battering myself to the point of incurring a hospital copay.  Because I need that money to pay for the moving van.

Nailing Fashion...Every Time

Just when I think the exciting parts of my day had come to a close, I come home from work to find that a bottle of nail polish has completely overturned and sneakily unscrewed itself in my bag.  I had brought Loréal's Tweet Me, a canary yellow shade that made me feel sunny just looking at it, to work to paint my nails over my lunch break.  It was so innocent.

What proceeds is a comic romp, but with sounds of sadness instead of sassy montage music.

I retrieve the bottle of nail polish from the depths of my bag and set it on the table, where it immediately sticks.  Then I quickly grapple it away before it can totally fuse to the surface, and holding it between my fingers, which are sporting freshly painted yellow fingernails, I peer into the bottom of the bag and pull out my Kindle, where a fiendish blob of polish threateningly clings to the bottom edge of the cover, but thankfully has not touched the actual device.  (Editor's note: I have already spilled red wine and water, on separate occasions, on my Kindle, which is part of what prompted the purchase of the case).  I scratch at the gooey blob on the cover to prize it away, and more or less just rub it into the surface and into my fingers.

With a sense of futility I gaze upon the other blob at the bottom of my bag, catching the light of my dining room and merrily winking up at me.  It'll dry.

I take the nail polish bottle and move into the bathroom.  My fingers are already conjoined with the bottle, like the rites of a Celtic marriage, but for some reason I still find it a good idea to use them to spatula away a majority of the polish.  The result is as disastrous as you'd expect any idiot could have guessed if they weren't impatient at having to have to clean up nail polish goo mess after a long walk home from work, and if they weren't totally starving and actually more focused on the cupcakes from Dozen Bake Shop in the bag in the kitchen.  But anyway.

I scrape away the polish goo as best I can with the pads of my fingers, trying to save my precious nails, which is more or less to say I smear the goo more fully around the bottle and my fingers, seemingly determined at my own self-destruction.

Okay.  I need nail polish remover.  And cotton balls.  I drop, or rather, violently fling, the polish into the sink, then use my wrist to edge open the cabinet under the bathroom sink.  With one hand I grab the nail polish remover (acetone-free) and plunge the other into the bag of cotton balls.  I don't really need to grab them because I come out with about six sticking to me anyway.  I carefully pour remover onto some of the cotton balls the furthest distance from my still safe nails, and start scrubbing.

I'm proud to say that I got about 80% of the polish off of my fingers and off of the outside of the bottle, but it wasn't all without final casualties to the precious nails.  This all started with the great idea that I had of "I'll do a manicure at work!" and has now become "I will have acid-happy Big Bird fingers!"

Ah well, the color is at least seasonal.

Photo courtesy of http://www.makeupandbeautyblog.com/nails/these-new-loreal-spring-nail-colors-make-it-hip-to-be-riche/.

Alchemical Husbandry

I'm not ready for the big long-term commitment just yet, but I've been able to narrow down the qualities I'd like my husband to have, amongst these four men:

Indiana Jones

Solves problems with brash ingenuity and chutzpah.

James Dean

Sends me smoldering glances, even when we're both 80 and can't see very well.

Rob Petrie

Helps with housework and makes me laugh all day long by tripping over things.

Bill Nye

Dedicates his brilliance to making the world a better place.

I think this is reasonable.

iReality

Wow, it is March. March. Is that possible? Apparently. I am impressed by how time has flown, and put it down to an incredible flurry of activity for me.

I went back, after a hiatus of feeling lazy, to putting together a structure for my novel. I'm also brainstorming with the proprietor of Falkora Jewelry, on some fun social media campaigns to increase her network. She does great sales when she goes to shows and conventions, but as we all know, 140 character virtual tweets are now how we communicatively define our lives.

Seriously, though, I've been having a real love-hate relationship with technology lately. I recently read an article about AT&T and Verizon's predictions that within the next couple of years, we will have serious spectrum issues trying to handle the volume of data being volleyed through the ether by smartphone users. P.S., trying to find that article again to repost it here, I had to wade through about 3,000,000,000 articles about the iPad 3 or 4 or 8 or whatever. Another tangent.

I really hate how slow my android Motorola Citrus is most of the time. We pay for an unlimited data plan, but half the time I feel like I could walk to Google's headquarters in California before their homepage finishes loading on my tiny touchscreen, which is covered in my tiny-hand fingerprints. I also hate myself for caring about something so trivial. What do I really do on my smartphone that's that worthwhile?

