12 of 12: April

Sometimes, it's 12 of 12 and I'm out of town, or hanging with friends, or doing something really interesting. Today is not one of those days. It's not Chad Darnell's fault, but ultimately one could say that 12 of 12 is. ("Fault", "inspiration", whatever.)

Enjoy!

8:03 - Awake and wearing my giraffe jammies. You know, as you do.

8:49 - I wasn't going to say anything, but: yes. I spent this incredibly rainy Monday morning in bed with my computer and my cat. Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.

10:05 - Austenacious got a new header over the weekend, and if you think finding a tiny disco ball, photographing it, and Photoshopping it into a website header shouldn't take six months, well...we'd probably like to work with you. Heh.

1:30 - Leftover chili, pineapple, and SunChips: lunch of champions.

1:33 - Finishing up Season 3 of The Wire, about which I can't say anything for fear of Sarah stringing me up by my fingernails. Or, more appropriately, whistling "The Farmer in the Dell" and shooting me in the head with a .45-caliber shotgun. (However: !!!!!)

1:45 - The end of the Citron wrap is nigh, but those 540-stitch rows in the last section are not to be trifled with. I'd better find me some strapless dresses and some chilly summer evenings to show this baby off.

3:13 - Scripting away: Acts II and III, draft two.

4:24 -We have this bizarre talking Caller ID feature that announces aloud who's calling (as well as showing it in a pop-up bar at the bottom of the TV; when the robots overtake us, at least I can go down blaming Comcast), and today the phone told me with great specificity that "Nra" was on the phone.

4:48 - The great thing about California is that, even if it rains, things will look like this eventually. And by "eventually" I pretty much mean "within twenty-four hours." We wouldn't have it any other way.

7:26 - Rehearsing the Ukrainian Alleluia with forty of my closest friends.

8:40 - Post-rehearsal debrief, because nothing says "Praise the Lord" like cold beverages and cheese fries.

9:07 - Mysterious glowing cider, Triple Rock.

If I had a blog, this would be a really big day for me.

I realized recently that I've completely fallen off the blog-reading wagon.  It turns out that, as far as my own reading habits go, enthusiasm for the blogs of total strangers corresponds directly to having a job I'm trying to avoid; in a sense, I guess it's a good thing that I'm out of touch with these corners of the internet. Theoretically, I am so busy doing work I like and/or trying to get work I like that I have completely forgotten to snoop through the lives of people I've never met. (I speak the truth! Productivity is my middle name! These are not the droids you're looking for!)*

With this in mind, I've trimmed my blogroll—I got rid of the site about the hipster stay-at-home dad with the super-cute kids, the celebrity fashion site that exemplifies all that is great and good about the internet but that I somehow never actually read, and Mindy Kaling's sadly defunct shopping site (I guess this is what happens when you are hilarious: you sign a seven-figure development deal with NBC and stop needing to write for free about ridiculous Things You've Bought That You Love). I kept a couple of knitting blogs—as one does—but mostly I refined my collection of food blogs. Because that is something I never get tired of: the urge to make ridiculous, complicated, and/or expensive dishes because somebody has a really nice camera.

First, I added Smitten Kitchen, because leaving SK off the blogroll any longer would be like telling my (theoretical) really awesome boyfriend of five years that I'd really prefer to keep our relationship "just between us." Consider this my very own food-blog Jumbotron proposal: I cook from Deb's blog all the time. To wit: for dinner tonight, my family ate mushroom marsala pasta with artichokes; before dinner I'll have a bit of the Guinness chocolate cake I whipped up this afternoon—for the second time in two weeks. SK is my first line of defense against lack of recipe and/or inspiration, and also now includes frequent but not content-diminishing pictures of the cutest baby of all time, and I'm so pleased to have made an honest blog of it. Our love is pure and true!

I also added Thursday Night Smackdown, with which I have been acquainted approximately an hour and a half, and which I can already tell is good people. We're talking the Invisible But Obvious Membership in the International Siblinghood of Poached Egg Obsessives kind of good people, which is, I think, akin to finding a whole spate of long-lost cousins on the internet—cousins who like their eggs runny and plopped on top of all manner of non-breakfast foods, even, which is even better.

