Sputnik Sweetheart

These People Ought To Know Who We Are And That We Are Here

oddbird — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 06:59:22 GMT

Over at A. is A. there is a process post called "These People Ought To Know Who We Are And That We Are Here".

If you're interested in what I've been working on lately and what I've been doing with it, then this might be of interest to you.

I've been reading my old stories lately, trying to figure out what can be salvaged and polished and what can't. Maybe one day soon I'll actually sit down and read my thesis collection. Maybe.

Green Toast and Egg

oddbird — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 18:45:24 GMT

Over at Knives Out there is a new post about cooking with freshly laid eggs and a very simple recipe for Green Toast with Egg.

The more cooking posts I write, the more I realize that I need a better camera for taking pictures of the things I cook.

Spaghetti Squash with Brown Butter and Sage

oddbird — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 22:26:51 GMT

I didn't really list all my New Year's resolutions here on LJ like I usually do this year, but there is one that is relevant to people who read what I write on the internet. It's really three resolutions that interconnect.

1) Save more money

2) by cooking at home more

3) and uploading the results to Knives Out at least once a week.

So here's the first recipe of the new year - Spaghetti Squash with Brown Butter and Sage.

I Always Wanted A Dragon

oddbird — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:21:28 GMT

I have a pet.

His name is King Ghidorah. He is a juvenile bearded dragon. Much like yours truly, he enjoys sun lamps and leafy greens.

King is very low maintenance. He gets chopped greens in the morning and crickets in the afternoon. He explores the room and puffs out his beard to look tough. He tastes the air. He falls asleep on my forearm.

Pets are nice because they take you outside of yourself for awhile. The signals that move through King's reptile pea brain are alien and incomprehensible. When I gently stroke the top of his head, he closes his eyes and goes still. Does he enjoy it? Is he mesmerized? Is he wishing he was somewhere else? It's impossible to say. He might dream, because he sometimes twitches his legs in his sleep.

Bearded dragons are desert creatures. His terrarium brightens my room during these gloomy Portland days. King is very young and was born in captivity. In Portland. I don't think he has ever seen the real sun. Someday I would like to show it to him.

I Miss Russian Class

oddbird — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:37:21 GMT

Chain Smoking Batman Is The Best Batman

oddbird — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 18:52:58 GMT

Last night I dreamt I was Robin to Jon Hamm's Bruce Wayne / Batman.

I think we spent far more time drinking absurdly expensive liquor than fighting crime.

It was pretty great.

Pew Pew Pew Laser Time

oddbird — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 01:10:42 GMT

I wrote today for an hour with the kind laser intensity I haven't had since I finished my thesis. Got down a solid 428 words of "Light Sensitive". It's a non-genre story in the sense that all of the events that occur are grounded in our particular kind of reality, but it does contain a hell of a lot of lyncanthropy imagery. It's about money, family, and mental health. And feeling a little monstrous sometimes.

I'm not doing NaNoWriMo. I never do NaNoWriMo, because I think it's silly to try to write a novel in a month. I am, however, utilizing the time frame as a convenient arbitrary deadline for some other writing-related things I want to get done.

1) Finish a full draft of a new story, either "Light Sensitive" or "Hum".

2) Submit another story for publication.

I'm still waiting to hear back on the last pulp story I submitted for publication, but the publication in question takes 3-4 months to respond and it's only been 2. In the meantime, I'm trying to get a few new balls rolling.

Oh Yeah And This Happened

oddbird — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 19:05:32 GMT

Last night Galactus and I realized it's been a year since we started dating.

If you're interested in my cheesy recap of the evening, you can read it over at A. is A.

Greening

oddbird — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 02:08:22 GMT

All right. I'm finally going to try a little vegetable gardening.

After having great luck with plants during high school, I went through a period in which I killed pretty much everything I tried to grow. This time period coincided with living in a dim apartment complex, so the poor light quality might have had something to do with it.

Now things are better. I managed to save one of my boyfriend's rootbound houseplants after it's root system was burned by a mistaken overdose of chemical fertilizer. The little pot of basil I bought a few months ago is still thriving after a fall move indoors. I got a fern for the bathroom (they like the humidity) and the little fellow is doing great.

