I don't think a brisket really counts as an ethnic recipe. Right?

It's been two weeks since the last articles post and although I was collecting their links, and for some, even got around to writing responses, I couldn't get around to posting them. Too much other stuff was in the way... hello, I had a FAVICON to make? But seriously, the reason the last two weeks of articles is being folded into a three-day-late weekly update post is that this weekend, my computer died. Entirely. It's a long and complicated story involving the power supply and the battery, but it's on right now because I literally forced it into place, and everything important is all backed up to an external and all that... but it's been time-consuming, and I honestly wasn't motivated to write posts on my dad's ancient Windows ME laptop (complete with Firefox version 1.0!). Plus side- I rediscovered (for the umpteenth time) an old DOS game called Lexicross, which running on a semi-modern processor is like Wheel of Fortune and Scrabble's crack baby, on speed, and meth, and... you know, those genes that gave Superman his super speed. Good times.

I also had a four-hour brisket to make on Saturday, as well as apple bread for dessert, in honor of either Rosh Hashanah (if you ask my grandmother) or my sister coming home for the weekend (if you ask her). It turned out splendidly, I think, and because the recipe calls for a cup of red wine, I had (almost) an entire bottle to myself to nurse for the afternoon while it roasted. Extra good times.

So with all that, I forgot to mention that I started writing actual! scenes! of screenplay. I'm still completely unsure about the beginning, so I decided to just skip ahead a bit and write a crucial intermediate exposition scene. I'm actually remotely satisfied with the way it's coming out so far, although it's very awkward getting used to the screenwriting software. It helps you autoformat everything more easily, so you don't have to spend so much time typing mundane things like the characters' names over and over. Theoretically a good idea, but apparently the guild-approved format calls for reentering the character's name after they have direction and speak if you want to add more direction. Anyway, perhaps when it's finished I will put it up. (Probably not.)

I also began reading a book I purchased a few years ago, right after the author was promoting it on the Daily Show, Imperial Life in the Emerald City. Aside from having an awesome title, this very well-researched book exposes the realities of both life in Baghdad's "secure" Green Zone in 2004-05 and the political conflicts that did not just hinder, but visibly set back the progress of rebuilding Iraq as an independent nation. The author lived in Baghdad, across the river from his interviewees, all of whom were employees of the various US agencies represented in the occupation government. The storytelling is so smooth that it reads almost like a novel, and I'm excited to jump back into it tonight. So I'm going to. Below the cut are links to the articles I did end up reading (and, in the case of the Economist, bothered gathering links for) and, yes, I know, it's very light on the New Yorker. Sue me.

"What to do with Moody's, S&P, and the rating agencies?" I was attracted to this New Yorker piece because I was only vaguely aware of the rating agencies' role in the financial system, not knowing much beyond the fact that they had rated AIG AAA - apparently a good rating - right before it collapsed. This article explores that theme further while demonstrating the history of increasing the entrenchment of these agencies into the system. (That very system also writes the agencies' paychecks, which is why the ratings are so slow to change.) It also advocates for a "divorce," removing the government seal of officiousness from the agencies themselves.

What's most interesting about this is the grade inflation that went on over the last three decades without anyone appearing to take notice. When AAA becomes the standard and not a way to differentiate truly low-risk investments from the rest - and when the supposedly perpetually-secure real estate busts nationally - there's no question that America's major disease is greed.

If, in high school history class, we had been given "Trial of the Century" instead of half a paragraph in our textbook to learn about the infamous Dreyfus Affair, I would almost certainly have retained enough of the details to not have clicked on a New Yorker book review to quench my curiosity. This six-page review, after giving a short summation of the book's main point - that the historical context that enabled Dreyfus to be wrongly convicted (twice) of treason by supposedly spying for the Germans before finally being allowed to return to his home - gives a detailed history lesson about that very context. The review does a very good job of it, so I won't paraphrase. Just go read it.

Normally, I wouldn't really care to read a biographical piece about the prospective new owner of the NY Nets. But any article that begins, "Being a Russian oligarch these days isn't easy" is, in my opinion, one worth taking a peek at.

"Rethinking the bees' waggle dance:" so it turns out bees might not actually be as smart and communicative as we thought. Waggledance is still fun to say, though...

"Overconsumption is the real problem" is one article in a large special feature NS published about the looming specter of overpopulation. The whole feature is good, but this is the one that spoke to me most.

"Economic Vandalism:" an anti-American-protectionism tirade. Sort of. Apparently we pissed off China by putting a tariff on shoddy tires instead of letting the market sort it out - never mind that when tires fail, BAD THINGS LIKE ACCIDENTS happen.

"The power of mobile money" explains the new trend of mobile banking in Kenya, and how it's helping jumpstart the economy there. It's a pretty nifty system; people can transfer small amounts of money from one another, which they can then withdraw at local convenience stores - useful in a nation with a very small banking infrastructure.

