Category: Awesome

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Awesome Books Nonfiction Writing

5 reads for Halloween time

If you’re looking for a good chilling read for Halloween, then look no further. (Everyone likes to read – or reread – scary stuff this time of year, right?) I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite scary books, all of which I would heartily recommend. (Also all of which I would heartily recommend you read when you’re not home alone.)

1. The Shining by Stephen King

This is actually not my favorite Stephen King book – possibly not even in my top 5 Stephen King books. But this time of year it’s perfect. It’s got all the old familiar horror aspects to it, plus it’s written during my favorite part of King’s career. The Shining is so well-crafted that multiple parts of it have become well known in pop culture, for which I’m sure we should be thanking Stanley Kubrick and the 1980 film adaptation of the book. (The movie, by the way, is also great although definitely took some liberties with the source material.)

2. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

I read this book for the first time in 6th grade, and I still remember how much it freaked me out. There’s one particular scene, with some seaweed…I won’t say anymore, but man. I had some paranoid nights when I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

You know how much I admire and respect and adore Agatha Christie, and she was incredibly prolific, but I think that when it comes to spooky and creepy, this book stands out from her other work. I’m not even sure what I can say about it without spoiling it. So I’ll just say…we passed this thing around in 6th grade. Even boys read it. And we all found it deliciously thrilling. And if a classroom full of 6th graders approve, you know it must be great.

3. Dracula by Bram Stoker

This is more fun than scary. I read this for Halloween a couple years ago, and I was surprised by how much I loved it. I expected it to be harder, with more flowery language – more like Frankenstein. But it was actually a pretty quick read, I had no trouble following any part of it, and I enjoyed the entire thing. I never got nightmares or anything from it, but it was a fun little October activity. I do like all aspects of Halloween – from the scary stuff to the silly stuff to the sentimental stuff (Hocus Pocus on TV every night, anyone?)

4. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Step aside, The Lottery. No, just kidding. While I find Shirley Jackson’s short stories to be some of the best (and most inspiring) writing I’ve ever read, The Haunting of Hill House has seriously stuck with me. This was one of those random library grabs, and then I ended up taking it up to my parents’ house one weekend when I was house sitting for them. Now, I’m skittish spending the night alone at my parents’ house anyway. I have done it maybe 3 times ever, and it just terrifies me. Something about how dark it is outside, how close the trees come to the house on all sides, providing plenty of cover for murderers, and how so many of the windows don’t have blinds you can tightly close to that the aforementioned murderers don’t know exactly where you are.

I couldn’t believe I was so dumb as to take no other reading material but The Haunting of Hill House, and I just sucked it up and curled up under the oldest, most familiar comforter I could find, with both cats on top of me, and waited out the night. (I think I got like 3 hours of sleep.) So good.

5. Rosemary’s Baby (or really anything) by Ira Levin

I picked Rosemary’s Baby because it’s been on my mind, but honestly, you can’t go wrong with Ira Levin. Here’s a list of his novels (we’ll start there and leave the plays for later) so you can figure out which one to start with: A Kiss Before Dying, Rosemary’s Baby, This Perfect Day, The Stepford Wives, The Boys from Brazil, Sliver, Son of Rosemary. Yes, Son of Rosemary is a sequel to Rosemary’s Baby. The cover of it makes it look like a cheap paperback, but as it was actually written by Ira Levin, it’s still great writing and a fantastic story with a crazy unexpected twist. Do it. (But you’ll want to start with Rosemary’s Baby.)

Rosemary’s Baby has also become iconic in our culture. You probably know that the story involves devil worshipers, the antichrist, and that Mia Farrow cut her hair really short for the movie. (The movie, I will mention, was also really good according to me, and it followed the book really closely, but it’s still not the same.) If devil worshipers and the antichrist aren’t enough to pique your interest, then it also takes place in New York City, which is fun to read about. Also, stop complaining and just read it already because it is awesome.

Any of these great works of literature would be well-worth your Halloween time. It occurs to me now that for each of these books, there is at least one movie adaptation. That’s all well and good and I like scary movies, but please don’t judge any of these books based off of just the movie. They all have so much to offer and they’re waiting for you to read them…alone, in the dark…maybe on a particularly rainy night…

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Awesome Beginnings Books Fiction Games Writing

Is it already almost November AGAIN?

It’s October 11, which means we’re into the middle of October, which means it’s almost November, and November, as you know, is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

Dangit. It just kind of snuck up on me this year. If I’m going to even attempt to do it again this year, now’s the time to think about it, so that we don’t get to November 1st and I just panic and start writing and then end up with 12 pages of third-person narration where the main character is obviously just a thinly-veiled version of myself.