I want to be disconnected from this crippling need to constantly be connected, and yet it is supposedly critical to social and economic survival in this world. Isn't it? I don't know.

I would like to be a writer, and a marketer, who makes peace with the monsters of technology. But is it possible to compete in a world of communication, without being constantly in communication?

Post-Valentine's Caloric Count

For Valentine's Day I decided to make some cookies for my office. I wanted something that was vaguely healthy, delicious, and also would carry some sort of romantic, Valentine-y theme. I settled on making these Chewy Chocolate Chip Oatmeal-Raisin cookies from Delish.com, which turned out to be the perfect recipe for all of my criteria.

The batter calls for two cups of flour, and one cup of oats, as a base:

While I wouldn't rate these cookies as "oatmealy" as some other recipes I've used, the advantage of the added flour was that it was much easier to shape them, and for them to retain their shape while cooking. Oats can kind of just go "blah" on their own, and collapse dejectedly into a blob. Instead I got these lovelies into the oven:

And they became these lovies:

They are perhaps not the healthiest cookies out there, but they were easy to make and got rave reviews among my easy-to-please colleagues. I have since had office requests for a St. Patrick's Day-themed cookie. We'll see. Shamrocks are a bit more complex than hearts, but maybe I'll just end making this some kind of Lucky Charms Magically Delicious Cup Challenge.

The Beautiful Tower of Babel

Last night I watched a TED Talks video posted by a friend on Facebook, discussing the philosophy behind modern education, and why it has become both inadequate to serving the world's continued economic interests, and the personal holistic interests of children. The speaker's (Ken Robinson) main point was that education is designed around a "factory mentality" born out of the first industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century, and in conjunction with similar ideas brewing around personal freedoms and the connection between an individual and society.

One of many points that struck me was Robinson's emphasis that one of education's struggles is to balance teaching cultural identity to students, while teaching them globalization. It's the same struggle that hums at the core of public education–that effort to standardize, to make the many into one. In some ways, this is just what education should do, as no society can function at the most basic level without some shared beliefs and structures.

The flip side to this, however, is the reality of human complexity, and the inescapable fact that as multidimensional beings of infinite capability, we don't always fit into one mold. And perhaps we shouldn't.

Modern western culture teaches that at once both diversity and globalization are desirable virtues; but how can both exist simultaneously? At some point, one has to give in to the other.

The story of the tower of Babel is that originally, humans tried to build a tower up to God's level in order to make themselves all-powerful, and were punished by having this tower struck, and the people all on it, scattered to the four corners of the earth. Diversity of language, culture, and thought, supposedly comes from this original "punishment." Separation, or individuality, therefore, is the result of our confounded efforts to be one.

Of course this is just a slim interpretation of a cultural myth loaded with symbolism, and many scholars do not even apply a concept of punishment to the original story, so much as that of an etiology tale of how civilization came about. But my point is that Babel is beautiful. Our children's Babel is beautiful, and the Babel told in Egypt, Norway, and Malaysia, and in tiny, remote Amazon villages, is also beautiful.

Globalization teaches us to see each other as "one," and that is so important an idea–and yet, it makes me worry that the universality that we supposedly believe we are reaching for, is not universal and is not as liberating as we think. It's a dominant culture (undeniably often the West) that, for better or for worse, is spreading around the globe, and potentially eradicating other sounds of Babel, and even potentially squelching them in its own offspring.

Instead of seeing globalization, like education, as an opportunity to engage in a multi-voiced dialectic, it is so often pushed as a single truth, or to quote the TED Talk lecture, "There's only one right answer…and it's in the back of the book." In American public education, curriculums geared towards standardized testing heavily outweigh approaches more contextually designed around individual classrooms.

In the age of standardized testing, there's no longer an active search for truth, only the dead declaration that wonderful One-ness is coming (but it's our One and not yours). It's the same age that is drugging up so many kids with dangerous ADHD meds, obsessively tracking their academic progress in ridiculously unhelpful charts and numbers, and then continues to cut music, art, science, and recess. I can't think of anything more destructive to our economy than teaching our children to stop being creative, to stop innovating, to stop taking in information with five senses and to process it, play with it, imagine what it could become. You think a strong economy is built on a generation of people who simply learned how to regurgitate answers in Scantrons?

So I guess this has me both thinking about our attitudes towards educating our own children, and how we "educate" the world. I think globalization is inescapable at this point, but I don't mean to say that's a bad thing. In so many hopeful ways it is inspiring. But it makes me wonder what happens to diversity and individuality, as One-ness takes over. I hope it will be a One-ness built on all of Babel, not just some.