So I guess this is a step in a positive direction: finally, somebody's found something useful to do with that new Information Superhighway, if by "useful" you mean "including leafy greens, lots of champagne vinaigrettes, and recipes that requires ice cream makers I don't own."

Not that, you know, non-food blogs aren't worth reading. Despite my own lull in making the rounds, there's lots of good writing to be found that has nothing to do with what to make for dinner. And everybody likes a good sporadically-updated, non-subject-oriented yet cat-heavy life chronicle, right?

....Right?





* Note that this does not include the many and varied (yet also somehow redundant) social networks out there: Facebook and Twitter and Blip.fm and Goodreads and that horrendous hipster time-suck Tumblr, which I don't even USE but cannot stay off of, regardless. What if something awesome happens on the internet and I miss it?

12 of 12: March

What has two thumbs, speaks limited French, and didn't forget 12 of 12?

All credit/blame for the twelve-photo obsession goes to Chad Darnell. He started it.

8:15 - Up; not quite at 'em.

8:41 - Nothing like starting the day off with a ten-minute Lady Gaga/Beyonce lesbian prison-movie music video, right? Yet Sherlock appears unimpressed.

9:22 - Packing for a weekend in LA. Jewelry bag: check. Makeup bag: check. Knitting bag: check. Round brush: check. Laptop cord: check. Well-intentioned but unnecessary running shoes: check check.

10:38 - Heading over the Altamont Pass and into the valley.

11:05 - Green hills, orange wildflowers. Say what you will about I-5; it's a total showoff in the spring.
















11:30 - Somewhere between nowhere and nowhere (or rather, Santa Nella and Harris Ranch), central California.

1:28 - Bringing fries along after lunch at In-N-Out (#2, protein-style, with grilled onions); oddly, they weren't good, and I didn't finish them.

2:17 - Post-Kettleman City, pre-Grapevine. More wildflowers.



3:00 - At last, the Grapevine. It's like a reward.



4:15 - Waiting on a light in Van Nuys on the way to visit recent California transplant Sharon.




8:08 - Mango and blackberry sorbets at Sharon's; I like how sorbet offers the dual illusions of ice cream and virtue.


11:42 - My final destination: hanging with Kendra and roomies for the weekend. Worth the drive!

What I'm Doing; or, 0 of 12

February 12 was pretty much a normal day. I did stuff. I didn't think too much about it. That is, until I went over to Heather's to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, and she said, "Let me take a picture of you for 12 of 12!" and I said, "Wait, today's the 12th?" and she said, "Smile!" and I said, "Aaaaargh."

So. I have no pictures, today, of myself 1) waking up, or 2) writing, or 3) walking to Trader Joe's (via the yarn store), or 4) eating sweet potato bisque, Dubliner cheese on crackers, and a mineola for lunch, or 5) making the maiden tweet on Austenacious's brand-new, steeped-in-emotional-ambiguity Twitter feed, or 6) driving to Heather and Erik's for the Olympics, or 7) getting verklempt over stand-up comics falling in love on NPR, or 8) eating heavenly gingered eggplant and chickpeas over basmati rice for dinner, or 9) realizing that I now get two weeks of hunky Brian Williams on my TV without having to watch the news, or 10) eating heavenly rose water-buttermilk sherbet and cornmeal-orange shortbread, still warm from the oven, for dessert, or 11) coveting that flying-harness dude's job in much the way that I have previously coveted Tinkerbelle's job in the Disneyland fireworks show, or 12) coming home, feeding cats, and crawling into bed.


Nevertheless, it occurs to me that, in quitting my job and moving cross-country and then completely failing to post here, I may not be doing an excellent job of explaining what exactly I'm doing right now.


Well.


Fair enough.


I'm writing. I'm keeping up with Austenacious and trying to post to P.S. BTW like a normal person. I'm eyeing this blog guiltily and promising to post more. I've just turned the Act IV corner on an original TV pilot script, which I hope to use as a calling card so that I can get somebody to pay me to write more scripts.