I'm going to start simple. Container gardening on the patio, so as not to disturb my landlord by tearing up the yard. A container of mixed lettuce and a pot or two of tomatoes. Lettuce and tomatoes are both vegetables that are much cheaper and much, much tastier when homegrown. Lettuce apparently likes things cloudy and damp, so I can plant it as soon as the winter frosts are over. Tomatoes come a little later in the spring.

Still trying to decide whether to buy self-watering containers or build them myself. I might build one for the tomatoes and buy one for the lettuce, as the particular size of the containers needed for the lettuce might be difficult to scavenge.

Any gardening tips?

Get Excited And Make Things

oddbird — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 19:05:52 GMT

I put the book Radical Homemakers on hold at my local library in the summer. I picked it up a couple days ago. That's how popular this book is in Portland.

I can see why it's popular. I've finished the "theory" section of the book and I just started reading the "practice" section. It's a good read. It's a seductive read. Hayes tends towards the virulently anti-corporate, but she also makes a series of very sound points. More money does not equal more happiness. Getting rich doesn't matter if we suffer from time poverty. The things that consistently make human beings happy, like good friendships, relationships, family, and the freedom to pursue our own creative pursuits, suffer and disappear in the face of a sixty-hour work week.

I currently work 15-20 hours a week if you include the time spent prepping for class. Here are some things that make me happy: dinner with friends, library books, bike rides. These things don't cost very much.

Hayes also helped articulate why I feel calm and empowered when I'm standing over a pot of beans over the stove. I don't feel like a drudge. I'm making something for myself and the people around me. I'm doing something for myself instead of having to pay someone to do it for me. Yeah, I think cooking and cleaning can be a feminist act. I think anything that makes me self-reliant and happy is a feminist act.

I had the day off yesterday. I'd worked a 6-hour tutoring shift, no breaks, the day before and I was bone tired. My job can be exhilarating and rewarding at times, but it's not quite right for me. I want to teach people how to read books, not how to take tests.

How would I rather spend my time? Working for two weeks and spending my whole paycheck on a beautiful table from CB2, or taking a two-week carpentry workshop and learning how to build my own beautiful tables? Spending an hour at work in order to earn the money to buy a 8-dollar bag of organic granola, or spending an hour at home making granola from scratch?

I spent most of my day reading Radical Homemakers and drinking tea. I made granola with rolled oats, olive oil, honey, pecans, apricots, cinnamon, and kosher salt. I made a big container of kale and basil pesto that will last me a good two weeks on pasta. I checked off one of my chores on the house chore wheel. And I felt pretty damn good about myself.

I'm definitely looking forward to to WWOOFing this summer. It's time to expand my skills.

Tatooine

oddbird — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:27:32 GMT

Good Food and Good Company

oddbird — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 18:01:36 GMT

Hosted an amazing dinner party with some of my housemates last night. I made baked mac and cheese with caramelized onions and fall greens. N. made lamb meatloaf and beet salad with toasted hazelnuts. M. made an apple crisp. Somehow we managed to all cook in the kitchen at once and get everything out on the table on time. Fed about 10 people and still had some leftovers.

Then we drank lots of cider, carved pumpkins, and played Apples to Apples.

According to Apples to Apples, I am "deadly and influential".

While I'm looking forward to having my own place, there's definitely a lot I'll miss about living in a communal house.

MS Dream Adventures

oddbird — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:39:58 GMT

Yesterday was a chicken-y sort of day. Housemate N. thawed out an anonymous bag of chicken breasts sitting in our freezer and then made an enormous batch of fried chicken. Later that evening I went to a parental dinner with Sar-bot and others at a chicken wings restaurant.

Last night I had insomnia followed by weird dreams. I think this was a result of playing Fallout 3 an hour before bed. Yes, I'm behind the times. Fallout 3 was the reason I originally decided to get an Xbox instead of a PS3. Then I got distracted by series like Mass Effect and never got around to buying it. Two weeks ago my boyfriend picked it out of a $15 bin at a used game store and brought it home. Now I'm in the throes of new game addiction.

It's very different from the original games. Much bleaker. The stress of simply surviving is so high that the game produces a constant adrenaline buzz.

I had insomnia last night, followed by weird dreams. Probably as a result of too much chicken and video games. I dreamt I was carrying out a torrid online affair with Andrew Hussie. Then I met him in real life and found out he had a fiance. I was heartbroken.