"Set Angela free" is a little dated now, but this piece is still an informative primer on the dynamics of Germany's multiparty government.

Last, but certainly not least, "The Best of the Ig Nobel Prizes" is best described as the Razzies for science. Two of them involve innovative applications for alcohol, so... just read it.
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On a Streetcar Named Getting-My-Ass-In-Gear

For the first time, I feel really good looking back at the progress I've made in the last week. It might be because I got paid and so everything just looks a little cheerier, but it just seems like I've gotten over some kind of hump (or maybe just my plague) and am better equipped to listen when I tell myself to turn off the TV and do something else. In fact, on Thursday night I was too good at that and missed half of the Bill Clinton interview on The Daily Show - even though I had set up a reminder and the cable box had switched itself over to the channel. But the reason I missed it was that I was so engrossed in my Adaptation project, and the interview is online, so I don't feel horrible about it. I think this week I am actually going to write a scene, instead of just taking endless notes. Three or four possible ideas for an opening scene have been fighting to claw their way out onto the pixel-page, so I might just do all of them and see where it goes.

I read almost all the articles I meant to, which can be read about in the post below this one, and I finished Sourcery, the first next Discworld novel on the list. I also began Streetcar on Saturday morning and got about halfway through it. If you've never read the introduction that Tennessee Williams wrote himself for it, you can download it from me here. I would pull out one of my favorite quotes, but 1) I don't have just one, and 2) I can't bear to rip any of them out of context. They're all better together. Suffice it to say that reading it, and then lovingly transcribing it because it seems not to exist ANYWHERE ELSE on the internet, I was reinvigorated about both this project and the general direction I want to take my life.

Speaking of which, the Foreign Service test is just a little over two weeks away. It's intimidating. There's this huge, seemingly-singular event in my too-near future and it. It seems like applying to Vassar all over again. I have my sights set on this one thing, to the point of totally blocking out any other potentiality, and I'm not sure how many more times this is going to work for me. To that end, I've begun to think about how else I might leave Daytona in next spring or summer. It's actually not as hard as I thought it would be to do this... I imagined that planning alternatives might feel like a concession of defeat before I'd even given myself a chance to see what I could do. Instead, although I'm still dealing with those feelings, I also feel more confident in myself, and sort of feel resourceful for the first time in my life.

Besides wanting to be a career diplomat, one of my other long-standing career dreams has been to be an editor at a publishing company. I don't just love grammar, I have a sort of unnatural eagle-eye for spotting errors and typos (think an extra space between words) at a glance. Unfortunately for this particular dream - though greatly to my credit for the State Department, obviously - I majored in Political Science, not English, so I'm not immediately qualified, on paper, to get a job in publishing. I do, however, have a bit of practical experience editing manuscripts, papers, and, recently, business reports.

Enough experience, I think, to post a craiglist ad in the major cities advertising my availability for freelance editing services. This idea is still in its infancy, but hopefully, if I can get this venture up and running by the beginning of November, and people are into it, I'll be able to have at least six months of experience to put on my resume and a list of references to vouch for my abilities. If it doesn't work out with the State Department, I can still move back up north (or west, or somewhere completely off my radar right now) and apply for real editing gigs and do something (else) that I love with my life.

So there's that. Another thing I love is books. (Yeah, completely and unartfully changing gears here). On Friday afternoon, my brother and his girlfriend flew into town and I left work early to hang out with them, and discovered that Kristen really likes books, too, and that, furthermore, my brother had never heard of Mandala, my very favorite used bookstore... possibly ever. So we turned right back around after we got home and headed down once more to "Daytona proper" and spent a good two hours rummaging through the overcrowded shelves and floor-stacks and old National Geographics and Playboys. I ended up with three new Philip Roth books; The Satanic Verses; a book called Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz, one of the fathers of the modern Arabic novel; Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man; and a National Geographic from 1975 revealing the amazing future of wind power (including a really excellent artist's rendering of a futuristic, multiturbine, exceptionally top-heavy oceanic device, which, thanks to the power of the interweben, I need not scan because some kindly person has already done it for me. The picture will be below the cut, along with my final purchases, four new postcards! I'm really excited about them and I can't really remember this second if I made any more good goal progress this week - rode the bike to work on two days last week? Stretching regularly every night? - so I'm just going to skip right to the pictures :)



First, the windpower of the future!, as envisioned by National Geographic in, once again, 1975.

I know, right? Craaaazy hippies. What were they thinking?

Now, postcards. Tomorrow I plan on sharing the 17 postcards I already have, but first up tonight is Gustav Klimt's "Cartoon for the Stoclet Palace: Expectation." Secret: I really love the Klimt aesthetic but my inner indie snob has always prevented me from buying a poster of "The Kiss," because everyone else has it. What I enjoy most about "Expectation" is the way the woman's body is facing left, but her head is turned back. What is she looking at? A man? A mirror? A squirrel? The world may never know.

Next, the Monets.

