charts, facts, figures

So I took an amazing cooking class last weekend, where I got to make homemade pasta (ravioli, fettucini) in a funky little room with 8 other people and it kind of felt like you were at your favorite uncle's house where he would tell you bizarre stories and silly jokes and give you wine without telling your parents. I was so excited afterwards that when I wandered into Ross and found a pasta machine for 20 bucks, that thing was MINE, suckers.

(seriously, food you eat with butter and oil and cheese and mmmmm? no downside)

I just got an email from the guy who runs the class:

Hi Flyakate,

I was wondering if you would like to come to this Saturday's Gnocchi class and help out in exchange... if you would like to, arrive about 10 minutes early and I'll give you the run down. It was great to have you last week and I think you would enjoy this class.

Best,

Chef Joe [seriously, his name is Chef Joe, which I think it awesome]


I am so excited, perhaps overly so. But someone enjoyed my company! I get to meet more people who are not between the ages of 4 and 11! I get to learn to make gnocchi! As I told him in my reply, how can I refuse?!?

XD XD

This gives me even more desire to make this delicious sounding recipe [Ricotta Ravioli with Rainbow Chard] after I walk to the library to return my books.

The interesting sounding one about the story of writing Grey's Anatomy is clearly going have to be taken out again another time. But at least I finished all the rest of them: Cooking and Screaming (a memoir about a woman who rediscovers her love of cooking as she recovers from a brain clot), Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (a little too heavy on how we are different from monkeys, but that might just be my image of how the book should have been vs. how it was) and Writing Away: A Creative Guide to Awakening the Journal-Writing Traveler (which I looooooved, and need to photocopy the prompts in the back before I return).

I was telling a friend that no, I wasn't really a "foodie" (and I LOL'd at the definition on Wikipedia of a food blog: a number of people photograph and post on the Internet every meal they ever make or consume. Makes them sound like crazy people!) and in a way, I'm not. I probably can't tell a crimini mushroom from a baby bella without the packaging, and I have no interest in any kind of flavored salt, pepper, or oil. But I am really starting to like cooking, making stuff that tastes good and looks pretty and yeah, take pictures of it sometimes, though in a decidedly non-crazy person way. Unless you ask my younger sister :o)

Today I am teaching upper grade math and they were so happy to see me! They are so cute, in a very mature and grownup way, naturally ;o)

Though I'm sure many of you have already seen this (in case you are not following Sam, aka copperbadge's jornal) I thought you'd enjoy reading about the use of Livejournal to create/construct/collaborate about fiction. copperbadge wrote, edited, rewrote and eventually self-published a novel, Nameless, and the following is more a review of the process (he posted each chapter on Livejournal during the editing process and comments/response from the enormous pool of readers really changed both the writing of the novel as well as its structure).

Trial and (Ex)tribulation: The New Face Of Authorship in the Web 2.0 by Rebecca C. Moore

The postscript to Nameless: Talking with Twenty Five Hundred is a lengthier description and analysis of the crafting of a book with (literally) an audience.

I've read Sam's book at least three times in actual print (and probably once or twice on Livejournal) and I still really enjoy it. Reminds me that I never did finish The Dead Isle. Guess it'll go on my list!

I've been working my way through the pile of Peter Wimsey novels that sit on the shelves of my room in my parents' house and, even though I remember who dunnit I am always still a fan of that universe. I finished The Nine Tailors a couple days ago, and pretty close to the denouement in The Five Red Herrings (I am such a sucker for mysteries where they have long re-enactments to either trap the killer or help figure out what happened and this one in particular does that in spades).

Another thing that took up a lovely chunk of my brainspace today (when I wasn't rereading Peppermints in the Parlor, which is such a strange book that it does not surprise me how weird I am if that's what I was reading as a kid) was an article by Michael Pollan about our obsession with cooking shows--or "food shows" as he likes to call them, arguing that there is precious little actual cooking going on. It talks about the recent rise in Julia Child love, as well, and how the cultural trappings around cooking (and how to define cooking, what we think of as cooking now vs. otherwise) have changed. I always enjoy his writing, so go read Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch.