I want to put some thought into it, and come up with a storyline ahead of time. Even though all of the Nanowrimo propaganda is about how fun it is when you hit a wall and you don’t know what’s going to happen next, and then your characters do something crazy that you weren’t expecting, I don’t work well like that. (See above, re: 12 pages, thinly-veiled version of myself.) I need to have a storyline to follow, and some idea of where things are going. The details that crop up on my way to the already-envisioned end can surprise me. And the ending can surprise me too, ultimately. But I have to at least think I know where it’s going.

I’ve been getting the year-round emails from the crew at the Office of Letters and Lights (they are in charge of Nanowrimo, as much as you can be in charge of a concept), and I haven’t unsubscribed from them, although I have to admit I haven’t opened and read them either. I guess I’m just walking a middle line, refusing to commit to either participating this year, or to making a decision to not participate. (I have 20 more days to decide before November 1st – technically I could still join in after that, but I’ve never been successful at starting late.)

I would love to make this work this year, especially since I’m not going to work and so you would think that I would have more time at home to write. We’ll see how this unfolds. If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave in the comments. In the meantime, a Google “I feel lucky” search for “plot generator” suggests this: “The story starts when your protagonist buys a new car. Another character is a gypsy who put a curse on your protagonist.” I don’t know…

Ooh, but refreshing the plot generator gives me this: “The story starts when your protagonist shoplifts. Another character is a thief who is the most attractive person your protagonist has ever met.” I kind of like that.

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Awesome Beginnings Children Dreams Drew Family Home improvements Love Memoir Nonfiction Parents Pregnancy Self improvement Sentiment

Making excuses, and making babies

I’ve been absent, but I have a good reason.

This little guy arrived early last Saturday morning, just after midnight. He’s become the center of our universes and we’re determined to spoil him (at least until he gets old enough that it becomes a problem). He’s a good sleeper, a good eater, a good cuddler. He has some of the cutest facial expressions and mannerisms I’ve ever seen.

There are things I miss about being pregnant, but actually not as much as I thought I would. It’s really nice to be able to do a lot of the things that I used to do – and to eat things I couldn’t eat for awhile. He’s barely 6 days old and I’ve already eaten like 4 turkey sandwiches. And the things I thought I’d miss were all kind of sentimental things about the bond I had with this unborn baby…but now we have this whole new aspect to our relationship, which brings all kinds of new challenges and victories. (I guess that should have been obvious.)

I’m trying really hard not to completely forget my “old” life, and to transition smoothly into my “new” life. I’ll try to keep updating you with how that’s going. And I’ll also try not to go all “stfu parents” on you. But you’ll have to allow me occasional slips. Like this one!

AWWWWWWWWWWWW

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Awesome Drew Fashion Friends Home improvements Memoir

My strongest suit

We’ve been cleaning and reorganizing, and last night Drew dragged out all of our “costume” stuff to consolidate it. For some reason – although maybe this won’t surprise people – we’ve been collecting costume pieces for awhile. We’ve got store-bought Halloween costumes, vintage stuff (mostly old-timey bathing suits and ladies’ gloves) from an estate sale a couple years ago, and the pieces that Drew bought/made in New York for some photos he was taking.

It took us awhile but we finally managed to get everything compressed enough to fit into this one storage tub we have. We’ve been moving certain things out into this cabinet we have in our carport area, which is coming in really handy. We now have things like Halloween and Christmas decorations out there, a tent for camping that we’ve never used, and with a giant box filled with all my stage management binders.

But costumes are irresistible, so before packing up, there was some modeling. Luckily, I was in control of my phone so there aren’t any pictures of me.

My favorite thing about this next picture is that I had to turn my phone on, select the camera app, and take the picture, using my nose, because I was wearing elbow-length charcoal gray gloves, and the touch screen doesn’t work with gloves on. (I hear I could have also used a Slim Jim, but a) we don’t have any here, and b) I don’t want Slim Jim grease all over my phone.)

When I texted this picture to Erin, her response was:

I mean, is there really anything else to say about that?

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Awesome Beginnings Being a girl Dreams Drew Food Friends Love Memoir Pregnancy Sentiment

Baby brain is a very real thing

Last weekend, my two good friends Sam and Erin threw me a baby shower. It was rubber duckie themed and adorable! One of the activities was decorating bibs. Some people were very creative and talented, and some people made up for any lack of talent with their enthusiasm. (I kid.)

I went with a Game of Thrones theme for mine – I was going to do “The stallion that mounts the world,” but horses are difficult to draw, and then we got into a conversation about how I should draw “mounting,” so I went with “My sun and stars” instead.

Then there was also a store-bought bib – but I also really like this picture because you can see my pink and blue nails (which are now a wreck).

The big surprise at this shower was that the dessert was cupcakes from Torino Baking, who did our wedding cake (and consequently, our first and second anniversary cakes!). She is AWESOME and her banana cake is amazing. The cupcakes (some banana and some chocolate) fully lived up to their reputation!