This "Japanese Bridge" lives in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, according to the back of the postcard, and is the much warmer, more vibrant brother of the painting I've seen a few times at the National Gallery in London, and I like it more, I think. I'm a huge sucker for the interplay of the full spectrum of colors.

The second Monet is "Venice, Palazzo Dario," which feels cool and refreshing to look at, with all that bright-blue water. I don't really remember seeing any Venice paintings by Monet before, but the fuzzy detailing in the water really drew me into it. If I have to pick only one city in Europe to go to to satisfy my travel goal for the list, I think it has to be Venice. What with the whole sinking thing (even though that may not be true anymore), it seems rather urgent that I get there as soon as possible. Maybe I'm just in the mood for delicately ornate architecture right now. Who knows.

And the parting shot is Renoir's "La Déjeuner des canotiers," or, "The Luncheon of the Boating Party," for the more English-inclined. Not going to lie, I am a bigger fan of Renoir's ballerinas (second only to those by Degas), but I bought this postcard because of Amélie, one of my favorite movies of all-time-ever. If you've seen it, you know it features semi-prominently in the film, with Amélie playing a semi-metaphorical Girl-with-Drinking-Glass. It's one of those beautifully complex paintings of people that I love, where every person is their own character, and you can tell just by the way Renoir has painted their faces that they all have a unique backstory and set of motivations that make them more enduring than just the luncheon scene itself.

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Sicko.

It's been a long, hard week. I've had trouble sleeping, I've gotten a sore throat, I've gotten a non-fever fever, and a cough of painfully epic proportions. I didn't go to work until noon on Tuesday, and I left at 1:30 on Friday. I have been on the couch or in bed almost all of the rest of the time. Blah.

I did do SPT, and make a little progress on various goals, and I will be posting links to and short blurbs about the articles I've been reading below. I cut because I care :)


First, the picture:

This was taken outside my office building after work, and that redness about the face is the fever. It's definitely not the best picture out there of me, but it's probably not the worst, either.

Next, I checked out the next two Discworld novels from the library when I went to stock up on sicky TV to watch (Stargate SG-1 from the beginning and The Duchess, for those interested in such trivial details). I plan to finish Sourcery tomorrow and get started on Wyrd Sisters shortly thereafter. I want to keep a steady stream of these coming in; they're good bedtime stories.

I've written another Drabble that I'm not yet ready to share. Maybe tomorrow. We'll see.

Adaptation is going slowly, but steadily. Well, more slowly than steadily, to be honest, but I'm blaming the sick. Very soon I'm going to stop blaming, I swear, but I've been making very solid notes and cross-referencing and getting some ideas together about the best way to tell this very long and convoluted story.

I obviously haven't ridden the bike to work this week, since I don't want to go into cardiac arrest from lack of oxygen or anything. But, I did find the handweight that I'd stashed in my room a while back to use while I watch TV, and I started stretching a little bit and doing leg lifts and crunches more regularly. I haven't explicitly tried to do a split since the gym in Portland, but I'm sure I'll actually get to that fairly soon.

I scheduled the Foreign Service Officer Test! It's on Wednesday, October 7th, and I have to drive to Orlando for it but that's okay. Within three weeks of the test, I'll get scores back and find out if I've been invited to write the five "personal narratives" about my life experiences that I feel qualify me to do the work of the State Department. I believe that about three weeks after that, I will find out if I've been invited for an interview, which they call an All Day Oral Assessment. Intimidating, I know. If they decide they like me after that, between two and twenty-four months later I will be offered a position. So. That's the process in a nutshell. Please, please continue to keep your fingers crossed for me!

And, finally, the articles. You'd think that with all this downtime, I'd have done almost nothing else, but my sick is the sick of ache and muscle exhaustion. Half the time I've been watching TV, my computer has been closed. Closed. That is so incredibly weird for me, because usually TV is in no way stimulating enough to occupy my full attention. Anyway, the last two weeks' worth of articles that I have read are:

• "Kennedycare" is a really excellent summary of Ted Kennedy's decades-long fight for better health care and coverage for Americans, Reagan and Nixon's creation of the "socialist Trojan horse" defense, and how all of this history is affecting Obama and how the best legacy he (and Kennedy) can leave is to "shift the trajectory of American politics."



• "The Rubber Room" was another excellently informative article, though this one is about something I'm sure very few of us are aware of: the hundreds of teachers employed by the New York City Schools who are paid for years to sit in these holding tanks called "Rubber Rooms" because they've been accused of misconduct or incompetency in the classroom. The reason the city is forced to continue paying their salaries (including full benefits and pension contributions) is the contract with the Teachers Union - it mandates arbitration to resolve these charges, and it can take years for a particular teacher's turn to come because the hearings for one person can go on for months. The article is fairly long because it details three of these cases, but I really recommend you read it, especially if you're a New Yorker yourself.



• "The Fountain House"I'm reading three articles a week in The New Yorker. You knew one of them was going to be fiction. It had to happen. I can't really say anything about this story that won't give part of it away, but it was just really sweet and it made me smile to read it.