Apartment Envy

oddbird — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 23:00:17 GMT

I love Apartment Therapy. I do. It's my favorite home design blog. I have an Expedit bookcase because of them.

But I do get tired of reading the interview sections of the house tours and listen to nearly everyone claim they were designing "on a budget" and didn't have much money to work with and got everything from thrift stores and Craiglist.

And then I look at the photos and they have a fucking Eames rocker. And a matched set of six Bertoia chairs around the living room table.

That's over 4 thousand dollars worth of chairs there, you guys. You're not fooling anyone.

These Beans

oddbird — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 08:24:22 GMT

For some reason I stayed up until 1 in the morning today making Cuban black beans.

It seemed like a good idea when I started. Then I realized the entire cooking process takes 4 hours and it was too late to stop.

I must say, though, that these are the best beans I have ever made. They also might be the best beans I've ever tasted. These beans are crazy.

Worth it? Maybe. The beans are these beans, if you're curious. See also: These Burgers.

Tomorrow it's French onion soup time. Now that it's fall I'm getting the most of my inherited Le Creuset. Slow stove-top cooking for the win.

Barreling Forward Like a Freight Train

oddbird — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 02:04:18 GMT

Now that I've settled into my hours at work, I think I'm going to apply for a few winter term internships. Probably at Hawthorne Press and the Bitch Magazine library. My job is nice, but I'd like to do some work that requires a little more intellectual stimulation and interaction with actual adults.

I'm also considering applying for a 1-year teaching fellowship for the 2011-2012 school year. A lot of old guard New England boarding schools offer these to recent college or graduate school graduates. They're competitive, but given my academic background and work experience I think I'd have a shot. Basically it'd involve living in the New England countryside for a year and teaching while getting a full salary and benefits. Room and board are usually included. A teaching fellowship seem like a pretty sweet gig.

I have a feeling, though, that I might have to pretend to be married in order to continue living with my boyfriend if I got one of those jobs. The provided housing is usually an apartment in one of the dorms, and some of these places can lean towards the conservative side. I'm not sure if they want to give on-campus housing to unmarried cohabitators.

But I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Not A Bum

oddbird — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 04:04:51 GMT

I'm employed. Take that, stupid economy.

I was just hired to be an English teacher at a test prep center. It's in Beaverton, but they'll pay me enough to make the commute worth it. I start tomorrow. I'll be working about 10-20 hours a week and making more than enough to cover rent, food, and fun times. I might even get a car.

So now I'm a submissions reader for a literary magazine / English teacher. This is pretty much the ideal combination of activities for me to do between college and grad school.

Tonight I'm working my way through my first batch of unsolicited submissions for Tin House. They are overall higher in quality than the prose submissions I read for RCCR, but not by a whole lot. Unlike when I was working for RCCR, though, I don't have to tear the names off these and anonymously present them to a voting board. I just read them and then choose "forward" or "reject". It's all very streamlined.

I hope I don't go mad with power.

In other news, I've been worrying an old story in my head like a loose tooth. I may start writing a new version of it this weekend. It's called "Hum".

Things are working out better than expected.

Reedies Are Everywhere

oddbird — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:02:37 GMT

Welll.

After I got the Tin House job my housemate N. took me out for breakfast. I ate oats and talked about Pokemon. She offered to take me to the used game shop on Hawthorne. I got a Gameboy Advance and a copy of Pokemon Crystal for around thirty bucks. It was worth it. Especially if I end up having to commute and hour and a half to Beaverton in the near future.

When I went to the test prep center I had a brief interview and then sat down to take a qualifying test. The test was material from the Verbal section of the old SAT. It was easy. Afterward the guy testing me smiled and said, "I know this was easy for you. I have a few people from your department working for me and they all do very well."

So the test prep center I applied at seems to have already hired a few Reedie English majors and likes them quite a bit. I don't want to count my jobs before they actually exist, but I think I have a pretty good chance at this one.

And then I'd be pretty much set.

These Days

oddbird — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:32:28 GMT

My last day in New York was great. I got brunch in Brooklyn with Posie and then had last minute tea with K-bot on the Upper West Side. It's really neat to hear about all the cool stuff my fellow recent grads are doing.

I got back to Portland very early Wednesday morning, and I've been busy as hell since then. I got called back for an interview with Tin House to be one of their readers. They hired me right at the end of the interview. It was a major confidence boost and a huge relief. The position is unpaid, but it's five extremely flexible hours a week. Not only is it easy to work this job around another paid job, but I can continue to do the job remotely if I move out of state. It's pretty much the perfect internship-style job for me.

