nanowrimo2020 – Page 4 – To Hither and Yon

Reading Update

November 16, 2020 3 of 8

So I’ve spent about half of my blogging time this weekend* reading in order to catch up my Goodreads account. After all, if I don’t read enough to keep up with my blogging, then there go my Gratuitous Amazon Links.

I’m only reading graphic novels, comics compilations, and comic strip compilations this weekend in order to get the most undated read items from my Goodreads account knocked off. And so far, I’ve reduced my undated books from 9 of the 14 pages to 8 of the 14 pages. If I keep this up, by the end of the week,** maybe half of my Goodreads pages will have dates! Yay!

Gratuitous Amazon Link time! Though since I’m talking about reading, maybe less gratuitous than usual. This post, we have Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book 2 The Hammer of Thor, by Rick Riordan. I guess the first book, The Sword of Summer, is buried somewhere in the wilds of the undated books in my Read category. There’s a surprise.

I only have one Unbeatable Squirrel Girl compilation to go. I’m starting on FoxTrot compilations and Avatar: The Last Airbender graphic novels.

*I had a three-day weekend, then worked a short (7.5-hour) day, then had another day off. It all feels like one weekend to me.

**Tuesday November 17 through Friday November 20.

What’s For Dinner Tonight?

November 14, 2020 2 of 8

This isn’t a recipe as such, but I’m hard up for words today, so . . .

Most of my meals are pretty basic. When Thomas and I split up, I pared down most of my meals to the bare basics because neither Alex nor I wanted the extra stuff.

I mostly said that for the wordcount, because I’m pretty sure this meal is the same now as it was back then. If I remember differently, I’ll edit this post later.

When I was little, the only fish my mom made was perch. She’d get these blocks of frozen perch at the store and we’d thaw them, pry them apart into individual fillets, brush them with lemon butter, and broil them. I believe we served this with French fries.

When I started getting older, my mom decided to start trying new kinds of fish. We tried halibut, turbot, orange roughy, salmon, sole, and other kinds of fish. Just fresh from the seafood counter at the store. And we’d cook it pretty much like we had the perch — lemon butter and broil The halibut, orange roughy, and salmon were the ones that did the best with that approach.

When I started dating Thomas, he swore that the only kind of fish he liked was frozen, breaded fish sticks. After several months, I got him to have fish with my folks and me on fish night (which was usually Friday, though we aren’t Catholic. If I could explain my mom . . . .) and he really liked the fish.

So when we got married, we made halibut and salmon. Then when we moved to Texas, something happened to the halibut. It was no longer firm and flaky but kind of mealy. So, so much for halibut. Now we were just down to salmon.

We decided that the salmon needed a side dish and somehow decided on the Pasta Roni Angel Hair with Herbs.

This is now Alex’s favorite dinner, and so I pick up salmon pretty regularly. And that’s what we had for dinner tonight.

A couple of posts ago, I started on the The Madman’s Daughter trilogy. Well, tonight is the second book, Her Dark Curiosity, which is an adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

So I’ve Hit Four Years of Language Study

November 16, 2020

I missed my 30-day streak on NaNoWriMo. I was pooped when I came home last night, so I went to take a nap for a couple of hours and woke up right at midnight.

I passed the four year mark on my language study yesterday and I have $2,700 in principal saved up. Assuming that life will have me bopping back and forth between the lowest amount I’ve averaged ($0.48) and the highest ($2.04) for the next 20 years, Then I’ll have $13,500, which is good enough to be going on with.

Though, currently, as I go I’m getting more studying and work done every day. When I first started, my average deposit was only $0.48. Now it’s $2.04. If the average keeps going up, maybe I’ll even finish early.

Of course, this is all in aid of paying for me to get a master’s degree in modern languages so that if I ever become too ill to have a physical job, I can still work to keep the money coming in (and for fun, and also maybe as a side hustle while working my day job).

And there are other ways to pay for schooling besides handing the school cash and saying “Here you go.” If I don’t start this until past 65, then I might be able to get some of my classes tuition-free. Then there are fellowships, which are like scholarships, except that it seems that there’s some kind of work component. My impression is that it’s like if scholarships and work-study programs had a baby and that baby went to grad school.

So I guess I need to start researching how to get a fellowship and figure out how to prove my dedication to an as-yet-undecided-upon language.

Also, I don’t know if I’ve come right out and said this, but I definitely need to go to a public college or university for this. $16,000 is the adjusted-for-inflation cost of my MSIS from when I got it in 2009 until 2016 when I started this program. I figured that most of the increase in tuition and fees from then until 2031/2036 will be taken care of by interest on investing that money. I hope.