• "The Vote that Changed Japan" is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a description of the recent election that saw the first solid defeat of the party that had controlled the country since the 60s and what that means for the country's future. If you have no idea what I just said, that's all the more reason for you to check this one out.



• "Pain-free animals?" will tell you everything you need to know about the next possible breakthrough in food production: animals genetically engineered to not feel pain, as such, so that killing them for food will be more humane. This article did more than Fastfood Nation could to make me seriously contemplate the ethics of my carnivorism. In the end, though, I reached the same conclusion I always do: chic-ken gooooood.



• "The Shrinking Archipelago" will remind you about the disproportionately devastating effects global weirding (bonus link yay!) has on developing nations. In the case of Indonesia, climate change will not only cause hundreds of smaller islands to be completely submerged in the next half-century; Indonesia is one of the leaders in deforestation (along with Brazil) because of Western demand for palm oil and other cash crops that Indonesians are increasingly opting to grow.



• "HIV's Weak Spot" summarizes the findings of a new study which shows that the HIV virus literally has a weak spot in its structure - a place where antibodies may actually be able to attach if they're taught to look for it, ie, through vaccination. Read, learn, love.



• After reading the previous article, I felt a little behind on the history of the search for an HIV vaccine. Luckily, New Scientist provided a convenient link in the last paragraph of that article, so if you're a clickaholic like me and have already read it, you can skip this one. If not, "Fears over HIV vaccines laid to rest" will tell you briefly about previous efforts to create a vaccine for HIV, why those efforts failed, and why the mere existence of an HIV vaccine was maligned!



• Finally, "Strife in Yemen" is a short piece about latest mid-East hotspot and the civil war currently being waged between the government and a wealthy tribal family and their supporters. Apparently Yemenis really miss monarchy.

For those keeping score, that works out to two in The Economist (first subscription issue should be arriving next week!), three in New Scientist (plus one science article in the Guardian about Alzheimer's and one in the NYT about the food industry battling the health care bill), and four in The New Yorker (subscription starting next week). Behind, yes. But these articles were a great start and I'm really excited to start reading the magazines all the way through. Next week, I hope to have this goal more complete by Friday, so it doesn't get folded into the Weekly Update again.

So that's where I stand right now. I'm still working on cleaning up my room and going through my boxed stuff, but mostly I'm just tired ALL THE TIME. Like now. So I'm going to bed. Goodnight!

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Picnic on the beach

In addition to getting an epic sunburn on my shins yesterday afternoon, I completed my first goal: number 82, Have a picnic in a park with at least one good friend and a bottle of wine. What I originally had in mind when I wrote this goal was a shady, grassy knoll in Central Park, with an actual picnic basket and wine glasses. But my friend Katelyn was home from school for the weekend, and asked if I wanted to picnic on the beach with her, and it was great.

We had sandwiches, oranges, and cupcakes, and, of course, wine (albeit in solo cups, because it's technically illegal to drink on the beach here). It was fabulous. The sun was slightly blistering, but there was a constant, cool(ish) breeze blowing in and - the best part - we were far enough north that our little segment of sand wasn't completely packed with holiday weekend tourists (or fellow townies, more likely). We stayed out for a good two hours or so, thus the sunburned shins, catching up and all that jazz.

I'm kind of glad something light and fun like this was the first goal I finished; it's a good precedent to set, a good tone for the whole 1001. Now, to get back to work on those notes for the screenplay...
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Her name is Bea Arthur.

As of today, I officially have nine goals in progress, but this is a lot harder than I thought it would be, what with all the working full time and the moving in and also, sometimes inertia is just inertia.

What has happened since the last weekly update:

• I got a car! It's an '03 Honda Civic EX with sunroof and power everything and I have named her Bea Arthur. Why, you ask? It's fairly simple. We're in Florida, the car is in her golden years, and, of course, she has silver hair paint. We've been together, oh, about a week, now, and we're very happy. I think we're going to be together for a looooong time :)



• I worked a 41 hour work week for the very first time! It's almost like I'm something vaguely resembling a real adult! Almost. Nothing very exciting to report about the office. It's an office, I file, enter data, and fill out forms and generally just learn things about pensions and 401(k)s and that - get this - they are different things. I'm getting paid; hooray.



• I started "training" for my ten minute real-world mile by riding my bike to work on Tuesday (and home on Friday - rain). It's not, you know, hugely excellent training, but it's a start. Hopefully once "autumn" sets in properly and it stops raining every afternoon, this will be a more regular thing and I'll be able to start jogging at night. I definitely want to head over to the middle school nearby and time myself on the track to set a baseline, so I know just how out of shape I am now and precisely how difficult it will be to get down to a ten minute mile. Let me remind you that I can already do this on a treadmill, but the actual physical forward movement of running in the real world makes me lose my breath and get a stitch in my side much more quickly. I hope to do this in the next few weeks, weather-permitting; I'll next update on this once I do get the baseline time.



