Kat with a K

Silver Linings and Golden Memories

Well, the silver lining here is that I have been reunited with my computer - and thus am more or less back to blogging - a week earlier than scheduled.

The reason why this is a silver lining and not just good news is that the reason why I'm back at my parents' house (where I left the computer) a week earlier than expected is for a funeral. My maternal grandmother's sister Margaret passed away a few days ago. She was 92 and had a good, long life, and had been ill for several years, so we are sad but not shocked. Deaths around the holidays always take on a slightly weird quality, don't they? The family will gather tomorrow, and after the funeral we'll probably go to some restaurant or someone's house, and things will be muted but when it comes down to it it won't be all that different from when we gather again next week for Christmas or the week after for New Year's Day. And that's as it should be, I suppose: holidays always bring up thoughts and memories of lost loved ones, so these accidents of timing only add immediacy to the bittersweet layer that always lurks just under the holiday joy.

Aunt Margaret had been too ill to attend most family events the past few years, so once - I think it was two Christmases ago - my parents and brother and I went to see her at her assisted living apartment after our main Christmas gathering. My dad and I both got new digital cameras that year, so we had them with us and kept taking pictures of everything - and each other - and Aunt Margaret thought that was hilarious. That's one of the few really specific holiday memories I have of her, so I'm happy that it's such a fun one. Mostly I remember her as a constant presence at family events, not as loud and gregarious as many members of the family, but always there with blunt opinions, a sense of humor, and a warm heart. And so the fabric of the family and of the holiday has changed this Christmas, as it always does, as it will keep doing each year, and we "muddle through somehow" with our memories of the past and hopes for the future.

Updated to add: Aunt Margaret was the one who made struffoli - traditional Italian Christmas honey cookies - every year, so I was delighted to find this on The Awl today.

A Monday Miscellany

Hello! Does anyone else feel like it should be at least Thursday by now? Why did today seem to take forever? I cannot figure it out. This weekend marked the end of my brother's football season, which is bittersweet, because the whole thing is fun and I certainly like seeing my family so often, but on the other hand, having my weekends back is sort of nice. Of course, I just have this one weekend and then it's Thanksgiving, but whatever. Bring on the holidays, I say. I am ready. I have started my giant notebook of lists. It's a wonderful thing. Speaking of which . . .

A PSA

For you XM or Sirius subscribers out there: holiday stations are here! There will be five stations eventually, and you can read about them here, but for now we have Holiday Traditions on XM 4 and Holly on XM 23. Holiday Traditions does lots of Bing and the like, so I'm thrilled with that. Holly is more contemporary, so that's kind of hit or miss for me. But I will admit that I did rather like the Ashley Tisdale version of "Last Christmas" I heard on there this afternoon. I like the Taylor Swift one too. Shush.

A Clarification

In my post about the caramels, I mentioned needing a very patient friend to Skype with me to distract me while I chopped the things. Said friend read what I wrote and pointed out that that was the first time she had ever been called "very patient" in her entire life. Upon further reflection, I'll say it's possible that she's just willing to babble on for hours at the slightest provocation, and patience doesn't really enter into it.

The Novel

How is NaNoWriMo going, you ask? Not too badly! Yesterday was the first day when I didn't do at least the daily minimum of 1667 words, so I started worrying, but I think the issue was just that I got home from Maine around dinner time, and my brain is just not designed to write in the evening. I gave up at only about 600 words last night, but I started writing at 6 a.m. today and wrote over 2000 words in a little over an hour, so I'm back into the swing of things and still three days ahead. Thank goodness.

New York, New York!

My aunt and I are going to New York for a long weekend in December! I'll tell you more about the trip later, but for now, I'm in the planning stages, so I figured I'd ask for your input. We want to do Christmassy things . . . any particularly good store displays or anything we should check out? Also, food suggestions - especially exciting grocery stores or specialty food places? Thanks!

