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November 30, 2006
Two (Specific) Reasons I Love My Friend Maaike
Because there are the obvious reasons:
Talent
Intelligence
Kindness
Laughter
Creativity
And then there are the two things she did today. For background, you should know that she teaches the same class I do, in the same room, right after my last class of the day. Also, that we are into the last round of speeches for the semester.
So.
Specific Reason for Loving Maaike #1
Anyone who teaches Comm 101 at the university is doing speeches right now. And anyone who takes or teaches Comm 101 knows that if you want to enter a classroom during speech days, you wait until you hear the applause and enter between speakers.
After the third speaker in my last class, the door to my classroom swings open and in walks Maaike with a scythe. A real, honest-to-god 5-foot scythe. Like Death carries. And she says, "Sally! Your Time Is Over!"
I, being the ever-responsible instructor, assume we've somehow run over time. Ilook at the list of speakers still to go, look at the clock, realize we're only halfway through and say, "No! We're only halfway done!"
And she responds, "No, Sally. Just you."
Since my students already think I'm a world-class nutcase, it was simply confirmation.
Specific Reason for Loving Maaike #2
Among the various things that made me crazy in my class today were three separate cell phones ringing during speeches a total of five times. Even though shut off the damn phones is a basic rule in my class on speech days. All three of them rang during one student's speech. I was appalled. They should know better than that by now.
After my class has finished, my students are packing up and going and her students are shuffling in, I say to Maaike, "One of my students had three cell phones go off during his speech today!"
And she says,genuinely perplexed, "Why did he have three cell phones?"
How can you not adore someone who makes you laugh until you fall over not once but twice in less than an hour?
Posted by sally at 08:58 PM | Comments (1)
November 28, 2006
51,315 Words!
As of 11:56pm, I have an unofficial total of 51,315 words in The Search for Herself. I wrote 5241 words tonight. Since about 8:30pm. Yes. I wrote 5241 words in not quite 3 1/2 hours. I type like the wind.
I say unofficial because I'm not quite finished. I've written the climax, but not the denoument. Because I want to actually finish a novel, rather than just writing 50K of one (Devil Daughter from last year still isn't finished, even though I wrote 72K and it's a better story than this one), I will write the final scene tomorrow and get it validated so I can get my official purple bar and banner and certificate and stuff. But not until the story is done.
And then I will put the gawdawful story away and maybe never ever look at it again. But I have to finish it first or it will haunt me. And all I want is for it to Go. Away. (Except that it just started to get interesting. Dammit.)
Posted by sally at 11:56 PM
This Is All Dave's Fault
Let me make that clear straightaway.
He is the reason we are stranded here, in the arctic reaches of the frozen North. If he wasn't in graduate school, we could be tanning poolside on a tropical island someplace. But no. We have to live in Moscow. Where it is currently 10.4°F. I refuse to do the calculations into Celcius as it would be a negative number and too, too depressing for words.
Dave is also the reason the weather here is so hideously cold and icy right now. Because he asked for it specifically. Just last week he was complaining about the fact that Moscow doesn't have real winter anymore. That's why, at the end of November, we have received roughly 6" of snow in two days. One of those days (today) was simply supposed to be clear and cold. But thanks to Dave, the weather gods tossed a little snow into the mix.
I actually like winter. And snow. I like wearing cute scarves and hats and nice winter sweaters. I don't even mind boots. I DO mind having to carry all the accoutrements needed for outdoor expeditions (say from my office to the classroom) around to three different rooms because I observe/teach in three separate spaces in the same building between 9:30 & 12:30. In fact, I think I'd enjoy winter more if it didn't require quite so much gear.
I also mind walking outside in air so cold that I can feel my nose hairs freeze when I inhale. Trust me. Not pleasant.
On the other hand, a little frozen nostril fuzz is a small price to pay for taking a twilight walk to my car through air so clear you can see forever, on snow that sparkles like I'm walking across crushed diamonds.
