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lauraanne_gilmanThere was, as it turns out, no writing done today. A lot of cleaning and furniture-rearranging, though. My windows were all open and the music was blasting and hey, it's either Spring at last, or it's going to snow all week. Who knows. Welcome to February.
To amuse you: I have discovered a drawback to the "note" function on my phone. The only way I've figured how to save it is to set it to 'remind' me. Which isn't a bad thing...except I am also a meerkat of little short-term memory. So when I get a notification this afternoon that reads "fine, call me a whore" my first thought was "WTF? Who did I piss off now?"
Then I remembered that was the start of the note I'd made yesterday, off a discussion of a UK newspaper calling romance writers whores. My phone was just reminding me I'd wanted to do something with that quote.
Much relieved.
More entertainment:
from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
neadods: Comment to this post and I will give you five subjects/things I associate with you. Then post this to your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.
My five:
New York City
Wine Maven
Foodie
International Travel
Publishing
New York City
I grew up in a bedroom community in NJ, which meant that the majority of adults went to work every morning in Manhattan, via train/bus, including my dad (and, eventually, my mom). I was wandering around the city with friends by the time I was 12, on my own by 14. I remember the Bad Old Days of garbage strikes, crack houses, and transit woes... and the highs of the Real Estate Boom and the Wall Street Years. Ups and downs, I thought there was no place more alive, more exciting, or more interesting. It was my emotional and spiritual hometown, and making it my actual physical hometown* at long last** was a dream come true. All of New York, but most especially Manhattan, from Inwood to the Seaport, West to East.
Countless museums, large and small. Boutique stores. Tiny little restaurants worth 4 stars that nobody's heard of yet. Central Park in all seasons. Multiple languages and multiple viewpoints and multiple cuisines, and fusions of all the preceding. Bryant Park at lunchtime. Broadway at 10pm on a summer night. The NYPL. The George Washington Bridge, which is one of the most beautiful things in the world to me. The subways that run 24/7. Murray's Cheese. Being able to walk everywhere. The pickle barrels you can still find on the Lower East Side, hidden under awnings with Chinese lettering and Hebrew inscriptions in the brickwork. The people, who are both brutal and kind, all at once.
That said, it's nowhere near perfect, and there are cities I love almost as much (Paris, for one). But it's home.
wine mavin
I prefer to think of myself as a wine nerd, because there is so very much I don't know yet -- a maven sounds like an expert: I just love the stuff. Although I worked in a wine store for a year, and had the opportunity to do more with that, I made the deliberate choice not to go pro -- one avocation-turned-job was enough for me.
So, a beloved hobby: white, red, rosé, sparkling and still... it all delights me. The color, the taste, the nose...and the amazing way it connects with food. And the social aspects -- wine is not a drink for solitary depression: to me it's family, and affection, and laughter, and companionship, even when I'm having a glass by myself. if I go into a cafe and order a glass, I will find someone to talk to; we seem drawn to each other, we serious wine drinkers.
And I am just as fascinated with the way grapes are grown as I am with the final product; finding someone find the right wine for them is as much enjoyment as a perfect glass for myself.
Out of all that came The Vineart War books, so I guess my two loves will forever be linked...
foodie
I was a picky eater as a child. Seriously -- there were so many things I wouldn't even consider putting on my plate, it's a wonder I didn't starve. My parents let me find my way, and eventually my curiosity led me to one food, and then another, and then I wanted to see what could be done if you added A + B... and I discovered I understood how flavors mixed and melded.
My fascination with wine started around the same time, and probably not by coincidence.
I now have a rule: every trip I take, I try something new. I may not like it, but at least I'll have had the experience, and I often come home with a new favorite, and whatever recipes I could badger out of the chef (my great failure was at L'Alabama down in St Maarten, where I could not convince the owner/chef to give me the recipe for his tropical chutney. I suspect I'd never be able to make it here, anyway, but OMG it was awesome.)
There are drawbacks, though -- when you love to cook and do it well, others have a tendency to let you do it all the time. Again, an avocation become a job -- or, in this case, a chore. I took a 2 year break from cooking anything other than basics, but have, thankfully, fully recovered. As evidenced by the curried lamb spring rolls I made today, just to see how they'd taste.
international travel
My dad once joked that they stole me as a child from gypsies. I have an incurable desire to see what's over the next hill, a fascination with discovery, and a willingness to just wander and see where the day leads me. Add to that a willingness to talk to anyone, my aforementioned enjoyment of new foods, and a cheerful admission that my country isn't the only one in the world, and I've never had a single bad experience outside US borders. Being willing to learn a few useful phrases of whatever the local language is has helped, too.
I think it's incredibly important to get outside your own comfort zone on a regular basis.
publishing
I come from a family with ties to the publishing world several generations back. I knew by the time I was 10 that I wanted to be a writer; by the time I was 14 I was already pretty sure I'd go into publishing, although I wasn't sure in what area. My first internship was at 19, my second at 20, my first job at 21. Never looked back.
It is, at best, a flawed industry. It's also a very simple one, at heart: get stories from writers to readers. Nobody gets into the field if they don't love books -- and if they do wander in by mistake, they don't last. I think that's the best thing you can say about an industry -- everyone's here for the like, if not the love.
* technically I'm in the Bronx, not Manhattan. But that was a question of finances -- and I'm a scant mile walk across the boro lines.
