More All About Me

I have not posted or worked on the blog for well over two years. Why? Because every time I did I thought "this has no cohesion, this isn't about anything." But that confusion just led to stagnation. Today I woke up and decided it's about things I like. It's a method for keeping my thoughts and dreams and interests in one place, if for no other reason, than to fuel my failing memory. (Nope, not failing in the big-picture medical sense, just failing in the my brain is too crowded to hold all this stuff sense.)

So what do I like? Books, particularly Young Adult books but not usually the distopian ones although occasionally those, too. And contemporary fiction provided it doesn't veer too close to thriller or mystery territory although there are exceptions to that rule, too. But mostly realistic YA stuff. I love writing and have written 13 published books but have shown NOTHING to anyone in the last few years because the terror that is wrapped up in my flailing confidence has prevented me from doing so. I still revel in the sweeping power that music has on our emotions and lives and like many different genres and bands and people but never (and this is a cliche I know but) never pop music although I did have a very realistic dream once that I wrote "Since You Been Gone" for Kelly Clarkson and she was very thankful. I honestly believe I missed my calling — I should have been a pop songwriter. I used to like TV, no I take that back, I used to LOVE TV but now, I can honestly take it or leave it. All of it. Even the good stuff. But let's face it, I always loved the bad stuff. I don't eat that gluten crud anymore because when I do my fingers and knees stop working. Like, Stop. Working. So while I get that from many folks' perspectives, it seems like a crazy fad, I like my fingers to work so I also like stuff without gluten. I like clothes but not too fancy crazy clothes, I love shoes, all kinds, even fancy ones, and I am on the constant hunt for new and ingenious ways to tame my once curly now just frizzy hair. Other random things that interest me: when science is explained in fun and easy to understand layman's terms, middle and high school education, good design of all kinds, people taking major leaps in their lives and trying something new, make-up, veganism - although I am not a vegan I think about it a lot, politics as they apply to me or rather as I understand them to apply to me, my daughter Tuesday, my dog Ozzie and my husband Jeff.

So that's it. a bunch of stuff collected because I like it. I don't expect anyone to read it except me but I bet there are a couple of people who have the same likes as me, maybe sans the daughter Tuesday.

SMALL THINGS

Two really great new Tiny Desk Concerts

Wilco
Lisa Hannigan

Six Famous Novels penned in under a month (in honor of National Novel Month!)

Super excited to try Scrivener out for a ride.

Last year I read all but two of the Publisher's Weekly's best Yong Adult books of 2010. I think I'll do it again for 2011's best. Here is what they got so far. Most looking forward to Brian Selznick's Wonderstruck, the Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler collaboration The Future of Us, also The Apothecary, The Girl Who Circumvented Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making (which I started already and wow!) and The Flint Heart, the latter of which I will read with my daughter.

Speaking of reading with my daughter, I bought this book for $1. Should arrive tomorrow. Damn, looks like the price jumped back up to $8.

I wanna take the hat class at Home Ec Studios. But it's $85 and spending that on me right now seems rather selfish.

That said, I think I am gonna splurge and buy myself this Pendelton bag on UrbanOutfitters.com - it's half off, as is a lot of the Pendelton collection. Damn, I want it all.

A very long list of the writers who support Occupy Wall Street.

Five interesting food politics stories that made news this week.

I Fear the Murderer May Be Amongst Us

These are some of the most clever illustrations // coolest art I've seen of late. The artist of Aled Lewis, a London-based. I own the artists' Threadless Thermos (I got it at Target!) and when I picked it out, didn't even realize it was the same person who made these hilarious photos. Prints are back in stock at inPRNT. More below...



And that's the Thermos.

There Is No Reason This Should Affect Me As It Does



I mean, he plays the electronic keyboards. The other dude is playing— what? A push button phone? I don't even know what that is. James Blake is a very white, nerdy 20-year-old Brit. Who repeats himself. A lot. And yet, this song, I think it's all that breathy space in between the words, just kills me. It hurts.

* Click the youtube logo in the corner and it will play there.

Finally.

I really have been wondering when someone would create an online teen magazine that had the old Sassy vibe but was thoroughly modern and real. And not another Jane thing, either.

Rookie is a that, or at least, it is thus far. They make fun of the ridiculous diets of women's magazines, they have a boy write about his love of all things girly, they lists songs to date to, they tell you how to buy a guitar and they do it without a Hello Kitty or pink lightning bolt in sight.

It's from young style blogger Tavi Gevinson and originally was supposed to be an off-shoot of Jane's xo site. But it's not now and I'm okay with that.

So far, I'm a fan.

I Can't Wait for This Movie!


Even though I really do not enjoy the artistic stylings of Charlize Theron. But what a great idea for a movie. The whole reason I wrote for teens whilst in my 20s and 30s is because I was still, in every imaginable way, a teenager.

This is the plot synopsis:
Theron plays a 30-something alcoholic writer of young-adult novels who, on a whim, decides to return to the small town that she left behind years ago to aggressively pursue her ex-boyfriend from high school (Patrick Wilson) -- only, now he is happily married and the father of a young child, which certainly complicates matters, and leads her to another high school classmate (Patton Oswalt), and no shortage of trouble.

Diablo Cody wrote it. And the poster is great, too. Got to wait till December. Damn.

Patti Smith in Sweden

She's in town to pick up that prize by the King. I absolutely love her reaction to Sweden's First Aid Kit singing "Dancing Barefoot":

I (Sort Of) Labored Today


Actually mostly what I did was sit at home and read blogs and download apps. And now I'm gonna share them here. I came to find the Biz*Ladies section of Design Sponge by way of the Girl's Guide To Web Design, which is an online class I want to take about Wordpress because I'm on Blogger and have web envy. The gal who conducts the class has contributed to Biz*Ladies (about Wordpress, of course) and when I started reading back posts on Biz*Ladies I got ever so inspired and excited and I even emailed my ol' pal Keva with new ideas (mind you she had emailed first, a few days ago, but still, I haven't emailed new ideas to Keva in years!) Really there are some very wonderful posts over there, in particular, I got a lot out of the following:

* Get a Website in a Weekend (a Wordpress primer)
* Advanced Functions of Wordpress
* The One Simple Thing You Need To Know For Your Online Business (hint: relationships)
* Free Publicity Techniques

But they were all pretty good.

Then I spent some time trying to retrieve my notes that I (thought I) lost on Evernote, but voila! They were there once I got back into my account. And now they have this section on their site called The Trunk that showcases all sorts of iPad and iPhone and Android apps that integrate with Evernote and so I spent an hour or three exploring those and downloaded quite a few, in particular I liked these:

FastFinga - A handwriting app that allows me to write notes with my finger on the iPhone screen
JotNot - Nifty document scanner
FotoNote - Captures text from a photo and does a decent job of it, too. This is going to come in handy at the hair salon where I always read interesting things in their magazines and try and shoot them with the iPhone camera and well this will convert it if I want and send it to Evernote and I like that.
ScanBizCards - Bet you can figure out what this one does? The free version let's you scan 2 cards a week which is enough for me.

*Those are the nachos that Keva and I shared last time we saw each other. Yum, Roxy.