It's All Okay

I got a lovely email recently from a young woman who I had once interviewed for admission to Gettysburg, who is now a current student there and wanted to talk to me about making the transition from student to professional in the admissions world.

Of course this email opened a floodgate of reflections for me. I remembered the interview with this charming girl, and how excited she was at the prospect of college. We talked and laughed well beyond our allotted interview slot, and I was thrilled when she ended up coming to Gettysburg. To be able to keep up a connection with someone with whom you'd been through the process of admission, to get to see what they've done with their time in college, to see how they've grown…well, to say it is rewarding is trite at best. It's simply unbeatable. And then to be able to be a guide once again on the next step of their journey is equally an honor.

These are the kinds of memories that remind me of why I loved being an admissions counselor. They also remind me of what I want to be in any job that I'm in. I want to help people. The moments that permanently imprint into my mind are those where I feel genuinely moved that I was able to improve the lives of those with whom I worked. You work because you want to serve a purpose, to make something better than it was before. Otherwise, why labor?

I especially feel blessed with these moments where I can turn to someone who's about to undertake the experience I've already had, and to be able to tell them it's all going to be okay. Isn't that all we ever want to hear? Especially now. And realizing as you're comforting them, that the words are still true for you as well. It's all going to be okay. And it will. It is.

Hoo Made Owls So Fashionable?

So many exciting events have happened over the last week, but all I'll say for the moment is that I feel pretty good so far about 2012. Yay 2012! Now don't worry; if something goes wrong now, I won't blame you as a year. But let's keep this happy streak going for a bit longer, shall we?

As the above photo suggests, owls are on my mind lately. That's because I've been writing up lots more product description for owl jewelry pieces for Falkora Jewelry, like this piece: Owl Be Attending the Oscars Ring.

Considering the number of jewelry pieces I've written about so far, of which the owl is a dominate theme, and considering in how many places have I seen owls featured as necklace pendants, rings, t-shirt motifs, and plateware (think ModCloth and Forever21), I am thinking now that it would be very interesting to do a research project on the significance in the fashion world of animals, and of why certain animals become popular when they do, and why they remain prominent in a fashion culture.

I don't think I'm fabricating this; owls just do seem to be everywhere in fashion, and they have been for several years now–especially among costume jewelry and among fashion marketed towards teenage girls and young women. But why this is, I have no answer for so far. I invite your ideas and owl-themed wordplays.

*image copyright of www.falkorajewelry.com

Massage Envy, My New Love

Last night I cashed in on a gift certificate my mother gave me for Christmas, to Massage Envy, which must be one of the greatest places on earth. I got an hour and a half massage, including aromatherapy massage lotions in their "anxiety release" scent, which was a soothing melange of lavender, orange, and some other calming stuff. I almost went for the straight lavender scent, but decided I would do the other one and just burn some lavender incense at home instead, thus completing my 360 degrees of harmonious environmental energy.

Oh, it was amazing. For an hour and a half, I lay practically comatose, and possibly slightly salivating, while this saintly woman slowly returned me to the state of Human Being. I went in with tension in my neck and shoulders from sitting at a computer all day, and general stressiness from running around and living life all day and not having enough time for yoga, and walked out of there literally bouncing down the sidewalk, I felt so light.

I try to make empathetic noises when people tell me they do not like massage, but honestly I am at a loss as to why. Perhaps I was a cat in a previous life, who now responds instinctively to back rubs, but the experience of having aromatic lotion rubbed into your tired skin while you slowly unwind every muscle in your body, is just unbeatable. Massages should be covered by health care plans, and not just because you made up something to the insurance company about "your old football injury acting up again."

Haha, like anyone would ever believe I played football.

*photo courtesy of www.massageenvy.com

Take Ye the Tureen of Goose Fat

While the content of my blog posts certainly strays from the original title of this blog, I've always felt that the 18th-century ethos still influences how I interpret modern social norms, politics, fashion and food.

Whether it is my unshakable obsession with the admittedly unhealthy bread pudding family, or my annual tribute to my patron authoress, Jane Austen, in the form of her favorite drink, the whipped syllabub, 18th-century food somehow always strikes me as the best comfort food, full of hearty, salty, sweet, creamy, savory ingredients meant to be slowly enjoyed in the days before all of those things were put on Santa's Naughty List.

So I was delighted when this morning I discovered that Colonial Williamsburg's website has launched a digitized version of an 18th century cookbook: "History is Served: 18th-century recipes for a 21st-century kitchen."