Posted by sally at 06:03 PM | Comments (2)
November 27, 2006
For My David, on the Occasion of Our (2nd) Ninth Wedding Anniversary
LOVE'S GROWTH.
by John Donne
I SCARCE believe my love to be so pure
As I had thought it was,
Because it doth endure
Vicissitude, and season, as the grass ;
Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring make it more.
But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow
With more, not only be no quintessence,
But mix'd of all stuffs, vexing soul, or sense,
And of the sun his active vigour borrow,
Love’s not so pure, and abstract as they use
To say, which have no mistress but their Muse ;
But as all else, being elemented too,
Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.
And yet no greater, but more eminent,
Love by the spring is grown ;
As in the firmament
Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown,
Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough,
From love's awakened root do bud out now.
If, as in water stirr'd more circles be
Produced by one, love such additions take,
Those like so many spheres but one heaven make,
For they are all concentric unto thee ;
And though each spring do add to love new heat,
As princes do in times of action get
New taxes, and remit them not in peace,
No winter shall abate this spring’s increase.
Happy anniversary, my dearest.
I love you.
Posted by sally at 03:26 PM
November 26, 2006
Habitual Responses
It's amazing how quickly one can get out of the habit of doing something. Dave and I left on Monday for McCall, a little town on the shore of Payette Lake, to spend Thanksgiving with my family. Specifically, my parents, my Aunt Sally and cousin Josh, and John, Janene and the most important person of all, my new nephew Kieran.
(This is him with Dave. Oh. My. God. Isn't he a cutie? -- Either he, frankly.)
We had limited web access. I had buttloads of novel to write. (I passed 40K last night, by the way. Yay me!) And once the family got there--Dave and I had the first two days to ourselves--we had not only Thanksgiving, but two birthdays to celebrate, Dad and John, so there was a party every night.
Add those all together and they spell "Sally forgot her blog even existed. Post? What does that mean?" And now I am out of the habit.
It's amazing really, how many habits I am now out of. I am out of the habit of responding right away to student emails. I am out of the habit of posting photos. (I am improving, see above. And below). I am out of the habit of checking my blogroll daily. I am out of the habit of doing pretty much anything but sleeping in, walking through the snow, drinking large amounts of tasty wine and stuffing myself. I am a victim of the holidays. Pity me.
I'm awfully well-rested now, though.
Posted by sally at 11:14 AM
November 22, 2006
What Is There to Do Around Here?
Well, sit and stare at the walls, it turns out. And write. Yesterday I managed 5900 words on my novel before I got so sick of the story I was done for the day. It was either stop on purpose or stop by accident when I threw the computer at the wall, so I chose the less expensive option.
I am forcing myself to not have any other activities right now. Just to get the damn book done. So far, I've only done 1550 words today, but I'm using this time as a free write to get me revved up and started again. Just in time to break for lunch.
Dave's home and more or less not working, so we've had a chance to spend some time together. That's been the best part so far. Staring at the walls and seeing him out of the corner of my eye because he's here. With me.
That's what I call a vacation.
Posted by sally at 01:52 PM
November 20, 2006
It Is Done
All the grading. All done. Grades posted in the website created for such things.
I have no more grading to do until a week from Tuesday. It hasn't sunk in yet.
Posted by sally at 01:40 AM
November 19, 2006
So This Is Hell... Nice View...
I feel like Sisyphus. On Wednesday night, for a few brief, shining seconds of freedom I had no grading. No. Grading. It was all done. All of it.
And then I checked my email, and the stuff due Thursday had started trickling in.
Have I mentioned that I have over 100 students this semester? And that when I am grading their major speeches, my top speed is 6/hour? It's about 18 hours of grading for one round of speeches. And since the end of September, I've had two rounds of speeches. And those 36 hours don't include the grading time for the minor assignments scattered between the major speeches. It took me five hours yesterday to grade two classes' worth of papers and mini-speeches. Five. Hours. I still have two classes of stuff to go.
