five state tango

This is a travel blog, or was, and I don't seem to travel much anymore, but here's a little tidbit for you anyway!

Two months ago, almost three now, I moved down to Texas. Don't ask me why because I really don't know still. I needed a change. I had to get out of where I was. There are jobs here. Anyway.

I packed up almost everything I owned into my (very small) car and drove down through five states in about five or six days. I used the trip as an excuse to visit my friends that I hadn't seen since I came back from China. That was two years ago.

First stop was Los Angeles. I crashed at my friend's house for the night. We spent it watching A Very Potter Musical and then the next morning we made crepes with nutella and strawberries! It was delicious and reminded me of my senior year of college when I would make crepes all the time with my friend Nicole. Which was perfect timing given that the next night was spent in Phoenix with Nicole.

It's nice coming back to familiar places. I always thought that I would hate Phoenix for the rest of my life after going to high school there. But there's something nice about knowing where you're going, how to get places, which roads lead to what. It was pleasant to be back in Phoenix, even if I was in Glendale, an area I'm not terribly familiar with.

We hung out in the pool and then went to see the Hunger Games (my third time, Nicole's first). The next morning, I packed up and headed out, straight to...

Albuquerque to visit my friend Caty and her husband Adam. I still find it weird that so many of my friends are getting married. We mostly just hung out and I broke out the colossal Europe photo album (It is twice the size of China's despite the fact that I was in China for a longer amount of time). I also introduced her to Starkid and the genius that is Holy Musical B@man.

But alas the fun couldn't last and it was off to Texas for me.

So here I am three months later. I have a new pet! It's a rabbit, an American Fuzzy Lop which I mentioned a few entries ago. I bet you guys didn't think I'd actually get one, did you? I actually have 3, but only one is here with me in my apartment.

And I've been here 3 months and I'm already bored. I'm thinking about my next move... which I'm fairly sure has to do with writing. If I can double my monthly freelancing income, I could make it my full time job. I suppose that is my goal for the end of the year. Until then, I will go to work every day and figure out a way to make it happen. Until the next trip!

blogs

I'm not really a blogging person most of the time. And I obviously don't use this one much, but if you're interested, I have another blog that's 1) easier to comment on, and 2) that I like better. It's mainly for my writer-y stuff, but mayhaps you're interested in that?

If you want to visit/follow, check out my other blog: http://elyceg.wordpress.com

Just FYI-ing.

american fuzzy lops

I am a dork. I admit this freely. I spend most of my time on the internet where I can nerd out over things like Harry Potter and LotR and Hunger Games, and whatever other fandom has caught my attention for the moment. But my dorkiness extends beyond the internet. Really, it started at an early age, and it hasn't seemed to have gone away. It's probably only gotten worse.

There is this thing, that a lot of people do, but that the great wide world seems completely ignorant about. That thing is rabbits. Yes, rabbits. People raise them and show them, and love them like they're little dogs. They are so cute and each has its own personality that either makes you love them or hate them. I've had rabbits that were the sweetest things ever, and then there was the one who decided he hated me for no reason (he didn't last long in our barn to say the least).

This hobby, though (and believe me, it's a hobby. You can't make real money breeding rabbits, maybe enough to break even if you're lucky and have amazing stock), it's weirdly isolating outside of it's own bubble. Rabbit people are awesome, but they're the only ones who will ever understand what you're talking about or why you love it as much as they do. None of my friends get it, and they just think it's this weird, cute personality habit of mine or something.

At the moment, I have no rabbits. I haven't had any since I was a senior in high school. We had to sell out when my parents moved and I went to college. Selling Eclipse, my baby, the only fuzzy lop I'd had since the day he was born, was hard. I'm sure he's dead now, but I still miss him.

Eclipse is the broken chestnut (on the far left). This picture was taken when they were about 3 weeks old. The other two are a broken black and a seal (which is not a recognized color in the ARBA)

It's hard not to have rabbits anymore. I mean, American Fuzzy Lops do take more work than other rabbits since you have to groom them twice a week generally, but they're so sweet. Eclipse would always come right up to me whenever I went out to see him.