Our Gratuitous Amazon Link this time is Steelheart, Book One of the Reckoners trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. I really enjoyed this, though I do disagree with how readily Chicagoans would agree to refer to the city as “Newcago.” I grew up there. If you search for “Marshall Field’s,” the site FieldsFansChicago, which advocates changing the name of the State Street store back from Macy’s to Fields, shows up on the first page of results. There’s a meme that shows 233 S. Wacker with text saying “Spelled W-I-L-L-I-S. Pronounced ‘Sears.'”
So, yeah. I don’t see “Newcago” happening.

My Bed Is Covered in Books

November 14, 2020 1 of 8

Supposedly I’m reaching the end the “difficult” week of NaNoWriMo, so let’s see if I can make that work out and get my wordcount way up. Granted, after this post (or maybe the next one), I should be farther than I got the last time I tried to NaNoWriMo my blog, but I’d really like to actually win once.

Anyway, between trying to update my Goodreads page and Alex moving out and giving me back all of my books that have been accumulating in his room and that I just don’t have any room for, the spot that used to be Thomas’s is now dedicated to my books.

Below, I threatened to take a picture of my bed with all of the books on it. Well, there you go. And maybe the blanket isn’t really *teal* per se, but I did make it that bluegreen color with teal dye.

Oh, and I got my latest book from The Fantastic Strangelings Book Club, which is a book about books bound in human skin. So that promises to be interesting.

OMG. I just realized that I don’t have any of my comic strip compilations on my
Goodreads account. Crap. I guess I’d better get to that, too.

I really should take a picture of my bed. My bedroom is really dark, though, so who knows what it’ll look like in a photo.

I found another cookbook in Alex’s bedroom, so that’ll be a new source for recipes now that I’ll just be cooking for myself. The cookbook is *also* on Thomas’s side of the bed.

For today’s Gratuitous Amazon Link, erm, I don’t know how the oldest Nancy Drew book in my Goodreads page is the 16th in the series (I wonder if my Overdrive account with the San Antonio Public Library has the dates I read the first 15 books), but it is. So, here’s The Clue of the Tapping Heels, by Carolyn Keene.

Ow!

Or: I Just Took a Long Walk in Sandals

November 13, 2020 2 of 8

Okay this all starts in August of 2019. Phoenix and I went to Pedernales Falls State Park for a star party. On the way, we stopped at a Walmart that has a Subway for sandwiches and picked up some socks.

The socks initially felt pretty comfortable. However, at some point I noticed that the socks were too tight and made my feet actually hurt. I treated the pain by giving my feet days off by wearing sandals without socks. When the pandemic started and we were locked down, I didn’t get a chance to go shopping for new sandals and I thought that the last pair of sandals I had from 2018 were going to be the last sandals I would be able to get until 2021. So I’ve been wearing my athletic shoes with the tight socks and putting an adhesive bandage over the sore spot and toughing it out until i can get my act together and get some new socks.

Then, just the other day, I found that they still make my sandals, so I ordered five pairs (enough to get me through the pandemic and maybe even into 2022). Since I no longer have to preserve this last pair of sandals, I decided to give my foot a day off from those socks and wore the sandals.

After all, I reasoned, I was going to be walking on a broad, paved path and so the sandals would stay on well enough and give me adequate support for that walk.

Then I misremembered where the path went on the Leon Creek Greenway and ended up in OP Schnabel Park, which is a very nice park, but isn’t where I wanted to be.

I wandered around in the park for a while trying to see if there was a way out that wouldn’t require me to walk all the way back the way I came. I use Pokemon Go as a map of park trails, and Pokemon Go said that there was an alternate route, so I decided to try it.

It was an unimproved dirt trail, but it led the correct direction, so I kept going.

And then I found a steep, rocky, downward, I don’t want to say “slope” because that kind of downplays the steepness of this. Not really a dropoff either, because it wasn’t quite that steep, either. I don’t know. Is there a word between a slope and a dropoff? It was, like, steps, maybe? But not that regular.

Anyway, I don’t really like going downhill at all. I tend to cling to the railing when going down stairs. Up? Up is okay. Down, not so much.

So here I am, in sandals, of all things, trying to climb down this rocky stair/slope/dropoff thing. Fortunately the trees closest to the path were pretty small, so I used them as a railing. I checked my phone at the bottom of that slope and I was (fortunately!) still going the right direction and so I kept going down the unimproved what is now largely rock trail until I finally got to the regular paved path I was looking for.