Of course, since the end of September I've also been rehearsing and performing Death of a Salesman, training the new teaching assistants, shadowing the instructor for the class I'll be teaching next semester and working monologues with students in one of the Acting 105 classes. I've not exactly had what you could call down time.
I remarked to Dave yesterday that I felt like I've been grading stuff forever. And I have. Since the end of September, I have been working on the grading. For a month and a half, I have spent my spare time grading papers and speeches. When I wasn't actually in class, or learning lines or putting together lesson plans or sleeping, I was grading. Except for the stack of papers I'd lost and then rediscovered and the late assignments and speeches that got set aside until I had time to look at them, everything else got back to its owner in a timely fashion.
And they wonder why I am getting more strict about late work. Because I have to grade it. And I would like to have a life too. You have one. That's why your assignment is late. Because you were having a great time doing something else. But I have been grading the work that was turned in on time, and I still don't get a break now? Because I have to get your late shit back to you in a timely fashion just like everybody else's stuff?
I pity the students who get me next semester. No late work at all without an excused absence. I am done with the flexible. Either get it done on time or you don't get credit.
As of this moment, two classes are completely done. I have nothing more to grade until after classes meet again the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. I have to get to the other two today. And then I will have a full eight days of no grading at all.
It will be just like being in heaven.
Which means, of course, that in the highly likely possibility that I end up in hell, it won't be like the interesting, enjoyable hell of Man and Superman. No, it will be a Sisyphean nightmare where I am constantly swimming to the top of a stack of papers, only to be buried underneath more. The Greeks had it right. Hell is not the constant torment. Hell is the hope that the constant torment may end. It's the end of the journey appearing in your vision, only to have it moved back beyond the horizon line.
Again.
Posted by sally at 11:42 AM | Comments (2)
November 15, 2006
I Love Coffee, I Love Tea...
Which is a good thing, because at the pace I'm running right now and with the amount of sleep I'm getting, caffeine is the only reason I'm still upright. Part of that--okay, all of it--is my own stupid fault for committing to so many things all at once. But how was I to know that four classes is so much more work than three? Or that I would be shadowing an instructor so I can take her classes in the spring? Or that I would be taking half of one of the beginning acting classes one day a week so all of the students could work their monologues more than if all 17 of them had to stay in the same room? Or that my novel would take such a turn for the Stupid?
None of that was predictable when I said I'd teach four comm classes this semester. Hell, when I agreed to teach four comm classes plus supervise & train the incoming GTAs (Graduate Teaching Assistants), I thought I had a shot at a small role in a comedy that opens after Thanksgiving playing someone's stroked-out mother. Linda was a faraway wish, and certainly not something that would turn into such a lovely reality.
Last August, I fully expected this fall to be as bleak as last fall was. No art, no job, no acting, no friends, no prospects. With only my novel to look forward to. (Well, that and Kieran, who I knew would brighten up October.)
So none of that stuff that is now consuming my days was expected. Or at least not expected to be quite such a big part of my life. The part that should have been expected was the amount of time the Artist Trading Card swaps I just signed up for would take. That's where it's-my-own-damn-fault-and-I should-stop-complaining-now takes over. Because I signed up for two swaps. Against my better judgement. Two themed swaps, which meant I had to make new cards.
Nine new cards. Not photography. Though now that I think of it, I could have figured out a way...
One swap runs 11/10-11/30 (six cards). The other, 11/15-12/1 (three cards). Guess which one I started first. Yeah. Not the one that begins and ends first and has more to do. Nope. I got them confused, and did the smaller, later bunch first. Those cards are ready to go and all I have to do is wait for the swap to start so I can get my recipient's name and send them off. Oh. That's today. Fantastic. I'll just fit the post office trip in somewhere around, well, hmmm... Looks like I'll be sending them out tomorrow. No. Friday. I'll definitely send them on Friday. Which is the first day I'm not committed to being somewhere during business hours since last Friday. Okay then.