ALL OF THE STUFF

Hello! I did not mean to be gone so long. I'm sorry. But it's November, which means that all of my blogging time is taken up by novel-writing. And this also means that I am doing less reading and TV-watching, because of the writing, so I have fewer things to tell you about. I have sort of been in the mood to write about various wacky and/or vaguely interesting happenings in my daily life, though, so I surveyed Twitter this afternoon, and the four readers who replied all said they would be fine with that sort of post. So! Here we are!

So, how is the novel going?

It's going well, actually! Thanks for asking! Unlike many frazzled writers this month, I am actually perfectly happy to be talking about it at this point. (This is, of course, subject to change as the month wears on.) I've written at least the minimum of 1667 words each day, and I think I've done at least 2000 all days but one. So I'm about three days ahead at this point. How am I doing this, and feeling remarkably unstressed about it, you ask? Well...

This year's NaNoWriMo strategy:
1. Set the alarm for five. Get up by 5:30. No, seriously. Your body clock may vary, of course, but I am so much more productive and happier in general when I get up early, it makes those unpleasant first few minutes of awakeness totally worth it.
2. Open Scrivener (more about that in another post) and the NaNoWriMo site (for word count updates and the positive reinforcement provided by their stats page). That's it. Oh, and actually, it's okay to be on Twitter, because no one's really tweeting that early anyway.
3. No breakfast until you hit 1000 words for the day. My friend Aishy has a rule that the reward for 1000 words is a piece of candy, but when you hit 1000 words at 6:30 am, candy feels a little premature.
4. Write for an hour. Hit 2000 words. Be done for the day, stop worrying about it, and try to get to work not ridiculously late.
Really, that's it. Go forth and write!

The 5 am thing is generally only on weekdays, by the way. Otherwise I just institute the rest of the plan whenever I wake up. Except for this Saturday, when I WILL be setting the alarm for 5 am, because I have to write and then drive to Maine by eleven or so. My brother's game is starting at 12:30, and usually I play it kind of fast and loose with arrival times, because my usual contribution to the after-game tailgate/potluck (dessert) doesn't really require any set-up. I always say I'll get there an hour early but then end up getting there a minute or two into the first quarter. (I'm trying! Really!) But this weekend is different, as you will see in this dramatic retelling of the phone conversation I had with my mom tonight:

Me: What time do you want to start setting up on Saturday morning?
Mom: Oh, I don't know, maybe eleven? We're meeting a friend for coffee first . . . [N.B. I live closer to the college than my parents do, so they drive up the night before and stay over, while I drive up in the morning.]
Me: So, eleven? I should be there at eleven?
Mom: I guess . . . Wait, why does it matter to you? [The "You never get there early anyway" was merely implied.]
Me: Because you need me there this week. Because I have ALL OF THE STUFF.
Mom: Oh! Right. You do have all the stuff. I forgot. We do need you there.

The reason why I have ALL OF THE STUFF is somewhat convoluted and also has to do with the time when I swear my father was more impressed by my brilliance than he's ever been in his life.*

The Idea That Made My Father Extremely Proud

My parents take this tailgating thing pretty seriously. (It's not just them. A lot of the football parents do.) And there's a lot of stuff involved. They have folding tables and two different grills and a canopy and coolers of food and . . . I don't know, other stuff. They usually fold down the back seats in their SUV to get ALL OF THE STUFF in there, along with their suitcases and whatever else. This means that when we're all up in Maine, I end up driving my parents around when we want to go somewhere together because I can't fit in their car with ALL OF THE STUFF, but really, that's fine, and the system works.

This weekend, though, my aunt decided to come up to Maine as well, but she wasn't thrilled about the idea of driving by herself. And, as I've said, there was no way she was going to fit in my parents' car with ALL OF THE STUFF. Discussions of this went on for days before I finally said "Hey, wait. Why don't you just put ALL OF THE STUFF in my car when you pack up the week before, and I'll bring it for you?" And everyone was very impressed by my cleverness.