This is probably all just coming up because there's a rabbit show this weekend and I want to go, but I also don't have any real reason to since at shows, you either show or you shop, and I can't have a rabbit right now, so it'd just be torture looking at all these things I can't buy. Ugh. I suppose I should focus on something else, but I can't help thinking about it anyway.

I Don't Know What I'm Doing

I don't know if anyone even reads this blog anymore and I never update, but that's mostly because I also have a facebook, tumblr, livejournal, wordpress, etc etc and the list goes on. Granted, I have cut down on the number of accounts I have in the past few years, but new ones always seem to sneak up.

Anyway, what I'm here to talk about now is writing. Yes, most of you know that I like to write in my spare time. I've been writing pretty constantly for the past seven years now. I've published (self-published, whatever) one novel and written over 300 other short stories. I've written six novels, and this year, 2012, is the year I'm finally going to Make. Stuff. Happen. Seriously.

As of Monday, I will be throwing caution to the wind and entering one of my novels in ABNA, the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Now, I don't expect to get much further than maybe the second round, third if I'm lucky, but of course there's a tiny part of me that's hoping against hope I'll make it to the top three and even win. I'm trying to be realistic, though. My poor little novel. I'm gonna be spreading its wings and pushing it off a cliff! It's a little scary.

In the meantime, though, while that will be going on and I'll be sitting on my hands in antici.... pation, I've also jumped off the deep end into freelance writing. I started about two months ago and I've gotten six jobs so far. In a way, it's awesome because it's getting paid to write, which is one of the things I would love to do full time, but on the other hand, it takes away time from actually writing my own things. I have a list of writing things to do this year, most of which involves editing and rewriting and submitting. But to do that, I have to actually have time to do it.

The novel I'm submitting for ABNA, I wrote it in November. That sounds ridiculously fast considering here we are two months later. In the first two weeks of January, I took hours every day and tore the thing apart and then built it back up piece by piece. I have never been good at editing, mostly because I was always afraid of the delete button, but I bit the bullet and deleted entire sections that had nothing to do with the plot or the characters. I took a chopping ax to the chapters, and managed to fall completely in love with a single chapter (I don't know why I love this chapter so much but I do. It's perfect). I want to get this novel out there, to prove that I'm not just fiddling around aimlessly on my computer. Also, I want to get the eff out of this town and selling a book would get me enough money to do that.

I guess I should go work on my pitch instead of sitting here talking about it, to make sure I do actually get to round two. Adios.

Counting Your Eggs

Well, hello there. It's been a while. You've grown. But this blog sure hasn't, and okay, I was pretty bad... I even deleted it a few months ago but it's back (mostly because I had to retrieve an entry from it, but here we are).

I wouldn't say my life has drastically changed in the past few months. I still work at the same place, live in the same place, see the same people every day. A dull litany of monotony.

Only one thing really has changed: I've become a freelance writer. No, really, it's technically official. I get paid to write stuff. Granted, I've only had one job and it's still "in progress" but it's a start. I'm not going to count my eggs before they've hatched. But I've applied for a few more jobs and gotten some bites that might develop into actual paying jobs, so I can officially say that I'm a freelance writer now.

I don't really know what I'm working towards with the freelance thing except that it could be the thing I'm supposed to be doing with my life. You know? I've gone through most of my life with varying levels of passion for things and they all seem to fizzle with time, and I went all the way through college not knowing what I wanted to do, and two years later still not knowing. But here I am with this new opportunity and god, the idea of working from home is extremely appealing. At the moment, I have to work around my other job which limits the jobs I can apply for since a lot of them want 24/7 availability.