I'm doing a bit of freelance work—writing short celebrity bio blurbs for a website about celebrity net worth, should anybody out there be wondering about the financial situation of, say, Zac Efron and/or Donald Trump—and looking for more. This involves much stalking of Craigslist, much writing of cover letters, and much pondering of the distinction between a writing gig and a writing job.


I'm taking a screenwriting class at the local community college, as my eighteen-year-old self says, "I thought I worked hard in high school so I wouldn't have to go to DVC?"


I'm singing with my old choir, because I simply haven't had enough Latin in my life lately.


I'm house-sitting an apartment and two cats in Albany.


I'm running.


I'm flossing my teeth regularly, because seriously, people who don't have jobs are not too busy to floss.


And that's the gist of it: working, trying to make writing my work, alternately hoping for and obsessing over the future, and trying to make the present workable. I'm glad I'm doing what I'm doing, because it's a chance at something awesome, and because not doing what I'm doing is a terrifying prospect, long-term. In any case, it's not a bad gig. Job. Whatever.

12 of 12: January

Happy January, cats and kittens! As always, credit/props/blame to Chad Darnell, 12 of 12 originator and guru.

PHOTO TIME.

8:15 - Up. Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.

8:40 - Off to the park for a run to celebrate seeing the sky. (Seriously: IT IS SO FOGGY HERE.)

8:47 - Path, sun, Rian Johnson on the Creative Screenwriting podcast.

9:57 - Apparently, I have become the kind of person who eats Great Grains and reads The New York Times.

10:10 - Deep thoughts in my Inbox.

(Personally, am torn on this issue. I do miss tasty Season 2 hipster hair, but the new look has grown on me. Could maybe do with--dare I say it?--a tad more product.)

10: 35 - Research for Austenacious. No, really.

12:30 - Taking a break for some thank-you knitting.

12:50 - Lunch: grilled cheese with apple and spinach (too much; next time, apple OR spinach!) and Jon Stewart totally failing to intimidate John Yoo (the scary constitutional lawyer, not the First Pres music director, though that would be fun, too).

3:15 - Seeing a man about a website. At Starbucks. Ooh la la!

7:50 - Sherlock enjoys watching my mom play with her people toys.

 

8:20 - Trying for an after-dinner burst of productivity, with mixed results.

 

8: 40 - How all good days should end. Obviously.

See you in February.

And to all a good night

SoHo, New York City; November 29, 2009

Right back where we started from

News alert:

I

AM

SO

HAPPY.

Long Haul II: Tennessee, not Williams

Fake Facebook status: Liz's camera cable is somewhere in the back of her car.

...Along with the rest of her worldly possessions.

So long-haul pictures will have to wait, but rest assured that we've made it to Nashville (via Charleston, SC) and are making friends with barbecue and the Grand Ole Opry. Tomorrow it's off to visit Elvis's "body" at Graceland and then Carrie in Arkansas; more smoked/sauced meats may be necessary.

Updates as news breaks.

The state of things

A telling (albeit slightly disgusting) anecdote:

The other night, I had this dream--not that I remember anything now, only that it was epic and sprawling and I think my friend Sue was in it--and in the middle, I woke up juuuust enough to register that my mouth tasted bad. Really bad. Consistently bad. Like rubber.

And then I realized there was something in my mouth.

And then I realized I was--wait for it--chewing on an EARPLUG. I had taken my right earplug out of my ear, put it in my mouth, and chewed it into pieces. (The left one: still in.)

It's still in bits on my night stand.

Stress eater, meet teeth grinder? In any case, I can't stop giggling about it. When I win my Emmy with a character who wakes up with earplugs in her mouth, you'll know.

...

In other news, today is my last day of work. Last! Day! Of work! What?!

Holy crap.

It's been real

You know, I've come to like DC, in a weird kind of way. I like going to things that begin with "National," and the lit-up view of the Capitol from Pennsylvania Avenue. I like the cathedral gardens, and the pizza sandwiches with hot peppers (and a small Oreo shake) from Potbelly. I like snow freak-outs and dogwood blossoms and hanging out with Lincoln whenever I feel like it.

Which, obviously, is why I'm leaving a week from today.