So! My point, I think, was that on Saturday I will be pretending it's a weekday and getting up at 5 to write so that ALL OF THE STUFF and I can get to Maine on time. Wish me luck!

* This is unfair. My father has been very proud of basically everything I've ever done, except the really dumb things, and probably even some of those, too. But seriously, he was so impressed by this idea, and it seemed way out of proportion to the actual idea, because it was clever but it's not like I cured cancer or something.

ALL OF THE STUFF

Hello! I did not mean to be gone so long. I'm sorry. But it's November, which means that all of my blogging time is taken up by novel-writing. And this also means that I am doing less reading and TV-watching, because of the writing, so I have fewer things to tell you about. I have sort of been in the mood to write about various wacky and/or vaguely interesting happenings in my daily life, though, so I surveyed Twitter this afternoon, and the four readers who replied all said they would be fine with that sort of post. So! Here we are!

So, how is the novel going?

It's going well, actually! Thanks for asking! Unlike many frazzled writers this month, I am actually perfectly happy to be talking about it at this point. (This is, of course, subject to change as the month wears on.) I've written at least the minimum of 1667 words each day, and I think I've done at least 2000 all days but one. So I'm about three days ahead at this point. How am I doing this, and feeling remarkably unstressed about it, you ask? Well...

This year's NaNoWriMo strategy:
1. Set the alarm for five. Get up by 5:30. No, seriously. Your body clock may vary, of course, but I am so much more productive and happier in general when I get up early, it makes those unpleasant first few minutes of awakeness totally worth it.
2. Open Scrivener (more about that in another post) and the NaNoWriMo site (for word count updates and the positive reinforcement provided by their stats page). That's it. Oh, and actually, it's okay to be on Twitter, because no one's really tweeting that early anyway.
3. No breakfast until you hit 1000 words for the day. My friend Aishy has a rule that the reward for 1000 words is a piece of candy, but when you hit 1000 words at 6:30 am, candy feels a little premature.
4. Write for an hour. Hit 2000 words. Be done for the day, stop worrying about it, and try to get to work not ridiculously late.
Really, that's it. Go forth and write!

The 5 am thing is generally only on weekdays, by the way. Otherwise I just institute the rest of the plan whenever I wake up. Except for this Saturday, when I WILL be setting the alarm for 5 am, because I have to write and then drive to Maine by eleven or so. My brother's game is starting at 12:30, and usually I play it kind of fast and loose with arrival times, because my usual contribution to the after-game tailgate/potluck (dessert) doesn't really require any set-up. I always say I'll get there an hour early but then end up getting there a minute or two into the first quarter. (I'm trying! Really!) But this weekend is different, as you will see in this dramatic retelling of the phone conversation I had with my mom tonight:

Me: What time do you want to start setting up on Saturday morning?
Mom: Oh, I don't know, maybe eleven? We're meeting a friend for coffee first . . . [N.B. I live closer to the college than my parents do, so they drive up the night before and stay over, while I drive up in the morning.]
Me: So, eleven? I should be there at eleven?
Mom: I guess . . . Wait, why does it matter to you? [The "You never get there early anyway" was merely implied.]
Me: Because you need me there this week. Because I have ALL OF THE STUFF.
Mom: Oh! Right. You do have all the stuff. I forgot. We do need you there.

The reason why I have ALL OF THE STUFF is somewhat convoluted and also has to do with the time when I swear my father was more impressed by my brilliance than he's ever been in his life.*

The Idea That Made My Father Extremely Proud

My parents take this tailgating thing pretty seriously. (It's not just them. A lot of the football parents do.) And there's a lot of stuff involved. They have folding tables and two different grills and a canopy and coolers of food and . . . I don't know, other stuff. They usually fold down the back seats in their SUV to get ALL OF THE STUFF in there, along with their suitcases and whatever else. This means that when we're all up in Maine, I end up driving my parents around when we want to go somewhere together because I can't fit in their car with ALL OF THE STUFF, but really, that's fine, and the system works.