This weekend, Liz had her baby shower in Stockton. Everything was Peter Pan-themed, and super cute. After the shower, we went back to Liz’s house and Erin took some maternity shots for her while I watched and provided the soundtrack/inner monologue.

I am obsessed with our second bedroom. Yes, it’s a lot of bookshelves and it’s still partly storage for stuff we weren’t sure what to do with, but Drew has made great strides in getting the closet cleaned out, and with all the new baby stuff we’ve acquired over the last few weeks, it’s starting to real feel more like a nursery than a library. I keep wandering in there and just standing around. I just like looking at all the baby stuff. Everything is so little and cute…and I’m hard pressed to walk by without sticking my head in and admiring the stroller, or feeling how soft things are, or going through the onesies and making sure they’re still hanging in order from newborn to 12 months.

I try to keep it under control with other people, but I have to admit, my mind is 24/7 thinking about the baby, and about what we need to do, and what we’ve done already, and what the future’s going to be like…it just doesn’t stop. If it’s like this now…what’s it going to be like 7 weeks from now?

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Awesome Beginnings Children Family Food Friends Games Love Memoir Nonfiction Parents Pregnancy Sentiment

Baby shower!

This week (and next week) is crazytown at work. I have given myself over to it, and just accepted that it’s going to mean full days at work, followed by evenings at the theater, but I just had to get that out there. It’s a lot, and I’m looking forward to a little peace and quiet after everything’s over. (Yeah, right.)

Last weekend I went home-home, and had my first baby shower. It was bigger than I expected (I guess I didn’t pay attention to the guest list), and I had a great time! It was lots of women who have (pardon the cliche) watched me grow up, so that’s always fun. My aunt and uncle came up from Napa, and Drew’s mom and her BFF drove up, and I hope everyone had as much fun as I did.

I mean, it’s either one or the other!
We’ve been splitting our time between this (sock) monkey theme and this jungle animals theme. Settling on one theme was never my strong point.
Christy made a diaper cake! Cute AND functional!
Me and Mom!
Me and long-time friends!
With Suzanne and Bonnie – love you guys!
Our travel system, compliments of my parents!

We are incredibly lucky and very blessed to be surrounded by such great, supportive, generous and loving people. The excitement and the joy has been very encouraging. I am grateful that I haven’t had to deal with people saying inconsiderate or negative things. Literally everyone has been positive and respectful.

When I got regular-home from being home-home, I had a carload full of stuff to unload (more boxes of books from my parents among them), and Drew’s mom had brought back a lot of presents that wouldn’t fit in my car. I reworked the nursery (see, I can call it that now, and not just keep calling it the library) and tried to get rid of boxes and bags, and group things into blankets, feeding, bathtime, etc.

We pushed the stroller/carseat in there, and after a moment Drew said, “Wow. I thought we had this room under control.” It’s a bit of a jumble right now, but I’m hoping we can alleviate that over the next month or so. It’s amazing how much stuff we have amassed – and I thought we were being conservative!

We haven’t taken the plastic off the crib mattress yet, or washed the sheets and made the crib up, but it’s still a good place to store certain things…

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Awesome Drew Food Friends Games Memoir Nonfiction Sentiment Sports TV

2012 Olympics

Last night we had an Olympic opening ceremonies party. Drew is absolutely crazy for the Olympics.

He made name tags for everyone, with a fun fact about each country.

I got to choose mine first, before anyone else arrived, so we went with one country that came from another country. Subtle, but effective.

As with the last party we had, back in May, between what we made and what people brought, we had way too much food. And there’s only enough furniture for half the people to be sitting at a time. But the opening ceremonies had all the expected moments of “wow” and also “wtf,” and we had a good time.

Now for two weeks for Olympics games – and then a year and a half until the winter Olympics and our next opening ceremonies party!

(Thanks to Erin for the pictures in this post!)

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Awesome Being a girl Drew Exercise Food Friends Memoir Nonfiction Pregnancy Sentiment TV

Dear Diary Update 7/12

Big Brother Season 14 started tonight – one of the best summer traditions.

Drew just demonstrated his excellent planking (the exercise type) posture, while Erin counted slowly to 30. Meanwhile, I threw Hershey’s miniatures at him from across the room in an attempt to distract him or make him laugh enough that he fell. But he didn’t!

I found out today that I officially passed my glucose test, which is a 2-hour series of blood draws they do when you’re pregnant to test for gestational diabetes. No GD here – very happy!

Not much else to say about this evening. TGI(A)F!

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"Other people" Awesome Drew Memoir Music Nonfiction Not awesome Sentiment

Solstice and singing

So, as I understand it, yesterday was the first day of summer. I basically say my favorite season is whatever season we’re currently in (with a slight bias toward spring and fall), but seriously, summer is great. We left Drew’s parents’ house the other day just after 9pm, and it was still sort of light outside. I just freaking love that.