By they way, here they are. The theme was Coffee. That's it. I decided that coffee should be one of the materials used in construction. Media for these, then are coffee, ink, glitter, paper, ribbon and metal on watercolor paper. I have to say, they look so much better in person, when you can tip and tilt them to see the glitter glitter.
Awash in Java
Jitters
Coffee Olympics: Bronze
Posted by sally at 08:02 AM | Comments (4)
November 10, 2006
Analyze This
What does it say about me, that I have acquired these two pair of shoes in the past month:
The pumps came today. I had been coveting them for ages and finally broke down and got them. I was worried, when I put them on, because I wasn't sure I was ready for heels. Frankly, after the whole knee fiasco, I suspected I'd never wear heels again. But the stack heels are sturdy enough, I figured I could try it. So I went ahead and ordered them.
It took everything I had to be a grownup and not tackle the UPS guy on the sidewalk as he walked up to the house. Once inside, I ripped open the box and pulled them out. With huge amounts of trepidation, I pulled off my comfy fleece socks and put the shoes on.
And I stood. Tall and strong. Like a goddess. I am almost 6' tall and a fucking goddess in these shoes. I wore them to a show tonight (the cast was mostly female, they all went ape over my gorgeous shoes), and it took me forever to find an outfit to do them justice. Obviously, I need to do some more shopping. Just to have the clothes that work with the shoes. Especially since I also got them in black. (What? They were on sale.)
I haven't worn heels this high in quite some time. And I've never had a pair of designer shoes before (the pumps are by Michael Kors). But those new red round toed, stack heeled pumps say me just as surely as the Chuck T's. (Well, without actually saying my name.)
Posted by sally at 11:34 PM | Comments (5)
November 09, 2006
YESSSSSSSSS!
Thanks to a fellow NaNo-er with whom I've been exchanging emails, I made an important change to my novel today. I hated writing it, it was just too, too dreary and I was having more and more trouble with motivation. Self-motivation, that is, the kind that gets your butt to the keyboard and your brain away from the internet and your being focused on the task of writing.
In my email to her, I mentioned that I have a friend I really envy. Uli is in the playwriting program with my husband, and I love her stuff. She tosses these elements of magic and the miraculous into her work and they take the pieces to a higher level. A gorgeous and theatrical level. Her plays are full of the unexpected transforming life into beauty.
I've never been able to do that. My gift is for detailed and complete worlds and situations, realistic characters. I can take a concept and run with it and be completely consistent, staying within the rules of that world from day one, though the world itself has to be unusual or fantastical. I write stories about normal people in unusual situations in different worlds. I can't just interject magic into the everyday.
But the thing is, (I wrote) what my characters need more than anything right now is an elephant in a tutu to pirouette through and serve them margaritas.
And then I thought, fuck it. It's NaNoWriMo. People do all sorts of things to their novels just to get them written in November, and I refuse to give up just because I don't like the story so far. It may be the worst thing I've ever written, but nobody has to read it but me. And if I don't like it, I can change it. So I pledged myself today to adding magical elements to the stuff I'd already written. That would be my tactic for reaching my wordcount for today.
I put it off for a while. Hemmed and hawed and surfed and experimented with ATC's. But the moment finally came and I sat down to do some work.
And magic happened.
Not only did magical elements begin suggesting themselves from word one, they were perfect. Simple, subtle, consistent. The rapes became more brutal, but the joys and daring and truths were equally more intense and vital and saturated with... with...magic.
Two hours later and slightly more than halfway through the stuff I'd already written, I had 1945 new words. I'm now well past the 1667 quota for the day. I'm invigorated, I'm free, and most of all, I'm hopeful.
This is a story I'm going to enjoy writing. It may even be a story I'll someday enjoy reading. I still don't think I'll ever share it with anybody, though.
Posted by sally at 10:51 PM | Comments (2)
Good Thing I Took Arboretum Pix Yesterday
It's Snowing
I got some good fall color before it suddenly became winter.