I know I only just started (literally, signed up last month), and I'm going slow because there's no rush, but I got one job and I've got two potential on the table, so I'd say it's a good start. Here's hoping I'll be able to sustain something in the new year and maybe, just maybe, I'll find a way to do this full time and quit my crappy job. Woo!

until the sea drowned the sun

November is probably too far off for most people to be thinking about yet, but for me, this is prime time to think of November.

If you recall, November is National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo or just NaNo) in which doomed souls partake in the challenge to write a 50k word novel in 30 days or less. Until last week, I had no plots or even ideas, that is until I stole one... But don't worry! I stole it from my best friend with her permission. Originally, the idea had been for a fake movie meme that filtered through tumblr a few months ago in which you take a few celebrities, a song from shuffle, and make up a plot with these. It's quite fun.

So I stole it and am in the process of plotting out the novel. So far I've got about seven pages of character development but no plot... haha. Typical. Quelle surprise. But here, have the (newly redesigned) fake movie poster!

The coloring in the title got a little screwed up on here, but that's okay. So... when my novel is made into a movie guess who should play the title roles? Haha.

signs point to yes

My Magic 8 Ball sits on my shelf, the desolate shelf that I cleared last summer in preparation that I would actually do something when I got back from France. It sits there along with one framed picture of my childhood. The little blue die inside is slightly battered, white where it's hit the circular window over the years, always popping up to answer my question.

When I was younger, I'd ask, "Does so-and-so like me?" I can't say my questions have gotten much better over the years. This morning, I asked, "Will today be a good day?" Yesterday, I asked, "Will there be a lot of baths today?" The day before, I asked, "Will my schedule be changed again today?"

As a Freshman in high school, we had daily announcements by the principal and every day, he'd end with, "You can make it a great day or not... the choice is yours." The choice was mine. I never made that choice.

Nowadays, my Magic 8 Ball makes the choice for me. It tells me yes or no, a good day or not. If it tells me it can't make a decision, I shake it again. The poor, battered die. For years it has answered my questions, and for years, it has been right. Or perhaps it hasn't been. Perhaps it tells me, I believe it, and because I believe it, it's right.

Magic 8 Ball, you will always be right.

every night is like a revival.

Just the other day, I was lamenting yet again) about my current state of life, but I read blog today about twentysomethings and why we all feel so old. We feel old because we have expectations of where we should be at certain points in our lives, specifically in our twenties, and if we're not there, we feel a failure somehow, we feel old.

When I was younger and had a clear view of my life (I was going to be a veterinarian and own about 50 dogs), twenty-four seemed so very far away. I didn't know anyone who was twenty-four. Now I'm twenty-four and the oldest of all my immediate friends which is strange because as a child, I always got along much better with people older than me. There are times when the age differences are glaring to me, even if it's just a few years, and that makes me feel older than ever.

However, I had a brief shining moment of clarity today. It didn't last long, but I thought I'd share it while I still feel this way. It comes and goes, you see.

I am twenty-four, but in my twenty-four years, I've done things that a lot of people would never dream of: I moved to China with no knowledge of the language or what I was really getting into, I moved to France, I traveled to 13 countries, many by myself, I published a novel and wrote four more. I wrote four screenplays, and as bad as most of them are, who do you know who has?

As a kid, I was generally the odd one out. I had a few close friends but very little beyond that aside from acquaintances since it was a small town and I knew everyone in my grade since kindergarten. I loved animals and spent hours reading books and memorizing facts and generally being a huge nerd. Luckily for me, that wasn't unexpected in my town. The whole place was a little odd, and admittedly, I'm very glad we moved away.

The point is, I've never been normal. I've never had normal jobs or done normal things. The closest I came to normal was in college working at a restaurant, but I was promoted to student manager so it wasn't exactly normal again. Now I work at a dog kennel which I also did for two years in high school. My life isn't normal. Most people never think of doing that job because it's not fast food or retail, and sure, it's not going to get me much anywhere but it's more interesting than saying, "I cook hamburgers for a living."

I've always been okay being not normal which I guess means I have to accept that at twenty-four, whatever life goal I'm supposed to be hitting won't be happening. The youth really is wasted on the young.