From here on out, the nights are going to start getting longer again. This is bittersweet. On the one hand, I’m enjoying the relative heat (for the most part) and the looooong days. On the other hand, this means we’re on the downhill slope into fall, which I’m looking forward to for a variety of reasons.

To celebrate the beginning of the decline of the summer, we were serenaded last night at 4am. Well, I was. Drew slept through it, thank goodness.

This same thing happened a couple weeks ago. That night, I also woke up at 4am, not sure if it was the music that woke me up or if it started after I was awake. (I wake up a lot in the middle of the night, and usually just fall back asleep.) But there was this vague instrumental music, and I thought, Is the TV on? But it seemed to be out the back window, so maybe it was coming from the house behind us? That night, it played through that instrumental song, then the Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You,” then “That’ll Be The Day” by Buddy Holly, then something I can’t remember, and then we were on “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” by Paul Simon when it finally switched off.

I assume it’s someone’s clock radio going off, and it just takes them 15 minutes to turn it off. But that time a couple weeks ago, when it also woke up Drew, he sort of freaked out, and then spent the next two hours unable to fall back to sleep, and then had to get up for work.

So last night I tried to ignore it the best I could, and to fall back asleep, although it didn’t happen until it was finally quiet again. The only song I remember was “I Want You Back” by Jackson 5. I’m still not sure if it’s from the house behind us, or from our neighbor. Either way, I’m just really glad it didn’t disturb Drew, and that I wasn’t awake longer than about 20 minutes altogether.

Happy summer! Here’s to sleeping through the night tonight!

6/22 EDIT: I jinxed us! The radio went off again last night, and I got to hear Buddy Holly again, and also “I Can See Clearly Now,” and also about 4 other songs. It woke up Drew this time, and he walked around trying to figure out where it was coming from. He reported that you can hear it best in our room, leading me to believe it’s either our upstairs neighbor or the house out back.

He even opened the window to try and pinpoint it. When the music went off a minute after that, he said loudly, “Thank you.” Which I found hilarious.

The only upside is that this morning I heard what the station number is. So, Dad, it’s 103.7, which appears to be KOSF.  You can listen to it online here. I mean, it’s annoying at 4am, but it does seem like a good station overall. It’s not the station’s fault.

How many times do I let this happen before I start doing some investigating/conversing with neighbors?

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Awesome Being a girl Books Love Memoir Nonfiction

Tetris + books = my life

I’ve been trying to figure out how to illustrate what I feel like my life has become: a cross between Tetris and books.

Unfortunately, I’m not an artist, so I can’t just draw it, and I don’t have any great skills with Photoshop, and I just didn’t feel that one of my typical MS Paint mashups was going to do this justice.

I’ve obtained a lot (and I mean A LOT) of new books lately. This is on top of already having a bunch of things that I haven’t read yet (and yet I keep thinking, “I love humorous non-fiction; I bet I will really like that book I bought when Borders went out of business and everything was 70% off”).

But then a couple weekends ago, I bought 7 or 8 used books at the library book sale, and I think I’ve only read about 3 of them.

I even checked out three books that day, although who knows why I felt like that was necessary.

I got books for my birthday this weekend (thank God some of them are for kids, so they’ll go quickly).

Although one of them is the FOURTH Game of Thrones book, and I have yet to start the third one! (Which I’m dying to do.)

I bought Jonathan’s book club book off of him, because he was just going to return it to the store. (But it’s The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta! I didn’t know anything about it when I turned over the cash, because I just have faith in Tom Perrotta, but it’s about the Rapture, and I don’t know if you know this about me but I’m kind of into Rapture stuff.)

And then I have to purchase my own book club’s next book, which I plan on doing from Amazon, but then I’ll want to add something else so I get to $25 so I have the free shipping.

It’s just a torrential downpour of books, and there’s no way I can keep up with them all. It’s like one of the later levels on Tetris, but instead of pretty colored shapes, it’s all books. But they’re piling up so fast!

At least books fit together well. Until you run out of space, that is.

Oh, I get it – it’s just like Tetris only none of the layers disappear when you fill them in. I guess that would happen if I actually read things, and then gave them away.

Why did I used to have so much time to read? I guess in New York I had the commute every day, and then both my roommates worked a show schedule, so I spent a lot of time alone. (Not in a sad way.)

But now, I just don’t have that same amount of time.

Although, I’m doing a cameo in wardrobe at Marin Theatre Company this weekend (started last weekend), and there is PLENTY of time to read then. Partly because the show is super easy (yay!) and partly because the show is short, so the break between shows is hours (yay!). So I’m going to try to get through as much this week as possible.

I would say, “And then I’m going to try to lay off acquiring books for awhile,” but it’s just not that easy.

That being said – anyone reading anything good lately?