Did I forget to say that earlier?

I've had a good time here--really. When I take stock of the experiences I had and the places I went and the people I met, experiences and places and people that wouldn't have crossed my path if I hadn't come here, I'm grateful. It was hard, too, both confusing and clarifying, but this year has been like nothing else I've ever done--and certainly like no place else I've ever lived--and I wouldn't trade it. I'll even miss it, some.

But there are other things I want to do, professionally, that aren't accessible in DC without, at the very least, a bus ride to New York; to stay wouldn't be a good use of my time. My parents have graciously offered me a crash pad while I take a shot at writing full-time--while I polish and send out my work, take whatever freelance gigs I can get, save up some money, and see what happens. I fully expect a wild-goose chase, but I'm hopeful and in a take-no-prisoners mood. And really, what better time to leave a stable government job than in the worst employment market in eighty years?

In the mean time, I'm a total to-do list hound. I dream about crossing things off of my master pre-move list, and somehow seem to have transcended procrastination for the time being. Mail: forwarded! Return route: decided! Prescriptions: refilled! The car is in the shop today, getting an oil change and a couple of new tires; I'm dying to get it back so I can put the seats down and start loading boxes. Packing up a furnished apartment is bizarre--I'm about two-thirds packed, and everything looks more or less the same, like I'm not leaving at all. Sherlock, of course, is just psyched that I've finally embraced his passion for boxes of clean clothes (little does he know what horror awaits--he's going on the plane with my brother). In any case, by this time next week, everything will be packed, cleaned, locked and left, and I'll be on the road to Charleston (Liz & Al National Tour Stop #1).

Until then, you'll know where to find me: just look for the giant flag of packing tape.

Black Friday

I've come to the conclusion that my favorite holiday may, in fact, be the day after Thanksgiving. It's not that I don't like Thanksgiving itself--I do, very much. I have no problem with the family project of putting on a huge meal, or with first-time-around mashed potatoes, or with well-loved stories tossed over my aunt's epic centerpieces. But, to me, the wreckage of the next day is even better: food and family, deliberately de-ceremonialized, is where the real fun happens.

My family does a Thanksgiving sleepover model--we're divided into Thanksgiving West in Santa Cruz and Thanksgiving East in New York, but both incarnations involve staying over, so that Black Friday is all about the morning-after sleep-in, leftover pie for breakfast, and hanging around the kitchen together. On the West Coast, we sometimes take a walk on the beach, or go downtown for lunch before everybody wanders home. It's more of each other than we've seen all year, usually, and there's time to talk and hang out and be who we are when it's not a major holiday. It's a good time.

This year, I went to Thanksgiving East, and spent Black Friday fighting a cold, but also sprawling on the couch with my brother, knitting, and assembling my Christmas list. We grazed on turkey sandwiches (cranberry + Grey Poupon for me; some kind of mayo thing for him). We hung out with my aunt and uncle. Eventually, we mustered the energy to leave the house and see Fantastic Mr. Fox; then we came home and sprawled some more and we all watched an old Poirot Mystery until bedtime. That's it. It was nothing, but it was great--it was us being together, with nothing else to do and nothing else expected of us, and that's a great holiday memory.

Plus, you know. Pie.

It's November 13th

How did that happen?

I have no photos to share--the date-remembering impulse took the day off for Veterans' Day, apparently. I can tell you that I went to work, ran in the dark, had leftover brown rice and acorn squash for dinner, and watched Bones one and a half times. So, you know. Aren't you sad you missed THAT?

She said you're like a disease without any cure

I went to the doctor today. My right eye has been acting funny lately, messing up my worldview a bit--being the freckliest girl in the world, it is unsurprising that I would have a tiny mole on my lash line, rubbing up against my eyeball and making me inappropriately teary, but that doesn't make it less uncomfortable. It's just another day in the life of the temperamentally-skinned. Thanks, genetic legacy!