This weekend, though, my aunt decided to come up to Maine as well, but she wasn't thrilled about the idea of driving by herself. And, as I've said, there was no way she was going to fit in my parents' car with ALL OF THE STUFF. Discussions of this went on for days before I finally said "Hey, wait. Why don't you just put ALL OF THE STUFF in my car when you pack up the week before, and I'll bring it for you?" And everyone was very impressed by my cleverness.

So! My point, I think, was that on Saturday I will be pretending it's a weekday and getting up at 5 to write so that ALL OF THE STUFF and I can get to Maine on time. Wish me luck!

* This is unfair. My father has been very proud of basically everything I've ever done, except the really dumb things, and probably even some of those, too. But seriously, he was so impressed by this idea, and it seemed way out of proportion to the actual idea, because it was clever but it's not like I cured cancer or something.

Hike for Tikes 2010

On Sunday, I will be participating in Hike for Tikes:

Hike For Tikes 2010: A Hike-A-Thon benefit for babies in Intensive Care at Connecticut Children's Medical Center is a 2.5 mile round trip hike up moderately steep terrain along the Tower Trail at Talcott Mountain State Park. Hikers will also have the opportunity to climb the Heublein Tower to get an estimated 1,200 square mile view on a clear day.

I am so done with this week.

I have some stuff to deal with, and then I'm going away for the weekend, so I think I'm going just sign off until Monday, folks. Have a great weekend. If you want to talk about the epic Vampire Diaries premiere in the meantime, leave a comment and I'll e-mail you. Vampire Legal Issues for the first episode will appear early next week.

The shirt should have been your first clue.

I didn't manage to pack a lunch for work on Friday morning, so I stopped by the Panera near my office for a salad. I ordered the Tomato, Mozzarella & Basil Salad which, you'll notice, includes no meat in its menu listing. The person taking my order asked if I wanted to add chicken. I said no. I'm sure you can see where this is going, but I didn't. For some reason, I didn't check the salad before I left, and I was back at work before I realized it was covered in chicken. I drove back to Panera and they made me another without too much trouble, although it would have been a nice touch for them to give me a little money back or a free side or something for my trouble. They didn't offer and I didn't want to make a scene.

The reason this story is funny is because I happened to be wearing this shirt. It said VEGETARIAN in big letters across my chest. Apparently that was too subtle a clue.

Happy Birthday to Me, Part I

It's not actually a birthday present, of course, but the timing isn't entirely coincidental - in my state, car registrations are renewed during one's birth month, so it seemed easier to just buy my new car in July. (Plus the old car, you know, died. Details.) Here it is!

It's a Hyundai Elantra; the color is called khaki, and it's sort of a greenish tannish gray. I'm pretty sure its name is Alaric.

Back from vacation!

Hey everyone! I had a lovely time in North Carolina, and now I'm home and trying to get back into the swing of things. I owe you a bunch of TV posts, and I promise I will get to them eventually, but I wanted to check whether anyone has requests as to which show(s) I should tackle first: Vampire Diaries, Royal Pains, Persons Unknown, Pretty Little Liars? Reviews of pilots of other new shows (The Gates, Scoundrels, Rookie Blue, Memphis Beat)? Opinions, anyone?

Vacation!

I'm going on vacation later this week, so between preparations today and tomorrow, and then actually being away until Sunday, posting might be sporadic until next Monday. I know I owe you some TV posts. I'll do what I can. Have a great week!

I love electricity.