For the ambitious, or for the 18th century grad student, you can read the original 18th-century description and interpret as best you can (half the fun!). For the more modern reader, a 21st-century description is provided below, with more straight-forward instructions.

Let the colonial cookery begin!

*photo courtesy of http://recipes.history.org/2011/09/to-make-an-onion-pie/

Eclipses Bring Cookies and Change

Oh my, I can't believe it's December. And not just December, but like, halfway through December.

So sorry it has been a bit of awhile since I last blogged. My boss has gotten some funky new jewelry in at Falkora Jewelry, so I've been writing web copy for pieces like these fun atomic age earrings.

Falkora also had a show at the recent First Fridays in Pittsburgh, on Penn Ave in the Friendship/Garfield area, and was very successful!

I am not sure yet that I totally have the whole Christmas thing in hand this year, but at least I did get some decorations up and baked some sugar cookies today.

Today was also a lunar eclipse, and funnily enough I did hear of two major (or one major, and one semi-major for my family) events that took place today: my dad, stepmom and stepsister got two new kittens (monumental since the deaths of our other two cats), and my cousin got ENGAGED!!

That is the big one. I have been smiling all evening after hearing about it. I haven't met her fiancé yet, but thanks to Facebook I pretty much feel like I know him. I am so happy for both of them.

As winter approaches, we come up with so many reasons to celebrate and try to bring light back to the world. Peace and love and light to you all, dear friends, in the coming days.

*photo courtesy of www.falkorajewelry.com

Time to Break Out the Eating Pants

Thanksgiving is coming. Time to break out the Eating Pants.

I have two recipes which I am excited to use again this year when I make my pilgrimage to Flemington, NJ for the family get-together. The first was one I learned of from my cousin, Hilary, and it has been a delicious alternative for vegetarians, as well as just another yummy addition to the meal: Butternut Squash and Cheddar Bread Pudding. Its cheesiness elicits many cheese fantasies.

The second is this ridiculously unhealthy pie, called Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake, where there are two sticks of cream cheese in it and only half a cup of pumpkin. So, you know. It's basically like eating a buttload of cream cheese from a hypoglycemic cow.

Last year my sister and I had a small contest to see who could make the best pie. I think the critical factor was that I insisted you had to use a whisk or mixer to get the batter smooth enough, and Emily insisted you could whisk it with a fork or something and be fine. I'm not trying to make judgements here, but I just have to say I think my pie was better. Em would say they both tasted the same.

To be fair, at 1:30am the night of Thanksgiving, after a significant quantity of wine, she was absolutely right. And really, that is the ultimate moment of truth.

*photo courtesy of http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/double-layer-pumpkin-cheesecake-2/detail.aspx

Life in the Tower

My dreams, lately, have been scattered and surreal. You may suppose that all dreams are that way, but really, mine often have a very particular storyline, so the fact that they have lately felt disconnected and staccato-ed, is, I think, some testament to some kind of discomposure.

I also have been reading Tarot cards lately, and I keep pulling up The Tower. It's a jarring card, but not necessarily bad. It's more like a wild card that just yells "SURPRISE!" It speaks of some structure or situation that comes tumbling down. Something being thrown out of joint, or wiped out. It can speak of loss, but not always the bad kind. When we are stuck in a tower, sometimes we need something or someone to tear us out of it.

It can reference anything from being jarred out of a bad work situation, to falling in love–to be "struck by lighting" because of meeting someone. The bolt of lighting is often seen as the hand of God, as are the golden raindrops around it: representations of the Hebrew letter yod, symbolic of the same. The card is scary, but usually only when we are afraid to change, even if the change is good.

Some people, in fact, get this card when they're going to have a baby (hee hee, which makes the look on the faces of those people tumbling much funnier). But rest assured–that is definitely not my situation at the moment!

I do feel, though, for whatever reason, like I am falling, and where I will land, no one can say. Maybe I will get somewhere I would not have otherwise gone, however.

The Tower is part of the Major Araca, the big, fat suit of 22 cards that discuss the archetypal roles we are required to play in order to achieve spiritual growth. Usually that means you can't avoid these cards; they are part of your karmic destiny. Sorry! Transformation is a real bitch.

By the way, if you ever want to pick up a pack and start reading, anyone can. They operate on the principle of the collective unconscious–the same sort of thing that makes you dream of the future, etc. You may find it interesting, in fact, to google Carl Jung and the Tarot and see why he was so fascinated with it, but he's one of my history heroes so, you know, I'm a bit biased.