On my way back to my car, I then continued my project of taking pictures on the Greenway looking for shady areas. It was overcast today, so I don’t know if the movie will really emphasize where the shady areas are (and there were shady areas!). I hope to post the movie once it’s done, but that won’t be for a long, long, time. In the last two weeks, I think I’ve done about 1/3 of the Leon Creek Greenway and 0/3 of the Salado Creek Greenway. So, assuming that the Salado Creek Greenway is about the same length as the Leon Creek Greenway (I think it’s longer), that’s at least a 12-week commitment.

So you’ll be seeing the movie on January 25, at the earliest.

Our Gratuitous Amazon Link today is The Dragonfly Season, the second book in the Streetlights like Fireworks series by David Pandolfe. I’m very sorry that Pandolfe has apparently stopped writing, because I really loved this series and also his Jump When Ready series. If he Googles his name and finds this comment, I really would love to see more from you, Mr. Pandolfe!

Content Creators: The Bloggess

November 13, 2020 4 of 8

I’m trying to remember when I first discovered Jenny Lawson, who blogs at The Bloggess. I believe that one of my friends (Leta, maybe?) linked to And That’s Why You Should Learn to Pick Your Battles.

I dug around on her site a while and found her to be hysterically funny and, like the very best funny things, every once in a while, Jenny will post something that hits you right in the gut. Often these gut punches have to do with Jenny’s mental health. Jenny has a mental illness and she is very frank about her struggles.

She did a TEDx Talk about her mental illness and she had a panic attack in the middle of it. Jenny lives in San Antonio and the talk was at the Empire Theater. I hadn’t gotten tickets because, well, time got away from me. It turned out that I walked right past the theater that day and I came *this* close to seeing if she’d gone on already and, if not, if I could’ve bought a ticket. And I’m very disappointed that I didn’t because I’d’ve loved to have been one of the people there who gave her a standing ovation.

She wasn’t there to see it, because her anxiety made her run off to the back as soon as she was done. But I’d’ve happily ovated her standingly.

And I’m not the only person who loves her. She opened a bookstore here this year, Nowhere Bookshop on Broadway in Alamo Heights. Well, I say “opened,” but they’re only open for curbside service right now. But she also started a virtual book club this year and she expected maybe 50 people. Last I heard it was over 1,000. There is a $10 setup fee and then you get charged $25 per month plus shipping (and sales tax if you’re in Texas) for the books. If the book is more, the book club eats the difference and if it’s less, they send you some kind of extra thingy, like a bookmark or a pin or something. Some of the books are autographed and two have come with little bookplates with the author’s autograph on them.

If you want to join the club, the signup page is here: The Fantastic Strangelings Book Club. A number of my Gratuitous Amazon Links are book club selections.

Speaking of Gratuitous Amazon Links, what’s up next? The Madman’s Daughter, by Megan Shepherd, apparently. I have some recollection of this series, but since I read them four years ago, it’s not so crisp and clear. This is the first book in a trilogy, also called The Madman’s Daughter, which is about the adventures of Juliet Moreau, the daughter of Dr. Moreau from The Island of Dr. Moreau. I will soon be posting the other two books.

What’s for Dinner Tonight?

The Meal I Invented by Mistake

November 13, 2020 3 of 8

Way back when dinosaurs walked the Earth, Rice-a-Roni had a recipe on the beef Rice-a-Roni package for a kind of Spanish rice recipe. It involved basically making the Rice-a-Roni according to package directions then adding canned tomatoes (or was it stewed tomatoes? I can never remember and it’s really immaterial right now). My mom always browned pork chops, then browned the rice/vermicelli mixture then put the pork chops into the pot with the Rice-a-Roni and tomatoes too cook the rest of the way through. It’s really good and was one of our staple dinners from my childhood.

In late 1991 or early 1992, I was a newlywed and had these chicken breasts that I’d bought basically on a whim. I was on the phone with my mom and my inability to come up with anything interesting to do with these chicken breasts came up in the conversation.

My mom suggested that I make them with Rice-a-Roni rice pilaf, so I basically did the pork chops and Spanish rice meal with chicken breasts and rice pilaf. Well, without the tomatoes, ’cause that would be weird.

It was awesome. Thomas and I both loved it and I made it pretty frequently.

Fast forward to autumn of either 1999 (when my mom came to help with Alex after he was born) or 2001 (when my mom came to help while I had my chemo). Actually, it was probably 2001, because I don’t remember my dad being there.

I made this dish for my mom and she said that it was delicious and asked me where I got the recipe.

Thomas and I both looked at her and I said, “I got it from you.”

She assured me that she’d never heard of this meal and she certainly would’ve made it herself if she had.