• I wrote my first fiction drabble two nights ago but I don't think I'm going to post it. I don't think I'm there yet. It feels a little too melodramatic and I'm not completely sure it satisfies the "quality" aspect of that particular goal, but it's only the first week and I haven't done this in a while. I'm sparing you, I promise.



• I was a little sloppy on my article reading goal. I got three done in The New Yorker and two in the Economist (which I also put in a subscription for (signing bonus woo!)), but didn't, um, make it around to the New Scientist at all. Tomorrow I will finish the reading and post all the links and (a short) reaction to each article. Also of note: I plan on getting a subscription to the New Yorker, too, as soon as I get my first paycheck. It's only $70 for two years! I didn't realize it was so cheap! I will definitely read more as soon as I have the actual magazines, and I'm very much looking forward to that.



• Ashamed as I am to admit it, I was also sloppy on starting up Tennessee Williams, Salman Rushdie, and (I feel the worst about this one) the screenplay. With the books, it's partially because I realized around Tuesday or Wednesday that the books were still packed and I really have a lot more to clean up in my room before I get to unloading those six or seven boxes. With the screenplay, though, it's all me and my. Laziness. There, I said it. I have the post-its out, ready to color-code, ready to coordinate with a OneNote Notebook on my computer. I told myself I was waiting until I had the right mechanical pencils on hand, so I could make notes in the book itself, but I bought those on Thursday and still haven't done anything more than think about beginning to read. I honestly can't understand what happened. I was, and am, so excited at the prospect of this undertaking. Maybe that's the problem - I like the idea of starting remaining on the horizon.
  
  Well. No more. I'm running out of excuses (i.e., things to watch on On Demand that aren't Apocalypse Now, by the way) and tomorrow I have An Agenda. I am going to lunch at noonish with an old friend, and when I get home, I am doing a LOT of laundry, and while I am doing laundry, I am going to keep the TV off and the classical/soundtrack music on and start in on this book. I am going to tackle it head on and I am pretty sure that after it gets rolling, the other half of that law of motion (the part about when objects are in motion) will kick right in and it won't seem quite so possibly impossible anymore.



• Attentive readers may have noticed that in the previous post, Sundries - Part 3, one goal had been moved into the "In Progress" category: number 90, Intentionally go out in the pouring rain and soak through. Seems a bit of a one-time thing, doesn't it? Either you've stood out and soaked or you haven't. Not so. Twice in the last two days (that is, last night and this morning) it sounded, in the house, like it was a torrential downpour outside. This morning, it was actually loud enough that it woke me up, and I checked out the window before changing into rain-appropriate attire (that is, not my velvet pajama pants) to ensure that this time, it really was a good solid rain. Literally by the time I was out the door, it still sounded slightly ferocious, kind of like a lion cub on the verge of lion puberty trying out an intimidating roar, and by the time I was across the yard and into the street, the rain felt nice, but I could tell it was definitely not of the "soak through" sort. By the time I was back inside, changing back into my cozy pjs, the rain had slowed to a trickle. The real measure? My shirt was completely dry within five minutes.
  
  Therefore, goal number 90 is in progress because I continue to be vigilant in my search for a proper hard rain and. Seriously. The next time there is one, rain-appropriate attire be damned. I will own that rain, even if it means I have to be ridiculously uncomfortable doing it.
  
  Probably.



• I hit submit. I sort of have a phobia about that, finalizing things that I sometimes don't have complete control over: airplane reservations online, intrawebal submissions of papers, and hitting "send" on just about anything that isn't a casual email. I have a tremendous fear about not being able to take things back. One day I might tell you about the realization of this fear in a funny little story I like to call "Half an hour of tears and screeching with the Virgin Atlantic call center in India." Yeah. It's a good one.
  
  So, what did I submit? The registration packet for the Foreign Service Officer Test. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the entire application, though it did ask for basic resume stuff. I feel like the real application should have essay questions about why I want to be a part of the Foreign Service. I should probably work on preparing those answers, anyway. Yeah. Anyway. The test window is sometime in October, so I should be receiving my invitation to register for a seat sometime in the next week. I'm hoping. Fingers crossed. You should, too.



• Finally, Selfportrait Thursday, goal 37, is underway. You can see it three posts back from here; I will not be mentioning that I have done SPT again in the weekly update unless I'm feeling particularly down about my goal progress that week. It'll sort of be our secret code; you'll know I'm really mad at myself for not getting anything done because I'll bring it up. Know that I am chastising myself quite enough even now, for this grave, underperforming transgression.

So, there it is, the week in review. Now that all the goal detail posts are done, I won't have them as an excuse to delay doing actual goal-related activities, and the posts in the coming week will be far more substantive. I'm going to really get started, I swear!
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Start Date: 8.28.09

The first day of my Mission 101 has officially ended, and here's what I've accomplished so far:

• Sleeping until 11:37am. To be fair, I also was up until nearly 4 because I was not only on west coast time, but also slept about four hours on the plane, and I only had about three hours of sleep the night before, what with all the packing.