Judy Jetson: a Role Model

I am finding it hard to believe that it's november already. When did that happen? And what have I been doing with myself?

Well, I've been amusing myself with following up on the incredible success of my premier eHow article, "how to make a top out of men's briefs" with such illustrious titles as "how to hang oil paintings in stairways" and "how to coil the strings on Sperrys." I like to think that I am changing lives.

Also, check out more fun web copy I've written for the fabulously funky Falkora Jewelry, this time in the bracelets department. Any time in which I get to reference iconic American television classics like Judy Jetson and Morticia Addams is a good time, I must say.

P.S., do you actually remember Judy Jetson, and how boy-crazy she was, even though her boyfriends had names like Sky Rocker and Nicky Nebula? I had forgotten how inspiring she is.

salamanders aplenty

i haven't recorded an interesting dream in a little while for you, so here's one i had thursday night, thought i had properly interpreted, and then decided i didn't. so, for your pleasure:

i was traveling for work to baltimore, and was going to try to meet up with friends, but i couldn't. instead, i found myself in an historic market district that seemed so familiar, and i decided i'd just wander around there instead with the time set aside where we'd originally planned to meet up. i wanted to get lunch and i thought i remembered there was a good seafood place that did takeout, so i found it. it was at one end of this market street, tucked in a corner with outdoor seating and black iron-wrought furnishings. the rest of the market, by the way, was full of white, or lightly colored building fronts, almost white in the sunlight. it was early morning, so the sunlight was extremely bright.

then the waiter told me that they didn't do takeout anymore, or their food was not what i expected to be in some way, and i was frustrated. i knew i had limited time, so i had needed to take advantage of that, and now that time was wasted.

then the dream shifted and it was night, and i was checking into a hotel, presumably in that same neighborhood. the hotel was awful, extremely cheap, with crumbling ceilings and dodgy light fixtures, and even more bizarre, piles of random bric-a-brac that seemed to have been collected from garage sales, and thrown in piles into all of the rooms, by way of decoration and furnishing. the furniture, therefore, was all mismatched and scratched and gross-looking, and all i could console myself with was the thought that i wouldn't be there for long.

the dream shifted again and i'm in that hotel room but it's daylight now, and the sun is streaming in and blinding everything in the room, and i can't decide if it's good or bad. then i notice something i hadn't noticed before because of the glare in the room: a little salamander. it's on the floor, which is white tile, and it's so white itself that it's almost translucent. i peer closer and see that it is translucent, save for its two deep black eyes. it's both beautiful and gross, somehow--beautiful in its pure form, so white and so smooth, but gross in that it looks sticky, and is on my floor.

in real life, i love salamanders, but my only thought is that i enjoy them out in nature, and not in my bedroom. and the salamander is indeed sticky when i try to pick it up, and then i begin to notice that there are more of them.

some of them are tiny, and others are huge, and they're all over the floor, and the walls, and the ceiling, and i'm trapped because if i move i know i'll step on one, which 1) grosses me out, and 2) i don't want to hurt them. i call for help, and someone suddenly appears close to me, but i don't know who it is. i tell her that there are these salamanders everywhere, and she acknowledges it, but we don't know what to do. this part of the dream ends with us still trying to figure it out.

there is a second part of the dream that happened after that, but it's too vague now for me to recall more than faint images.

fabric fixation

ah, pittsburgh. how i love your weather forecasts calling for snow before Halloween has even happened.

on the bright side, that means i get to take out early some of my fun winter wardrobe pieces, like my beloved pairs of chocolate brown and purple leather gloves with the ruching at the wrists. i love when it's finally cold enough to take these pairs of gloves out from the closet. i even get to match the purple pair with my three-quarter-length-sleeve empire waist fall jacket with the peter pan collar from Old Navy. the sleeves are just short enough to show off the ruching. <3 <3 <3

i love ruching. there's something so casually elegant about it. i love it almost as much as i love draping fabric, and for those of you familiar with my years working in the costume shop at Gettysburg College, you may understand just how deeply i love draping fabric.

can people have a compulsion to drape fabric? i would believe it. i used to sit around the costume shop in college and take gorgeous pieces of cloth and pin them in dramatic ways all over our dress dummies, and wish it was some cocktail dress i'd been invited to wear at a party. oh for those days.

p.s., now i want to find a winter coat that's reasonably priced, warm, and makes me feel like a Swedish snow princess. i'm thinking something with a hood, princess seams, and fake fur trim. any suggestions?

a glitzy-glam new beginning

so if i have seemed to be MIA, it's because i've taken up a lot of my free time in making ground with my new part-time job, writing web copy for a local jewelry vendor!