** I had wanted to move to Manhattan when I graduated college, but my then-SO refused to even consider it. He was and is a 'burbs boy.
To amuse you: I have discovered a drawback to the "note" function on my phone. The only way I've figured how to save it is to set it to 'remind' me. Which isn't a bad thing...except I am also a meerkat of little short-term memory. So when I get a notification this afternoon that reads "fine, call me a whore" my first thought was "WTF? Who did I piss off now?"
Then I remembered that was the start of the note I'd made yesterday, off a discussion of a UK newspaper calling romance writers whores. My phone was just reminding me I'd wanted to do something with that quote.
Much relieved.
More entertainment:
from
neadods: Comment to this post and I will give you five subjects/things I associate with you. Then post this to your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.My five:
New York City
Wine Maven
Foodie
International Travel
Publishing
New York City
I grew up in a bedroom community in NJ, which meant that the majority of adults went to work every morning in Manhattan, via train/bus, including my dad (and, eventually, my mom). I was wandering around the city with friends by the time I was 12, on my own by 14. I remember the Bad Old Days of garbage strikes, crack houses, and transit woes... and the highs of the Real Estate Boom and the Wall Street Years. Ups and downs, I thought there was no place more alive, more exciting, or more interesting. It was my emotional and spiritual hometown, and making it my actual physical hometown* at long last** was a dream come true. All of New York, but most especially Manhattan, from Inwood to the Seaport, West to East.
Countless museums, large and small. Boutique stores. Tiny little restaurants worth 4 stars that nobody's heard of yet. Central Park in all seasons. Multiple languages and multiple viewpoints and multiple cuisines, and fusions of all the preceding. Bryant Park at lunchtime. Broadway at 10pm on a summer night. The NYPL. The George Washington Bridge, which is one of the most beautiful things in the world to me. The subways that run 24/7. Murray's Cheese. Being able to walk everywhere. The pickle barrels you can still find on the Lower East Side, hidden under awnings with Chinese lettering and Hebrew inscriptions in the brickwork. The people, who are both brutal and kind, all at once.
That said, it's nowhere near perfect, and there are cities I love almost as much (Paris, for one). But it's home.
wine mavin
I prefer to think of myself as a wine nerd, because there is so very much I don't know yet -- a maven sounds like an expert: I just love the stuff. Although I worked in a wine store for a year, and had the opportunity to do more with that, I made the deliberate choice not to go pro -- one avocation-turned-job was enough for me.
So, a beloved hobby: white, red, rosé, sparkling and still... it all delights me. The color, the taste, the nose...and the amazing way it connects with food. And the social aspects -- wine is not a drink for solitary depression: to me it's family, and affection, and laughter, and companionship, even when I'm having a glass by myself. if I go into a cafe and order a glass, I will find someone to talk to; we seem drawn to each other, we serious wine drinkers.
And I am just as fascinated with the way grapes are grown as I am with the final product; finding someone find the right wine for them is as much enjoyment as a perfect glass for myself.
Out of all that came The Vineart War books, so I guess my two loves will forever be linked...
foodie
I was a picky eater as a child. Seriously -- there were so many things I wouldn't even consider putting on my plate, it's a wonder I didn't starve. My parents let me find my way, and eventually my curiosity led me to one food, and then another, and then I wanted to see what could be done if you added A + B... and I discovered I understood how flavors mixed and melded.
My fascination with wine started around the same time, and probably not by coincidence.
I now have a rule: every trip I take, I try something new. I may not like it, but at least I'll have had the experience, and I often come home with a new favorite, and whatever recipes I could badger out of the chef (my great failure was at L'Alabama down in St Maarten, where I could not convince the owner/chef to give me the recipe for his tropical chutney. I suspect I'd never be able to make it here, anyway, but OMG it was awesome.)
There are drawbacks, though -- when you love to cook and do it well, others have a tendency to let you do it all the time. Again, an avocation become a job -- or, in this case, a chore. I took a 2 year break from cooking anything other than basics, but have, thankfully, fully recovered. As evidenced by the curried lamb spring rolls I made today, just to see how they'd taste.
international travel
My dad once joked that they stole me as a child from gypsies. I have an incurable desire to see what's over the next hill, a fascination with discovery, and a willingness to just wander and see where the day leads me. Add to that a willingness to talk to anyone, my aforementioned enjoyment of new foods, and a cheerful admission that my country isn't the only one in the world, and I've never had a single bad experience outside US borders. Being willing to learn a few useful phrases of whatever the local language is has helped, too.
I think it's incredibly important to get outside your own comfort zone on a regular basis.
publishing
I come from a family with ties to the publishing world several generations back. I knew by the time I was 10 that I wanted to be a writer; by the time I was 14 I was already pretty sure I'd go into publishing, although I wasn't sure in what area. My first internship was at 19, my second at 20, my first job at 21. Never looked back.
It is, at best, a flawed industry. It's also a very simple one, at heart: get stories from writers to readers. Nobody gets into the field if they don't love books -- and if they do wander in by mistake, they don't last. I think that's the best thing you can say about an industry -- everyone's here for the like, if not the love.
* technically I'm in the Bronx, not Manhattan. But that was a question of finances -- and I'm a scant mile walk across the boro lines.
** I had wanted to move to Manhattan when I graduated college, but my then-SO refused to even consider it. He was and is a 'burbs boy.