• "First day" of work. Considering I arrived at the office at 1:30, and didn't do a whole lot but fill out my W-4 and label a few folders before leaving for a bank deposit run at 4, I don't really think it counts.



• Grocery shopping. Time: 1.15 hours. Stores visited: 2. Money spent: $140. Number of boxes of artichoke and mozzarella ravioli purchased: 0. PUBLIX FAIL. Now I have to learn how to make it myself. Ohhhhhhhhh well.



• Unpacking. This is an extraordinarily daunting task, mostly because in the last four years, I have accumulated a LOT of stuff. Boxed up, it is more than can reasonably fit in my room, so I have absolutely no idea how I'll fit it all in here out of the boxes. I probably won't even try to.



• Shuttle launch. At 11:59pm, the shuttle Discovery lifted off to deliver supplies, a new scientist, and the Colbert exercise(?) module to the space station. I was at the beach (along with a hundred other people and my family) watching. It was a very fitting way to, erm, celebrate being back in Florida.

So... those aren't at all things that count as progress towards my goals. Oh well. Here's what I do have:

• The list of Top 50 Greatest Movies of All Time Ever. It will be in its own post, momentarily. Apocalypse Now is on TMC on demand right now, though, so I'll probably be watching it in the next week. Progress yay!



• The novel that I'm going to adapt into my screenplay. I will begin reading it with a hefty stack of post-its in hand tomorrow or Sunday, depending on scheduling.



• Ten dollars worth of stock. It turns out that buying stock is more complicated than I thought, and that broker's commission is generally ten dollars, so I'm sort of informally purchasing 8.5 shares of stock in my uncle's new company, Hyperdynamics Corporation, from my dad. It will be slightly more difficult to uphold the "not looking at it" portion of this goal for the duration of my employment in Florida, but that's (hopefully) only going to last six months, tops. This goal is now currently "In Progress!"



• Books. Books books books books books. I have a lot of them. I have to sort them, and I have to make lists of them, but I hope to read Streetcar and East, West to begin my Tennessee Williams and Salman Rushdie oeuvre goals in the next two weeks as well as getting started on the screenplay novel.

So that's where I am right now. Like I said, I'll post the list of movies to watch in its own post in a second. You may have also noticed that the detail posts for my Reading Goals and Sundry Goals have not yet been posted; I will have those done by Sunday night.

I'm just beginning to get a feel for the magnitude of this project. It's alternately very scary, very exciting, and very ridiculous. I'll say more on this in my next weekly update, after I've been at it a little longer.

One final note - a few people have mentioned that they weren't sure if they could comment without a blogger/google account, or that they tried to but the site ate their comment without posting it. To the first group, yes, I have enabled anonymous posting, though it would be nice if you wanted to sign your name and let me know who you are, if I know you. To the second group, I was unable to reproduce this error in three independent tests, so I can't test for myself if the solution I am trying has worked. I did change the comments to being on a completely separate page from the post instead of being embedded in it, so hopefully that will help. Thanks for reading, regardless!
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Creativity Goals

1. Participate in NaNoWriMo.
8. Plant things. Make them grow and stuff.
9. Learn to properly knit a human-sized sweater.
18. Write at least one quality drabble weekly.
20. Learn at least thirty ethnic food recipes. Prepare each satisfactorily.
22. Learn to play June on the West Coast on guitar.
25. Adapt a favorite novel into a screenplay.
35. Participate in the 24 pictures/24 hours at least 3 times.
36. Reupholster something successfully.
37. Selfportrait Thursday.
40. Create an entire outfit by hand.
50. Sell baked goods at a farmer's market.
66. Collect 101 new characters.
67. Fill a watercolor journal.
79. Write a children's story and find someone to illustrate it.
83. Handmake and send 10 no-occasion cards to friends and family.
97. Make a baby onesie out of a Stewart/Colbert '08 shirt.

Details

1. Participate in NaNoWriMo

My reason for wanting to do NaNoWriMo is simple: ever since I learned of it six (seven? eight?) years ago, I've never been able to work up the nerve to actually do it.

One of my major problems when it comes to writing fiction is that I get so paralyzed that I'm going to do a bad job that I don't even start. The point of NaNoWriMo is not to produce the next great American novel (or that of whatever nationality/ethnicity you may be). It is to produce, plain and simple. The point is to spit words out.

I don't anticipate being able to participate in NaNoWriMo 2009, for the simple fact that I'll be too wrapped up in adapting a screenplay at the time. But I hope that by November 2010 I'll finally be able to join in contribute my word vomit to the pile. I'll go sci-fi/fantasy on this if I need to.

8. Plant things. Make them grow and stuff.

Another rather self-explanatory goal; I've always thought it would be neat to have a proper garden instead of an aging bamboo plant on my bathroom windowsill. The closest I've yet come is the plant I (with a lot of help from my grandmother, I'll be the first to admit) kept alive in the dorms all through college (except for junior year when I wasn't there; see above).