My power was out when I got home yesterday, and didn't come back on until almost bedtime. Now, this was a short enough outage that it wasn't a major problem in any way, by which I basically mean that I didn't have to miss a shower and the ice cream in my freezer didn't melt. But I felt like I should find such outages to be, I don't know, refreshing, or a nice change of pace, or delightfully old-fashioned, or something. And I didn't. At all. I sat and read by candlelight, so it's not like it was an unpleasant evening, even, but there were things I wanted to be doing. I wanted to cook dinner. I wanted to knit lace. (I realize knitting doesn't technically require power, but I would have had to light a whole lot more candles.) I wanted to finish season two of In Plain Sight. I wanted to obsessively check for an e-mail I'm expecting without worrying about draining my phone battery. I wanted to watch Glee while everyone else was watching and tweeting about it. I wanted my TiVo to be merrily going about its tasks, including recording things that I probably won't watch for weeks or months, so the prospect of watching online doesn't help.

I'm not sure what my point is here, except perhaps that it's always fashionable to talk about dropping off the Internet or getting rid of your TV, or whatever, and there's this idea that getting rid of technology makes you a better person, and I'm calling shenanigans. If some people prefer to live that way, more power (ha!) to them, but don't bring virtue or enlightenment into it, and drop the holier-than-thou bit. Sure, none of these things are essential. I realize that. But I have absolutely no desire to attempt life without my laptop or my smartphone or my TiVo, and I'm fine with that, and I honestly don't think it reflects negatively me or my generation or society as a whole.

I feel as though we reached a tipping point, anyway, the first time I called my parents and discovered that they were in bed, watching their new TV, with their laptops, on their wireless network.

I HATE APRIL FOOL'S DAY.

In case you were wondering. Please do not try to fool me. Thank you.

Hello from Texas!

Well, I have been more offline than I'd expected, but that means I'm having a great vacation in Texas, so I'm not complaining. I'll have lots of pictures and stuff for you, eventually. Hope everyone's having a great week!

Happy March!

February always seems to go on forever, given that it's such a short month. And this year, it seems like everyone's very ready to see it gone. So here are a few things to which I'm looking forward in March:

March 2: Parenthood starts. Lauren Graham and Peter Krause, back on my TV!
March 5: Alice in Wonderland opens.
March 7: The Oscars!
March 8: Gossip Girl comes back. Finally.
March 10-17: Vacation to Texas
March 20-22: Quick family trip to Florida
March 26: Hot Tub Time Machine opens.

What are you looking forward to this month?

Electricity is awesome.

I came back from CT yesterday afternoon, and discovered that my electricity had just come back on and things were more or less okay. Hurrah! I'm still getting myself sorted out, but blogging will resume today and the hand cream series will probably come back tomorrow.

Update!

When I tried to go home from work yesterday, I . . . couldn't. All access routes were closed off and/or blocked by trees. So I drove to my parents' house in Connecticut. I just heard from a wonderful friend who went to check out my house, and the roads are still closed (although they're letting residents in) and the power is still off. Joy!

Pros and Cons of Small Town Life

Con:
Plowing my little dirt road seems to be quite low on my town's list of priorities.

Pro:
Once I made it onto a more main road and then had a dramatic spin while trying to drive down a hill, and got completely stuck almost facing in the wrong direction, the town plow guy driving by parked the plow and came over and pushed me out.

THAT was an exciting commute.

Nails, Darker Than Anticipated

My lovely cousin Liz asked for a picture of the nails mentioned in last night's Endnotes. Her wish is my command:

It's harder than I'd realized to get a picture of your own hand from a decent angle. Anyway, the polish is a lot darker than the sample thing looked in the store, but now that I've gotten used to it, I kind of like it.

My power is back!

Yay!!!

Strategic Error

Yesterday, I had caffeine way later in the day than I usually do - I had to stay alert for an evening event, and I had to grab dinner quickly, so that meant a bagel and iced coffee from Dunkin' Donuts. Of course, that then meant that once I was home, I couldn't sleep for a while. And now it's Friday, and I'm tired, and I have a weirdly large amount of work to do for a Friday. And lots of it - a big project I'm currently working on - is the sort of work that is both monotonous and finicky, so it doesn't really hold my attention but I can't go on autopilot either. Bah. I think this all adds up to the sort of day when I need to stop at Starbucks on my way from my pre-work volunteer gig to my actual job. Mmm, mocha.