I'll be assigned 25 pieces of short prose from the unsolicited manuscript pile every two weeks. I'll read the stories, take a few notes, and then forward my 2-4 favorites to the editors for them to look at. I'm really excited to be part of the selection process.

Tomorrow I have an interview to be an English SAT I & II test prep teacher out in Beaverton. Next week I'm interviewing at Noodles & Co. downtown to see if I can sling sauce for a living.

Things are definitely looking up.

Hey, Remember When I Wrote That Thing?

oddbird — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:34:30 GMT

And then I said I'd post it to my blog, piece by embarrassing piece? And I didn't?

Well, now I am. Nobody expects undergraduate creative writing thesis to be a masterpiece. While I enjoyed the process and I got a few good stories out of it, probably about half the prose that ended up filling the pages was serviceable and nothing more. I'm sure many people who wrote an analytical thesis had a similar experience.

I'd avoided posting stories from my thesis because I wanted to avoid posting the inevitable clunkers. But it's probably just as helpful for me to take a second look at the mediocre stories as it is to keep editing the better ones. Besides, it might give me the motivation to edit them.

So here's one of two scene-setting experimental vingettes from my thesis. It's called "Laika (Transmission)".

Green Hills

oddbird — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 18:04:26 GMT

I'm in the Berkshires of Massachusetts right now. Beautiful green hill country. I hiked up a mountain the other day. Then I sunbathed on a beach by the pond. Today I'm going to take the dogs and walk down some gravel roads and look for wild turkeys.

It's relaxing except for the facts that I can't sleep and I'm still applying to jobs.

I made a New Seasons profile today and applied for three separate clerk jobs at their Portland stores. That brings the "jobs applied for" count up to 10. Responses so far? 0.

Rejection letters aren't so bad. The void is far worse.

Well, Sometimes I Pay For The Subway

oddbird — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 02:27:33 GMT

I am in New York. Visiting New York, as usual, makes me want to move here. The foods good, the people are friendly, and it's impossible to be bored. It's a city I feel very comfortable with. The trouble is that it's about 800 times harder to be unemployed in New York than to be unemployed in Portland. And the job market in NY is better, but not great. I definitely noticed a lot of unemployed yuppies loitering in coffee shops.

I just looked at a bunch of photos of a friend's WWOOFing adventures in Europe. I want to go to there. Despite all the traveling I've been doing this summer, my wanderlust doesn't quite feel sated.

Well, time to go to <a href="http://www.ward3tribeca.com/">this place</a> and drown my travel envy in free "bespoke" cocktails. Apparently my sister knows the bartender. New York is pretty fun when you're not paying rent and people give you stuff for free.

Gelato and Airplanes

oddbird — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:05:18 GMT

I applied for a counter job at Staccato Gelato today. Apparently it's owned by a Reedie.

This brings my Things Applied For up to... 7. Only 93 to go before I find a job!

Also, I'm getting on a red eye flight to NYC tonight. I'll spend a few days there, a few days in the Berkshires, and then come back to Portland again. I'm looking forward to having dogs to play with. Hurrah!

Clerking It Up

oddbird — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:49:13 GMT

This week I dropped off applications to be

a marketing intern at Dark Horse
a store clerk or warehouse clerk at Things From Another World (owned by Dark Horse)
a bookstore clerk

I bought the Epic Win app a few days ago. I'm not sure if the fact that it's really helping my productivity is awesome or pathetic.

I Thought I Left Procrastination Behind With School

oddbird — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 22:35:53 GMT

Yesterday I celebrated the 21st birthday of my friend S. It was a lot of fun. I rode in the kiddie seat of a Volvo station wagon for a while.

Today I woke up feeling like crap. Not because I drank too much last night, but because yesterday afternoon I went to the gym and did weight training for my legs for pretty much the first time in my life. All of the muscles in my legs hurt. All of them. I've been limping around like an old person.

Since I've been incapacitated by muscle mystery, this is as good a time as any to pound out a couple internship applications. For serious. I'm doing it. Today. Now.

I've been seriously thinking of buying the Epic Win application for my iPhone. Because probably the best way to motivate me is to frame my to-do list as a video game.