This summer, I witnessed the amazing effect a city-wide effort to plant beautiful and useful flora can have on a population. Portland is full of roses, sure, but many, many people grows herbs and spices themselves, and almost as many have at least tried to cultivate their own fruits and veggies with varying degrees of success. I want to be a part of that, even if it isn't in Portland.

I foresee this goal being somewhat difficult to quantify as finished, owing to the fact that I may be moving around a lot, at least in the next year. Therefore, if I cannot obtain a personal gardening space, if I will consider this completed if I participate in every stage of a community gardening effort, from tilling to harvest. And if I can sneak a few jasmine plants in, all the better :)

9. Learn to properly knit a human-sized sweater.

Since learning to knit in high school, I have produced yards and yards of scarves. I am an excellent knitter - of straight lines. My non-scarf projects to date have included:

• Winter cap - Begun on five double-pointed bamboo needles; abandoned shortly after it came time to begin decreasing stitches to finish.


• Patterned Scarf - I wasn't really sure what I was thinking when I began this project, adapted from an afghan pattern, except that I was really excited to try my first Complicated Lace Pattern. I only had four skeins of dollar store baby-soft yarn, but by God, I was going to get somewhere with it, two feet wide or not. It turns out that I really don't understand certain stitch notations, as I began to add stitches when I mistakenly thought that I had inadvertently been decreasing by - get this - not understanding certain stitch notations. Turns out I've been knitting by luck this whole time, I guess. Anyways, this semi-cape-like object has become a very useful winter blanket for one of my stuffed animals. There are pictures; it is adorable.


• Bear Sweater - What originally started as another attempt to knit with circular needles and following (though reducing) a pattern ended up being me devising my own pattern for straight needles. It's a hoodie, and right now I have 90% of the pieces knitted. I'll let you know how it turns out after I get someone to teach me to knit itty-bitty in-the-round (anyone know how to do glove fingers?) for the sleeves.

So, as you can see, my knitting history has been a somewhat sordid one. Essentially, this goal is the culmination of two knitting mini-goals: to be able to knit to a pattern, and to be able to knit in the round. As such, I will occasionally be making posts related to this goal in those veins - I imagine I'll probably try knitting a sort of hobo-bag on big rounds, and give another straight pattern a go before I attempt The Latvian Sweater, or, as I call it, The Mother of All Knitting Projects. It's going to be intense. There will be pictures; you may feel free to point and laugh at any time.

18. Write at least one quality drabble weekly.

This goal is fairly straightforward as well: once a week, to keep my creative juices flowing, I will write at least 100 words in response to one of the many, many prompts I see on my dreamwidth journal. All drabbles will be cross-posted here and tagged both "Creativity" and "Drabble" - I figure that since there are going to be (if all goes well) 156 of them, they deserve to have their own tag. In order to be lenient with myself, in case I forget, or am busy traveling, once a month I may take a week off, though the next week I must make up the missed drabble as well as complete the current one.

20. Learn at least thirty ethnic food recipes. Prepare each satisfactorily.

Exactly what it sounds like. Americanized versions of anything will not count - screw you, lasagna, I already know how to make you, anyway. First up on the list is Beef Rendang, followed by Bengali Payesh (the only rice pudding I've ever liked!), followed by... who knows what. Suggestions are welcome in the comment thread. Obviously, each stage of progress for this goal will be tagged both with "Creativity" and "Adventures in Cookery," a tag which will also come into play for goals #50, 53, and 63 (Sell baked goods at a farmer's market, and learn about wine and cheese).

22. Learn to play June on the West Coast on guitar.

This is one of my all-time favorite Bright Eyes songs, which I "tried" to learn to play in high school. No more fooling around. It's a four(ish?) chord song and I WILL learn how to play it. While this is primarily a creativity goal, any posts relating to its progress will also receive a "Music" tag, for obvious reasons.

25. Adapt a favorite novel into a screenplay.

As I said above, this is my One Big First Project of this entire mission. This is a goal I am extremely excited about tackling, especially because it will force me to reverse my standard style of writing. I'm a narration girl at heart, and a screenplay will (duh) necessarily force me to shift the focus to dialogue to convey the story. Because I think that in 95% of movies it is a cop-out, I will not be using voice-over in this effort. Seriously. That's cheating. I won't say any more on this right now, because I anticipate that the bulk of my posts for the next few months will be about my progress on this goal, and more detailed reflections on the reasons for it and How I am Growing as a Writer and all that. Its secondary tag will be "Adaptation." With the period.