I've been initiated

Got my first (well, second ever but whatever) dog bite yesterday. Currently hurts like hell if anything touches it and there's a lovely swelling bruise around where the lower incisor was. What sucks most is that it's on my forearm, so... quite visible and unfortunately a place that touches things a lot like the computer, my body, anything I lay it on. Hopefully it will go down by the time I have to work again. Boo.

on bathing dogs

What's the highest amount of dogs you've ever given a bath in one day? If you said zero or one, you're probably like most normal people out there. My number is twelve. Top that.

I don't mind bathing them, unless they try to bite me. Then it's not so enjoyable. My least favorite part is drying because it takes a long time, and if you don't know me, I'm not the most patient person and if things take too long, I speed them up or take shortcuts. Can't take shortcuts drying a dog. It's either dry or it's not and you have to keep going until it is.

The worst dog to bathe, you ask? Shepherds. They have a ton of hair and no matter how much you brush, there's still more to come off. I swear their owners never think of actually buying a brush and doing it themselves. There are these things called pet shops, and, gasp, they sell pet supplies such as brushes and nail clippers and shampoo. Yes, things other than food and toys. Hard to believe, I know.

I wonder how many I'll have to bathe tomorrow. Shall we try to break my new personal record? I'd rather not.

fill it with unleaded

When I was younger, I didn't think it was abnormal in any way to pull into a gas station and have an attendant come out and do the gas for you. I grew up thinking it was like that everywhere, and it wasn't until I was 12 and I went to D.C. that I realized it wasn't as normal as I thought.

In Oregon, you are not allowed to pump your own gas. When I moved to Arizona, I thought it was so strange having to do it yourself, and by the time I got my driver's license, I was sort of scared at the idea of doing it since I'd had so little experience.

Ten years later, I'm back living in Oregon and I find having someone pump my gas to be annoying and a pain sometimes. Unfortunately, it's one of those things you can't avoid. Oregon, I love you, but please, let me pump my own gas.

don't judge me

I just went through and re-formatted all my gifs to under 500kb so I can use them all on tumblr.

This is my life.

harry potter and the deathly hallows, part two (no spoilers here)

So I went to the midnight showing last night.

I don't know how to feel. I almost feel as if I haven't absorbed a single thing from the movie. Like, I know I saw it. I watched it, going from "OMG SO EXCITE" to, "ugh, they changed crap again." But it doesn't feel as if. I mean, I don't even know. I feel so lost.

Harry Potter is over.

It's so... sad. It's been the past twelve years of my life. I've grown up with Daniel, Rupert, and Emma, and I just. I can't believe it. I haven't absorbed it. Well.

Here's a video that says it better than I can.

The downfalls of employment

I've often wondered what it's like to enjoy your work. I guess I'll be waiting a while to find out.

Flashback about eight years to high school and I'm in exactly the same place. Sometimes it feels like I've come so far only to end up exactly where I started.

I'm not going to talk about my job per say, but I'd like to talk about the things I've learned over the years doing this type of work - I work in a dog boarding kennel currently (just got the job last week), and I worked in a kennel in high school as well. First off, let's get rid of those misinterpretations that working in a kennel is super fun and you just play with dogs all day. It's not and you don't.

Alas! Earwax.

The last post was about Harry Potter and being unemployed. This one is about writing and being unemployed. Two things that you'd think would go hand in hand, but alas do not.

This month is something new: Camp NaNoWriMo.

You may remember last November when I attempted to write a 50k word novel. Well, what happened was I got to 50k words and then stopped. Just plain stopped writing despite the fact that the plot was only a third of the way in. I don't know why I stopped exactly. I reached the dreaded "middle section" in which things have to actually get done. Plots have to advance, you can no longer describe characters in long-winded details, there have to be hopes and dreams and regrets. My characters seem to have those, but they're having problems actually making them into something.