Falkora Jewelry is the name of the game, and it has been so much fun so far to work with the lady behind it all. her business got off the ground this summer, i believe, (or maybe earlier?) but already she's had good success both selling cute costume jewelry at vendor fairs, and in creating her own unique line of dangly tunnel earrings for women with gauged ears. i didn't know much about gauged ears before this, but i am learning that it's an increasingly popular fashion trend. i think it's great that she's identified this niche in the market and has just gone for it.

she's a super creative person herself, and pretty much allows me free reign to write whatever i like, occasionally tweaking and editing my work when she feels something doesn't sit right. which is how i decided to pay tribute to The Oregon Trail, one of the best moments of the early 90's. i also greatly enjoyed telling the story of the Mod Assassin Necklace, and Don't Make Me Take Out My Hoop Earrings.

as part-time work, it's perfect in that it allows me to hone my copywriting skills while just giving me a creative outlet on the side of my day job, to let my imagination wander. which just about seems to suit the style of Falkora.

so far i've written copy for all of the necklaces, and many of the earrings, and am just starting on rings this week. mind, the website is still in development, so stay tuned and tell your friends!

up, up and away

for all who are feeling the struggle against adversity right now, here's a little reminder that many things are possible beyond what we can conceive:



UP is one of my favorite films. i pretty much cry in the first five minutes of the movie, every time i watch it. and again at the end. and i love the premise that an old man turns to adventure by converting his house into a giant hot-air balloon.

i like films that remind us that only when things are truly bleak, is there room to see outrageous possibilities.

enjoy the rest of the weekend, dear friends.

a bit of fashion, a bit of rain

after what began as a long, stressful week is now finally unwinding to a semi-relaxing weekend. if only it weren't forty degrees and raining. hmm. the wine might have to come out of the fridge.

today i went briefly to the vendor fair and student fashion show, as part of the tail end of Pittsburgh Fashion Week. i do wish i had gone to some of the other events during the week, but alas, they cost a bit of money and that's just what i should not be spending in excess right now.

the vendor fair had a nice collection of jewelry samplings, but it was a bit smaller than i expected. also, my $10 ticket for "general admission," which allowed me to pick one fashion show to attend, seemed a bit pricey considering each show was about 5 minutes long. i was able watch two before they moved us out of the conference room and brought in a new crowd, but even so, in total, my $10 got me about…12-15 minutes of actual fashion catwalk time.

perhaps this is how fashion shows work, however. God knows the New York fashion week is probably zillions of dollars to get into, to view one waif-like model clad in shiny six-inch heels and a couture burlap sack.

on the other hand, the excitement and pride of the student designers, in getting to display their work, was inspiring to see, and reconciled the price and time length issue for me. and their designs were fun–well cut, unique, inspired. and maybe that penn state freshman who's been designing clothes with his mom and grandma since he was 11, will be famous one day, and this was the opportunity that helped foster his confidence to keep designing.

meanwhile, i am starting other new and exciting projects (more to follow on this!). but my fat orange cat has just climbed onto my lap, so for the immediate future, i guess my project is rubbing tummies.

novel: take-off!

finally, having had the first weekend in many where i have some me-time, i am pushing myself to begin to write my novel. i used to write short stories all the time, but as i grew older i somehow felt less creative, like it had all been done before.

now i feel like i have something to say–but to be fair, last year i didn't feel like i quite had anything to say yet. so. it takes time.

as i have never written a novel before, the idea is daunting, even while exciting. i'm starting by using the snowflake method, which is forcing me to think critically about the structure and message of my writing–something that's never easy for most writers, even though non-writers often seem to think that full novels and essays just leak out of our fingertips, onto the keyboard, without any editing required.

below is an excerpt from the couple of pages i have so far.

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"Happily I go to Amazon.com and start clicking through to the Books section, and then into Astrology. I start scanning through cover images, occasionally clicking on interesting titles like The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need, and The Secret Language of Relationships. I’ve actually read this one—or by read, I mean I’ve frequently gone into Barnes & Noble to thumb through it about various astrological relationship combinations. I can’t bring myself to actually buy it, because it only contains about a paragraph on each combination, so you only need it for about five minutes if you’re only reading about your one romantic relationship. Buying it would be an acknowledgement that I’d be requiring it frequently in the future."