But those aren't the pictures I'm posting here for you. Nor am I posting photos of the snow. (Although I did take some.) Nope. Today, you get to see my most recent Artist Trading Cards. They're all designed around my NaNo novel. I did an initial set in late September, and they helped bring some stuff together for me. They were so helpful that I decided to make some more, just to give myself another boost. I figured I could use them as prompts.
Here are the latest:
The Mess She'd Made
Butterfly Sets Out Butterfly Bandages
I'm so excited to be doing ATC's again that I signed up for two more swaps on swap-bot. I am clearly insane, since they need to be sent off by Nov. 30 & Dec. 1. And I've still got 37K to write on Search.
Posted by sally at 09:13 AM
November 08, 2006
Conversations with My Husband vol. II
Because we're so politically astute.
David says:
cnn headline:
David says:
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is stepping down, sources tell CNN.
David says:
it's a good day
Sally says:
WOOOOO HOOOOOO!
Sally says:
Wonder what prompted that.
David says:
huh
Sally says:
Of course. he's going to run in 08, isn't he?
David says:
what? no
David says:
he's no president
David says:
he knows it
Sally says:
Hmmm... Britney Spears files for divorce... Donald Rumsfeld resigns... Do you think?
David says:
there it is
Posted by sally at 10:20 AM
November 07, 2006
Instead of Writing
I have 2K to write this evening. 2000 words. I've already written 433, but that was this morning and I'm trying to make up for not writing at all on Saturday.
Well, not exactly trying, since I haven't even opened any of my novel-related doc. files.
Mostly, i've been not trying. And it's amazing what you come up with to do when you're not trying to write.
Blog entries
Artist Trading Cards
Tapping out rhythms on the keyboard with your fingertips as you look around the room
Suck haiku
Suck Haiku are one of my very favorite parts of NaNo. I'd forgotten then and I ADORE the Suck Haiku. They're what you write when things aren't going well.
This is my favorite of all the Suck Haiku I wrote today:
Type Think Type Think Type
Wrong. Delete Delete Delete
Gah Gah Gah Gah Gah
And that pretty much sums it up.
I wonder what would happen if actually tried to write?
Posted by sally at 08:36 PM
What Did You Do Today?
It's the most important thing I can do.
Posted by sally at 04:30 PM | Comments (2)
November 06, 2006
8744 Words
This time last year? 15,708.
I haaaaaaaaaaate my plot. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate it.
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate it.
It's like pulling teeth. Maybe partly because I really don't want to spend all of my time in the dark places it seems to want to go. Also because I would really like a day off from not thinking at all, or a day to do nothing but write and not have to think about everything else, and that's just not possible right now. In two weeks, yes. Right now? No.
(hate it)
I had such high hopes for this evening. I would come home, eat, bang out 2500 words and then get some other stuff done. In reality? Not so much. It all seems trite and silly and shite-ridden, and to top it all, the goddamn cat keeps shoving her nose into my left hand for attention.
Go.
Away.
And take this ghastly plot with you.
Posted by sally at 09:20 PM
November 04, 2006
The Sideshow Is Here
read the card with the roses that were delivered to me backstage.
Nothing else.
When the roses were first brought to me, I assumed they were from my parents. "No," said the House Manager. "I was talking to your parents in the lobby. They're from somebody else." So I tore into the card only to find the above cryptic message and nothing else.
Which is when I started guessing at who they might have come from. My castmates were all insisting it was Dave being mysterious and romantic, but I didn't think so. That's not his style at all. Plus, the handwriting was familiar.
My first thought was my friends Karma and Cyndi. The note sounded just like them. But driving all the way here from Boise and Twin Falls just to see me in a play did not sound like the sort of thing they'd do.
I pondered it all during the show. When I should have been thinking about other things. At some point during the first act, I realized that Dave had probably actually spoken to the mystery people on the phone that afternoon. He'd answered his phone in a very familiar tone, chatted with the person on the other end and said, "Yeah, I'll be there...Probably not." So I knew that had been about the show, because he saw it once and cannot see it again. But when I asked him who it was, he said, "Oh. It was Claire, she's in my playwriting class."
