NaNoWriMo

The first time I signed up for NaNoWriMo several years ago, I blew it off without much real effort.  Now, this year, I've committed to trying to take my writing seriously.  Thus, committing to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) seemed a logical move.  However, now that I've signed up, the fear and anxiety has set in.  I suspect it's somehow akin to how one would feel after signing up for a marathon.  Although, marathoners actually get time to condition their bodies and their minds for their great feat of endurance.  What can writers do?  Practice their typing skills?  Sharpen a few pencils?  Plot like crazy?

One wins this race by writing 50,000 words during the month of November.  It doesn't have to be a great 50,000 words, just as those people who stumble across the finish line can still say they have completed a marathon.  I think most who join NaNo, however, do want to use the time to write something worthwhile. My goal is not only to finish, but to learn something - to solidify the habit of writing regularly and push up my own expectations for a daily word count.

For any of you who may have joined NaNo as well, my username is ccarlyle (from my pen name Christy Carlyle).  I would say 'wish me luck' but I'd rather have wishes for perseverance, self-discipline, and lots of productive writing time.  I wish the same for all you NaNo writers out there!

Birthday gratitude

Thank you, everyone, particularly Facebook friends, for all the birthday well wishes! Thanks to Facebook, I now get birthday wishes from cousins, sixth grade classmates, old friends and new.  It was a surprisingly good birthday, considering the circumstances of being away from J.  He did, however, give me an awesome and much desired gift: a Kindle!

Anyone who knows me even a little knows that I love books.  I was one of those 'I prefer paper books' holdouts until just recently discovering the pleasure of e-books. Don't get me wrong, I still love books in any format, but e-books are just another way to enjoy them.  My Kindle, so thin and light and fast, is not only a fun gadget, but it allows me to carry hundreds of books around with me wherever I go.  For any book lover who has moved and carried box after box of heavy books up flights of stairs, you can appreciate the pleasure of carrying around multiple weightless volumes.

While I've loaded many of the no cost classics on my e-reader, just last night I bought a new novel for my Kindle.  It's a romance (not surprisingly), but with a twist.  This one falls into the currently hot sub-genre of Steampunk. It's a genre that melds historical settings (usually the Victorian era) with retro-futuristic technological innovations.  The author, Meljean Brook, is a member of my local writing group and I interviewed her recently for my Romance Novel Examiner page.  You can link to that article here.

Psychologically, this birthday has been daunting. There is something unnerving about having the big 4 0 staring you in the face.  However, the driven side of me just insists that I have much to accomplish in the next year so that I will feel satisfied rather than regretful when the next October 28 rolls around.

I'm grateful for friends (particularly the one who met me for dinner and writing collaboration tonight so that I wouldn't be alone on my birthday - thanks, Jon) and family.  Thank you for making it an excellent 39th birthday.

Fantasy football honeymoon

Peyton Manning conducts the Colts orchestra.

My fiancé is currently living in Scotland, awaiting a fiance visa so that he can return to the U.S.  It's a difficult way to live, for both of us.  Life in limbo, waiting for normality and stability, and most of all togetherness, to return.  There was a time when couples had to obtain parental approval before being allowed to wed. This is an extreme version of that, but in our case it's an uncle overburdened with bureaucracy and his name is Sam.


We spend a lot of time talking about the things we plan to do when we're together again.  I believe making plans together is eminently healthy, as is fantasizing about adventures that might never happen except in a shared daydream.  During one such recent conversation, we let ourselves imagine a wonderful, if nontraditional honeymoon.  

As a preface, I should explain that my fiancé is a devout Oakland Raiders fan.  For a long time I thought it might just be a British thing - rooting for the underdog and all that.  Then I thought it could just be a symptom of the taciturn sort of stubbornness that he sometimes displays.  Everyone else hates them, so he will love them with a fierceness that defies explanation or common sense.  However, I did discover an explanation, of a sort.  He claims that when he was a wee boy in Scotland, a lad came to his primary school and announced that the L.A. (at that time) Raiders were the best NFL team and all the other kids should like them.  I've come to believe that we often inherit our loyalty to certain sports teams from others, so that explanation made sense to me.  Though, one does wonder why, at 37 years old and with mature discernment, he never thought to choose another, better team to love.  Still, I respect his right to support the Raiders, even if it does mean that I apologize to him a lot on Mondays: "Sorry about the Raiders."

I love the Indianapolis Colts.  I like several NFL teams, to be honest, and that doesn't mean I'm easy or spread my affections around.  I inherited a love for the Steelers and Colts, and I tenaciously want to love the Philadelphia Eagles.  The Colts, however, have something that no other team has: Peyton Manning.  If the NFL were a pantheon, he'd be one of the fiercest and most revered gods.  His statistics are irrefutable proof of his greatness.  He is simply one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL.  However, there is more: a sense that he is an honorable man, an apparent humility and ability to poke fun at his own public image, and the skill to turn a football game around seemingly by the force of his own enormous will.