So what is Camp NaNo? It's a spin-off of the original in November, this time set in the balmy summer months of July and August (if you should so choose) in which you attempt another 50k word noveling experience. I had the brilliant thought that I should use whatever motivation this would give me to actually finish last year's novel (which hasn't been looked at since December. I am ashamed).

Well, it's day three of July and for the first time in seven months, I actually typed something into that document. It's difficult getting back into the story and the characters after so long, not to mention I've been working on a screenplay for the last two weeks, and getting out of screenwriter mode is extremely difficult.

I suppose what I'm getting at here is that I'm procrastinating writing... by writing this blog. Seriously. Worst writer ever.

In other news, yesterday I dreamt about French cheeses. I am going crazy.

some people must think i'm really weird.

Since I've been home, I've basically been a lazy ass. It's really unavoidable, being unemployed and all. Let's remedy that at some point, kay?

In the meantime of the fruitless search for work, I fill my days with internets, writing, and I'm just getting around to starting to scrapbook last year. I ordered 800 prints of photos and am just waiting on the scrapbook pages to be delivered so I can put on The O.C. and have a marathon OC and scrapbooking week (last year it was Gilmore Girls and China photos).

In that spirit, yesterday I went and did this:

I'm sure you can tell what part of it is - my ticket when I saw Harry Potter last year, but it's sitting on top of a nice little square of the red carpet which I took from the Premiere of HPDH part one last November (FAMOUS PEOPLE WALKED ON THIS. lol). A forever momento of my geekdom of which I have absolutely no regrets.

[insert gif with chicken spinning on disco dance floor with text "I regret nothing."] or that would be there if I had that gif.

In less than a month, Harry Potter will be over. Well, not quite. We still have Pottermore to look forward to, and if it's anywhere near as awesome as I'm picturing in my head, it will be AWESOME. Pottermore, I will see you in October.

filtered particles

I have a thing for "squares of sunlight" in stories. The squares of sunlight that fall in through windows onto beige carpets where cats crawl into them and bask for hours as if there's nothing they'd rather be doing than lying there. I always write them in, the squares, not necessarily the cats, and I stopped to wonder why today.

When I was growing up, I lived on the Oregon coast, which anyone can tell you, does not get a lot of sun. It's known for being rainy and dark, cloudy and windy and cold. Our house faced north-south so on those rare occasions when it was sunny, it always started in my parent's bedroom on the east side of the house. As a child, I was convinced that Sunday was the day of sun because I can't remember a single rainy Sunday. I'm sure there were, there had to be given the location, but I can't recall a single one.

On those days, especially in the summer, sometimes my mom would be in her room sewing something (and uselessly trying to encourage me to be crafty in my own sense). Their room had this light yellow curtain on the east-facing window and the sun would always stream in in big, bright patches on the carpet (it was grey not beige, but who's counting. The beige comes from living in Arizona where sun was all too plentiful). All those mornings were lovely and have apparently ingrained themselves in my memory.

So when I write them into stories, I'm writing in a moment of happiness. It might be obvious, what with the sun being metaphorical for happiness, but it's really more than that. We haven't had many sunny days lately and I should add that I've never been a huge fan but I like the rare bursts of happiness it always seemed to bring.

I think I'll go write one into the story I'm working on, as this post was all just a huge procrastination on my part.

You know what I love about Amerrca?

Pink eyeliner.

And that everything is open on Sundays. On a related note, my birthday was yesterday. I just went up to Portland and did a little shopping and had lunch. So now I'm officially 24 and living at home. UGH. Can anyone say pathetique? GIVE ME A JOB. omg.

Munchin' in Munchen (Munich)

Continuing the late-posting of trips: Munich

For our little trip, we decided to go places none of us had been (although Mad had been to Munich before), but we thought, Germany? Awesome! And Munich? Even more awesome. Beer, pretzels, Bavaria. Could it get better?