35. Participate in the 24 pictures/24 hours thing at least 3 times.

On days 93, 307, and 986 (Nov. 29, 2009, July 1, 2010, and May 10, 2012) of the mission, I will take one picture of myself/my surroundings/my actions/my whatever to illustrate Where I Am In Life. I think it's like doing a 24 hour comic, but with less effort and a lot less pressure to be funny. For those who are into that sort of thing, it may have started here, but unless you can read Swedish, it probably won't be very useful for you to click that. Anyway. I will post these when I do them.... Probably sometime the days after, because I will be AWAKE FOR 24 HOURS (although I suppose power-napping in between hours is allowed). They will be tagged "Creativity" as well as "pix or it didn't happen." I'm betting that will still be funny in three years. But not money.

36. Reupholster something successfully.

This goal is very near and dear to me for two reasons. First, I began a reupholstering project last fall and was heavily discouraged from getting beyond the first seat cushion due to insinuations that I would not actually be able to keep the couch I was so lovingly restoring. I have about 10 yards of very good quality, very pretty, sage-striped fabric left, and I'm aching to not let that money go to waste.

Secondly, when I was very young, my family had one of those floral living room sets. Very comfy seating, very dated fabric. My mom has had them slip-covered for years. Luckily, last year or so, our dog sort of tore open the back cushion of the armchair, which was, by all accounts, my chair from about the age of two and a half upwards. Memories. So, since I'm moving home, and I have all this fabric, and my favorite piece of childhood furniture is in desperate need of some attention, everything is coming together like Stillwater and Sabbath. It's all happening!

37. Selfportrait Thursday

If you haven't heard of this, the best and most well-known example is here. Except that he did it everyday. For six years. And I'm going to smile. These posts will also receive the "pix" tag in addition to, like every other goal on this page, "Creativity."

40. Create an entire outfit by hand.

Again with the sewing, I know. I've always been fascinated by the pattern books at the fabric stores, though, and I feel like I'm pretty handy with pins and lining things up and my sewing machine, so I'm looking forward to this one. It will probably happen a bit later on, because I want to do the reupholstering while I'm still at home. There are only two more things to add about this goal right now: Halloween costumes do not count, and this goal and #51, Make a real green dress, cannot be combined.

50. Sell baked goods at a farmer's market.

I like to bake. From scratch. I like to tweak recipes. I especially like to add peanut butter or Nutella whenever possible. I think I'm pretty good at it. Other people sell things at farmer's markets; other bakers have gained their local following at them and earned enough to open a proper shop for their delicious baked wares. I have no such ambitions at this time, but this is definitely something I would like to try at least once. After I do a bit more research and find out about any licenses or fees or anything I might need, I might decide to do this for a while. We'll see where it goes. It is definitely NOT going to go off the list, and any updates will be under both the standard "Creativity" tag as well as "Adventures in Cookery." Without a period.

66. Collect 101 new characters.

This might sound a little odd, but I swear it isn't anything serial-killery. As almost everyone in the universe knows, people-watching is an excellent pastime. If you have your computer or a notepad with you, it's even better. And remember, kids, it doesn't count as stalking if they're talking loud enough for everyone to hear ;) These posts will have an additional tag of "Characters," and the first two will be posted shortly.

67. Fill a watercolor journal.

I am atrocious at the visual arts. I can't draw anything but abstract models for clothing, architectural perspective pencil drawings with a ruler, and... well, no, those two are pretty much it. I can't even draw a circle without erasing at least half of it first and my smiley faces have never been as bouncy and happy-looking as the other girls'. But in high school art class, I really loved doing watercolors, and a wash is pretty easy. I want to work my way up into loose watercolor landscapes (think Lilo and Stitch) and a representation of The Galaxy. Every ten pages I will post scans of what I've done, tagged "Art Journal." Please note that if the mood overtakes me to use some medium other than watercolor, I will be most pleased at this willingness to experiment and take full advantage of it. You have been warned.

79. Write a children's story and find someone to illustrate it.

Every once in a while, I get an idea for a modern children's book, but I never actually sit down and do anything about it. Since all my attention as a writer is on material for people my age or older, I feel like it will be very refreshing to completely shift gears and write for a younger audience. My influences are Maurice Sendak, Eric Carle, and Leo Lionni, and if this watercoloring thing works out, I may even do the illustrations myself. Woo!

83. Handmake and send 10 no-occasion cards to friends and family.

Because everybody likes construction paper and glue. And everybody likes to get stuff in the mail. And... do I really need to keep explaining this one?

97. Make a baby onesie out of a Stewart/Colbert '08 shirt.

Not gonna lie, a little inspired by the Gilmore Girls on this one. I figure it's better to do this sooner rather than later, though, as by the time I actually have a kid these shirts should probably be pretty hard to come by. I have already started collecting weird, quirky early childhood books that I'm going to want my future offspring to be able to read, in case they're out of print, so this is not totally out of character for me, either. Jon Stewart for President!

So there you have it, folks, my Creativity goals for this mission. It's one of the most populous categories so far, although I do have about 35 more goals I need to add between now and next week. I don't think I can handle any more huge projects like these, though, without marrying rich and giving up all my, you know, career goals (see #61). We'll see.

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