So I told her about the phone conversation where (I thought) she suggested it.

Turns out she didn’t mean to do it this way, she was thinking more of using the Rice-a-Roni as a side dish. And she went on to say that she wished she’d thought of it because it really was good.

I’ve had a taste for chicken and rice pilaf lately but Alex has not, so I made it for myself tonight. I even have leftovers for maybe tomorrow night, or Sunday, or something. Maybe I’ll freeze them and have them next week. The sky’s the limit.

My Gratuitous Amazon Link this time is the *fourth* book in the Streetlights Like Fireworks series. I posted the second book and now the fourth. It looks like I somehow missed putting read dates down for the first and third. So I guess those are now going to be in my reading queue. Anyway, here it is: This Gem in My Hand, by David Pandolfe.

New Thoughts on Language Studies

November 13, 2020 1 of 8

I still haven’t decided on what language I’m going to focus on for my eventual degree. And I have lots of time to choose; I’m not going to start the degree until about 11 years from now, at the earliest.

But the thought occurs that I would like to do lots of travel (and, ideally, I’d need to study there for a semester for the degree) in a country that speaks my target language.

As we all know, Spanish is my path of least resistance. I have two years of college-level Spanish already and I speak it nearly daily in my job.

And, as a woman who would likely be traveling alone, I probably want to avoid countries where I’d be shaken down for bribes. So I’m looking at the Transparency International map for 2019 and the yellowest (the ones with the lowest corruption indices) countries on the map are Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, New Zealand, Singapore, and Luxembourg.

I already speak German, so there’s that.

So I guess I need to add Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, and Dutch to my language rotation somehow.

If I’m willing to go as orange as the United States, that opens up a bunch more, including France, Spain, and Portugal. Also, Ireland, Japan, Estonia, Hong Kong, the UAE, and Uruguay.

So I could stick with Spanish and plan for Uruguay. Also, Irish, Japanese, Cantonese, or Estonian.

I think I’d be biting off more than I can chew with Japanese or Cantonese, frankly.

So I guess I’m trying the languages of Scandinavia next. I have a friend who is learning Swedish, so at least I could maybe have a language partner there.

I have also decided that it’s too much work keeping up on my newest books read for my Gratuitous Amazon Links this month. So I’m going for my oldest read dates on my Goodreads account. And my current oldest read date is . . . . July 13, 2016? Don’t ask me. I guess that must’ve been when I started my Goodreads account. So I bring you: The Trials of Apollo, Book One: The Hidden Oracle, by Rick Riordan.

I Really Need to Stop Procrastinating

November 12, 2020 1 of 8

Although what I’m doing while procrastinating is kind of helpful for the long haul, I need to literally and figuratively get off my butt and do something more immediately productive.

I’ve basically spent the whole day reading comic books so that I can fill in those blanks in my Goodreads page.

Meanwhile, one of my friends has a sick dog and her paycheck was short this month, so I’ve just offered to spot her some money so she can take him to the vet.

Additionally, back in 2018, I found a pair of sandals I really loved (Earth Origins Nellie) and so I bought a bunch of them. By the time I found out that I was going to love them, the local DSW was sold out, so I had to scrounge what I could online. I ended up with one pair of black (the one I got at DSW), and one pair each blue, red, and brown. I wore the blue ones until they were just about worn out and the red ones until they were completely worn out. That means I wore the red ones for running around the house and things for a year or thereabouts. So the insole finally completely fell apart last night and so I’m changing to the brown ones.

Since I’m used to the sandals being red, every time I look at the brown ones I feel like my eyes’ color balance is off. It’s very disconcerting.

Since I realized how old these shoes are, I decided to see if I could still get them. I was very, very surprised to see that I actually still can. I honestly thought that my current pair was the last pair in the world. The store at Amazon.com has both black and white in my size, so I’m getting three black and two white. That should hold me until, well, if they last as long as the ones I got in 2018 did, 2022?

Boy, that added up fast. But for two years’ worth of comfortable sandals? I think it’ll be worth it.

I had to go back and look over all of my soon-to-be posted posts to see if I can figure out where I left off on Gratuitous Amazon Links. It looks like I was on the first Squirrel Girl compilation so, I bring you: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 2: Squirrel You Know It’s True, by Ryan North, Dan Slott, Erica Henderson, Matt Haley, Kieron Dwyer, and Ty Templeton

One of these days I need to go back through my Gratuitous Amazon Links and make sure that they are still good and that they lead to the books that I’m intending them to. That day will not be today, because I’m trying to focus on writing. Maybe I’ll do NaNoEdMo this March and do it then.

Tag: nanowrimo2020