Luckily, I have Kaiser health care, the kind where I call the advice nurse at 9:30 and they ask if I'd rather have the 10:15 or the 1:30 same-day appointment. I show up and flaunt my eyelid to my GP and to the opthalmologist's assistant; flaky-mascara lecture and eyeball-numbing glaucoma test notwithstanding, we all seem to agree: as terrifying as the intersection of opthalmology and dermatology sounds, minor surgery may be the way to go, here. Soon, the opthalmologist himself shows up. He looks around, resists the urge to flip my eyelids inside out like a junior-high boy, and shines a few lights in my eyes. He hmmmmms to himself. He looks at me.

"Well," he says, "We're going to hold off on the mole. At least until the conjunctivitis clears up."

Let me translate that.

PINKEYE.

I am twenty-nine years old, and I HAVE PINKEYE.

This is actually not that surprising; it seems like, in this world, you're either a pinkeye person or you aren't, and I most definitely am. I was that kid in preschool who practically bathed in eyedrops (but never got good at taking them--even now, I am a reluctant eye-dropper on the very best of days). For whatever reason, I'm conjunctivitis-friendly. It's nice to know I'm accommodating to all, don't you think?

In my (extensive) pinkeye experience, this'll all blow over. I've got eyedrops and ointment(ultra-thick eyedrops: AWESOME, UNIVERSE) and a check-up appointment for Monday; even going without my contacts seems to be keeping the ick at bay. Until then, I'm just trying not to start a Swine Eye epidemic. That would be embarrassing.

Side ponytails, unite!

When I was a little girl, my brother Ben and I had a club. We were the Tiger Club (tigers being both intimidating and pleasingly stripey), and mostly I remember having meetings via flashlight in Ben's closet, and plotting to build periscopes out of hand mirrors and paper-towel rolls, and always having to make up a new secret handshake because we'd forgotten the old one. Our parents inexplicably would not let us get a tiger to be our mascot; when I was six or seven, we eventually bargained them down to a turtle (practically the same thing anyway, you know) for which we saved up for months and then changed our club name to match. As you do. Scooter the turtle, I will have you know, was a fine and noble mascot for many years, and I think taught us all a lot about the joys of heat lamps and live crickets.

Last week, I picked my brother up at the airport--he's back in the States after five years abroad, and local to me for the first time since middle school. Thus begins the longest, most awesome Turtle Club meeting ever! He's so excited to be back in the land of pork and uncensored movies, and I am so excited to have him here for general bothering/fun-having purposes, even if it means driving him to every furniture store in the greater DC area until his apartment is furnished (I have a car; he does not). You can guess what we did this weekend.

So what I mean to say, I guess, is this: If you come to DC and it does not seem quite the same as it was, if it seems slightly more awesome and yet also slightly more weird, think of us, and know that the Turtle Club is hard at work.

Now, if we can just find enough hand mirrors, we can finally finish those periscopes.

12 of 12: October

Heyyyyy, it's that time of the month again. So to speak. For all info and background on the 12 of 12 project, see Chad Darnell's blog; it's his baby.

And here we go:



8:45 - Waking up gloriously late. Thanks, Columbus/indigenous peoples!




9:34 - Making the morning admin rounds for the newly launched Austenacious; my assistant sleeps on the job.




10:22 - Stopping by the cathedral on my morning run.




10:25 - My favorite place on the cathedral grounds, the Bishop's Garden.




12:47 - Um, lunch. IT HAS FRUIT IN IT, OKAY? Don't judge me or my baked goods.




1:39 - On the bus to Georgetown.




2:01 - Taking myself to the movie show: Whip It, which I liked very much. It did not, however, help resolve my inner conflict over roller derby (in which I dig the derby culture, but also dig my bone structure as is).




4:04 - In Georgetown, waiting for the bus back up the hill.




4:25 - In line at Giant, where I didn't even bother to track down a basket. Note: hand-carrying frozen peas around will eventually make your hands cold.




5:53 - Working on an original pilot script. Anybody know any agents looking for fresh TV-writer blood?




7:20 - Magic risotto, starring peas and zucchini and a whole lot of parmesan. Time-consuming, but it keeps me fed all week.




9:41 - Skyping with my friend Carly, whom I've known since birth and who is now super-adorable and thinking of becoming an English major. I approve.

That's all, folks! See you all next month.