A few weekends ago, during one of those bouts of shared daydreaming, my fiancé mentioned that the Raiders and Colts are playing each other at Christmas. More specifically, they are matched on December 26, Boxing Day.  The week 16 game will be played in Oakland, California and that city is a mere 10 hours drive south of Portland.  With uncharacteristic spontaneity, my fiancé suggested that we could go to the game.  Then his practical accountant side kicked in and he started on about how we needed to save money for wedding rings and a honeymoon.  But I'm not always one for practicality and insisted, "That can be our honeymoon!"  Oakland is not far from San Francisco and a honeymoon in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge doesn't sound bad at all.  Then, of course, there is the exhilaration of seeing an NFL game and breathing the same air as Peyton Manning for a day.

How many Pittsburgh Steelers
does it take to sack Peyton Manning?

We are still trying to figure out if we can afford it.  The best tickets currently available are in the visitor's section of the stadium, so I don't know if he'd be safe wearing his Raiders cap.  We have wondered and worried about what the weather will be like driving down I-5 in late December.  There are lots of variables to consider, but just the notion of such an adventure is invigorating and exciting, something to keep us focused on a common goal.  With the distance between us, that mutual fantasy, in and of itself, is priceless.

I said, "Tea"

I work for a college of acupuncture and Oriental medicine, so I am exposed, however peripherally, to Chinese culture often.  A colleague of mine recently went on a trip to China for the college, working as a student advisor during a three week period.  Upon her return, she walked into our office and, without preamble, asked me, "Tea or stone?"  Ever eloquent, I responded with something like "Huh?" or "What?"  Thankfully, she was unperturbed and simply repeated her mysterious query.

I love tea, so it was an easy choice.  Upon making my selection, she presented me with a mini canister of tiny green pebbles - precious Oolong tea from the Yellow Mountain in China.  I thanked her profusely and later opened the little canister to smell the tightly wound and dried tea leaves.  The scent was extraordinary.  They smelled like earth, verdant and rich.  I couldn't wait to soak them in some hot water and sample the tea.

They unfurl when they soak in hot water and give away some their green tint to delicately color the water in which they are immersed.  What is surprising is that one little pebble, one tightly wound leaf, can produce such a strong, significant tea flavor.  Oolong is a fascinating tea, somehow delicate and strong simultaneously.  At one time, tea was traded with the same precious values that characterized tulipomania in the 17th century. I count myself lucky that my oolong cost me nothing more than making the right choice when asked 'tea or stone?'.

A true friend brings you a pen

I started a new job a few months ago and was lucky enough to find myself working in an office with a woman that I adore.  She's funny, she's smart, and she likes the Beastie Boys. What more could I ask for?   Recently, she was away from the office for two days to attend a conference in Vancouver, Canada.  After sharing an office for a few months, she quickly noticed that pen acquisition is one of my fetishes.  She says I'm pen rich, which is a very generous way of acknowledging that I've already acquired more pens in my desk top pen cup than two people could use up in a year.

When she left me in an empty office for a couple of days, she reassured me that she'd bring back a Canada something or other as recompense.  She clearly knew that the most apropos souvenir for me would be a pen.  So, upon her return, I was presented with an adorable black ink ball point with a red barrel and a teddy bear and Canadian flag printed on the side.  It has a laser fine point and a nice heft to its translucent barrel.  Best of all, it is an offering from a friend who knows my predilections and brought a piece of her Canadian adventure back for me.

I'm always happy to acquire a new pen, but it's even better to find a new friend who likes me despite my quirks.

What's in a name? Or, a boy called Finn

It was embarrassing the first time I had to admit to someone that I'd named my boy kitten after a cute young man in a funny TV series.  It was a simple truth, but the person I confessed it to still laughed.  I added hastily that Ice-T's character on Law and Order: SVU is also named Fin, though I knew that my little black and white scruff of a kitten had little to do with that quietly cool tough guy.

The character of Finn Hudson on Glee, one of the only TV shows I bother watching with any regularity, is a young man who is full of energy and free of guile. As a kitten, my Finn embodied both of those characteristics. Now that he's a bigger kitten - I still struggle to think of him as a cat - he still retains all of that silly sweetness and oblivious boyishness that Calgary cutie Cory Monteith manages to exude every week as Finn.

Incidentally, my Finn has a propensity for watching TV.  Hmmm...  I wonder if he knows.