We flew there since it was the same price as a train and would take about six hours less. Our first night, we saw the glockenspiel which is apparently the 2nd worst tourist attraction in Europe after the Astronomical Clock in Prague. It's the little dancing people around a clock that goes off three times a day - 11AM, 12PM, and 5PM. I don't know why five o'clock.

And where could we go on our first night in Germany but a beer hall?

There was delicious pretzels, sauerkraut (although I'm still not a big fan), potato dumplings (omg, I must learn how to make these), and crackle! We spent most of the three days we were there drinking different beers, eating pretzels, and wandering around downtown Munich. We also took a little jaunt out to the Olympic Park and saw the swimming pool which was pretty cool.

Munich is also well-known as the place that started it all - Hitler's ascent to power. He started in a beer hall which no longer exists, and ran his headquarters from Munich for a long time. All over Munich, there are subtle little reminders of the Nazis, erased but not totally erased. Like the little golden path down one side street that marks a form of Nazi resistance by the citizens.

A little outside the city lies Dachau, Germany's first and most important concentration camp. Walking in is surreal as it's surrounded by trees and twittering birds and you think to yourself, "this doesn't seem so bad," but then the guide points out that none of this was here back in the 30s and it was all desolate landscape. 

work sets you free

I suppose if you really want ambiance, go to Dachau on a rainy, dreary day. It was obnoxiously sunny and hot when we went. We drank away the sadness that night at Englisher Garten, a very large beer garden in a huge park.

Munich is also the birthplace of the Lesbian Jacket, which I don't feel the need to explain as it's sort of an inside joke and doesn't really make sense at all unless you were there. 

Munich was super cool and people drink at 9:30 in the morning. They're even worse than in France ;]

dancing the Viennese waltz

I've been so bad at updating since I got back to the states but I'm finally going to post about one of my trips: Vienna!

Vienna was in the middle of the whole trip so we'll skip the beginning and end for now and just pretend we dropped right into Vienna.

I'm not sure what I was expecting from Vienna, and there were several times where we thought that perhaps we should have done a touch more research before fumbling our way down there, but we were there and there was no excuse to do stuff.

During my whole two week sejour, the weather was beautifully sunny and at times, far too hot. This made Vienna an interesting place to be. I'd say there are about a hundred gardens in Vienna, and we spent a lot of time lazing around in them. There are also thousands of museums, but seeing as I'm not a big museum fan, it wasn't a big draw for me.

The city of Vienna is an interesting place. The city is rather large and spread out when you get down to it, but the center part is compact and mostly old palaces now converted in museums. The Hapsburgs were apparently a pretty big deal. It seems most of my history classes failed to mention them, though. Although, Marie-Antoinette was from Vienna (French connection! They're everywhere).

Vienna is also home to Austria's favorite composer(s): Strauss and Mozart, although Mozart is really from Salzburg, a story for another day. This basically means that there are statues of them around every corner. Strauss even has two while the original is under construction.

Vienna is also famous for coffee so we had to have a sit down in several cafes to try some. It also happened to be erdbeer season (aka strawberries) so I had this mountain of deliciousness:

Normally, I hate admitting that I'm a tourist, although I've gotten over this slightly in recent years (it's impossible to blend in in China, so you just have to give up), but I still like to draw the line somewhere. That line is usually those bus tours that you seem to find in every overly-touristy city. However, since I was not alone and we really had no idea what was in Vienna, I got talked into going. It was quite fun!

Notice our little foto-bomber driver in the background.

We saw all the major sights including a giant church in the middle of town, the Danube river which is blue but not as blue as the song leads you to believe, and lots of horse-drawn tourist carriages.

Highlights of Vienna:

1. The hot dog with cheese baked into the middle. Yummm.

2. European coca cola. So much better than others. Maybe because it comes in a glass bottle.

3. The crazy guy with a trumpet

4. Waiting five minutes for a segway tour to actually move so we could watch

5. Trying schnitzel finally and deciding it's totally not worth it

In conclusion! Vienna is cool but I think I prefer Munich. Perhaps I'll blog that next.

crazy trumpet guy.