This led me on a merry romp through Google and the like, so I came another interesting read Bread for the Wilderness: Baking As Spiritual Craft by Jay Cooper Rochelle. I like the concept of this.

Helping Mom slice veggies for stir-fry and it reminds me... I am woefully underrepresented with cooking icons. Any suggestions? Generic cooking/baking imagery is really what I need. Mmmm...

So one of my campers is reading The Westing Game as a school assigned summer reading book and I was Googling around to see if there were any useful websites or games. And then I found that Ellen Raskin donated all her manuscript and draft notes to UW-Madison so that students could see the process of writing a novel and creating cover art and page layouts. Some genius has turned it into a website with all the scanned pages. There's even audio clips of her speaking about the materials (which I haven't listened to, but I'm sure they're awesome too). I love that book to pieces when I was younger and even more upon each rereading and I'm sure many of you did too, so go check out The Westing Game Manuscript!

The first week of camp is over (we got today off because it's a holiday weekend) and it's been a lot of fun. Even though I'm only consistently there in the afternoon (there's summer school in the morning and camp in the afternoon, with less academic-focused activities) it's been so hot and there's so much running around that it sort of drains you and so I've been exhausted all week. Still, my campers are really sweet, friendly, hilarious kids (even when they're too noisy and don't listen) so the times when we don't have super scheduled stuff to do and are just hanging out and drawing or they're listening to a book (at the moment it is Matilda by Roald Dahl, because there was no outpouring of negative reaction and it was one of close-to-the-right age books that I had on my shelf) it's a lot of fun.

In the holiday weekend, I most likely will head out of the city to my aunt and uncle's apparently notorious 4th of July party and am extremely excited, in no small part because I know the food will be awesome :o)

Because it is April (and still barely April 1st, here), I give you an interesting poem in honor of Poetry Month.

*

I Have Endured Much to Reach This Place - Ray Bradbury

I have endured much to reach this place in time
Yet I have not been sick, nor mad,
Nor ruined in a wreck.
And yet I feel I have.
There is a thing in me, the walls of cells are thin,
My veins are glass, my heart the merest whim
Of beat and pause and beat,
Deaths in the street are mine. I would not have it so.
I know much more than I would want to know.
The breakfast headlines tell me of a war,
I know they die out there; put down my spoon.
Men land on the moon tonight, I know their joy,
The boy in me goes with them as they tread
Far overhead on dust world beyond reach
They teach my tired blood to love again.
There's rain in downtown Peru tonight,
I wash my face in it. In Indo China, one more massacre,
I run a race in it and lose.
You see?
I cannot choose to be or not to be.

*

A line of it turned into the title of my Yuletide story about Will and Jim from Something Wicked This Way Comes, appropriately: Beat, Pause, and Beat. I love the way that Bradbury makes a picture with words.

Night all!

So I'm here in Alaska *waves furiously* and my older sister has one of those e-book readers that will read text files. So she's worked her way as far as copperbadge has written in the Stealing Harry 'verse, so I'm looking for more good long fic to make into a rich text file. So Harry Potter stuff, if you got it. I just sent her "Second City Torchwood", so anything long from that fandom would work as well. Just a long as it's well written, long and entertaining, link me?

Thank you! I am off to copy/paste resonant8's story Transfigurations, because it's long and cool and made of awesome ;o)

Hope all is well! Email me if you want a postcard! :o)

I'm reading a "new" (to me) Spenser mystery novel, Widow's Walk, and it's kind of nice how they're always the same kind of story and I'm sure will end well. It was part of my most recent borrowing from the library, which included Soon I Will Be Invincible (so awesome, I recced it in my last post) and City of Ember (which is being released as a movie in October and looks so cool) and Ghostwalk, which is a mystery thriller something or rather that looks intriguing. I requested Farthing from the library, I think. I heart libraries! Yay free (almost) books. Also, need to watch those movies I rented like now. :o)

But tonight there is frisbee, and last night I got to see L. A. Confidential for the first time in a while and it's so much fun (although seriously, why did Kim Bassinger get an Oscar for basically her ability to wear gauzey dresses and sleep with hot guys?) and Kevin Spacey is a fine actor. Guy Pearce too, though sometimes his Australian shows just a tad, which is kind of funny.