I believed that until the roses came. Even though his tone on the call was far too familiar and friendly for it to have been a person he'd only mentioned to me once.
There was only one other set of friends who might have written that card, Katie & Judy, and they live in Portland, six hours away. I couldn't imagine them leaving their busy lives to see the show either.
It drove me crazy during the performance. Which was very good, by the way. Aside from the fact that my ears plugged right before the play started and I felt like I spent most of the performance at the bottom of a well, shouting my lines out of it and hearing others' lines drift down to me. When we got to the Requiem (the final scene of the play), I could hear the sniffly noses. And part way through my final monologue, I heard some people break into actual sobs.
Good show.
I raced into the dressing room, tore off my costume & shoved into my own clothes, scurried into the makeup room and scrubbed my face at breakneck speed. I did take the time to thank local friends who stopped backstage to say hello and good show. I'm not a total pig.
Then I grabbed my bag, my coat and my roses and headed up into the lobby. I figured I could look for the people with my parents. And there they were. Karma and Cyndi, who had driven 9 and 6 hours respectively to come see me in this show. All of a sudden, I wasn't 39 anymore. I was eight, running across the lobby yelling, "I thought it was you! I thought it was you! I thought it was you!" It must have been quite a sight for those people who didn't know me and who had last seen me dressed in black, weeping uncontrollably.
I have the best friends in the world.
Posted by sally at 09:25 AM | Comments (1)
November 03, 2006
It Never Ends
So far today I have:
Added 1690 words to my NaNo Novel
Created an Artist Trading Card (ATC) based on an aspect of said novel
Graded a number of speeches and papers
Shopped for various items at two different stores
Cleaned the kitchen
Downloaded a bunch of pix from my camera and the wiped the disk
So far today I have not:
Cleaned the bathroom
Cleaned the living room
Made the bed
Made the bed my visiting parents will sleep in
Sorted the laundry
Vacuumed or swept the floors
Finished the grading
This is only a problem because I have less than an hour before my time becomes no longer my own but the show's, as I begin to curl my hair, assemble my makeup, etc.
I only bring this up because I also have not raked the yard:
Which is pretty much an external depiction of the chaos swirling within my house.
Posted by sally at 03:05 PM | Comments (2)
November 02, 2006
3727 Words In
Plot summary so far: Two rapes, a beating and alcoholism. Plus, a woman climbing a mountain.
What the fuck is this story I'm writing?
Posted by sally at 05:31 PM | Comments (4)
November 01, 2006
Fits and Starts
It comes and goes right now, my free time. On Sunday evening, after an exceptionally long photo call, I sat and stared at the walls. And then I played a video game. Because I could.
Now, though, I'm trying to grade papers and speeches and explain the format for the persuasive speech to students, and clean the office because the real occupant is back in town and should be able to sit in a clean space when she's here. And I'm trying to figure out how/when I'm going to take the Arboretum pix I didn't have time for on Sunday because we had company and a matinee and photo call and the adjustment to Standard Time and and and...
I just realized I completely left one of the classes I assist in out of my calculations re: dinner this evening. Shit.
Well, they've done just fine without me since mid-September. They can handle me being gone for one more day. Because otherwise, I'll not only overcook dinner (crockpot beef stew--yum!), but I won't have time to eat it before my 6:15 pickup rehearsal.
Somewhere in there I have to run lines so I'm useful in rehearsal and come up with 1100 more words of The Search for Herself before midnight.
Posted by sally at 02:12 PM
And We're Off
Less than an hour in and I've got 964 words. Not quite half of my own personal goal of 2K/day. (I might revise it down to the NaNo average goal of 1667/day, but we'll see. It's definitely harder so far this year.
I'm going to bed.
Posted by sally at 12:38 AM
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