Now I think I will go for a walk and get some coffee (from either Starbucks or Peets, haven't decided yet) and see if I can get rhymester to pick up her phone...

Also, kumquat_queen, what is an address I can send something to you at? Wow, grammar much, but you know what I mean. I don't want my card to get lost in the forwarding from your old place to new. Maybe your parents house? Email me! XD

Seeing as the most recent updates on here have been to keep up with the postings of mcshep_match fics (they're so awesome! All of them!) and other things under friends lock, I should probably post here now. I got to dogsit the cuuuuuutest dog this weekend, and it was lots of fun though sadly due to an overactive brain, I didn't get much sleep. I hate when you're still buzzing with unimportant (or highly important) things at like 2am. Which then means that you get thrown off your sleeping, so that you can no longer get up early and it's a vicious cycle. Fortunately, I have the rest of the week before "productivity" sets in, as summer camp starts next week. I'm really looking forward to having something to do during the day, though looking back at my calendar, I have not really been lacking for social things. And, looking foward (as I noticed when M and I were making plans this week), I am highly busy still. Tonight, I am watching a movie with M (maybe L.A. Confidential, maybe... a million other things), tomorrow I am playing frisbee, Thursday I have orientation for camp, and Friday a whole bunch of 'frisbee kids' are going to see a play that our "fearless leader"'s wife is in, with an after-party. And this weekend WALL-E comes out, I'm so excited!

Of course, my room is still a mess, but we have hot water (again, I got to relight the pilot light last night) and Roto Rooter came and fixed our sink, so we can both wash dishes and use the washing machine. Still, will be happy to get out of this house before it falls down about our ears, a la the house of Usher.

Watched Into the Wild (finally, the last of my DVDS from Netflix that I have had FOREVER are sent back, and I will be getting Blood Diamond, and discs of season one of Bones and Eureka woohoo!) and it was an interesting movie, very atmospheric and artistically shot. Emile Hirsch, who plays Chris McCandless, did a fine job of seeming both wise and naive beyond his years, and while the whole "ethereal voice over" mode of storytelling is a bit pretentious, it worked. The realist in me is still a little irritated at the real life events: how much of the tragedy could have been prevented (if he'd had/used a MAP, for God's sake) but I enjoy the romanticism of it (in the idealist way of romanticism, such as Thoreau). Makes me want to read The Journey is the Destination again. That and go have an adventure.

Think I'll have to settle for folding laundry and taking some decongestant (the headache from yesterday now has accompanying itchy eyes and sneezing. Something must have bloomed), at least for now XD

If I remember today, I have notes to make up a new Rec Triad, because I am woefully overdue again. Also, more fic inside my head. Though I spent a long time last night reading lots of lovely J2 fic recced by setissma here (though it was J2 AU fic, so I'm not quite sure how real that makes the RPF, haha) and then jezrana's involved awesomeness for bandombigbang: The Fall and Rise of the Black Parade

I slept in for a long time, it was kind of awesome. And now Younger Sister is back from her weekend in The City and a new week can begin. In slightly more exciting news, mcshep_match is open! There is already the first pair of fics posted for the prompt "Thief in the Night". Very cool. I love fics.

Also, if you are jealous and wishing that you too could be part of the awesomeness that is the Away Team this fic challenge, they're still looking for BACKUP WRITERS here.

Maybe I'll say yes. I'm a glutton for last-minute fic scrambling ;o)

Also, there are approximately a million books I want to buy right now. Get thee to a nunnery library!*



*While I used to buy lots of books (and wow, now OWN lots of books, who'd have thought?) I've noticed that because I read so fast it is kind of financially stupid to buy a book that I will finish in a day or two. Thus, the library is awesome. Of course, there's always those pesky late fees because me and being on time never quite meet...