Rebecca Agiewich

2012-02-02T08:47:00.000-08:00

Greetings, Earthlings.

Me and mom in the old days

This has been a wacky fall and winter. I've been a bit under the weather and keeping a lower profile than usual. My mom was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer a year ago and it seemed to hit me all at once this past October.

First with a cold that never went away. Then the tension headaches that ate Manhattan. Oh and let's not forget the back injury I got working on my laptop IN BED (the most unglamorous injury ever) and also the knee injury earned backcountry skiing last April (a tad more respectable) that have kept me from hitting the snowy slopes and neon lights with as much fervor as I usually do.

Oh, poor me, right? Meanwhile my mom is going through chemo and losing her hair and having many awful symptoms, on top of worrying when this stupid cancer is going to kill her. She has always been so robust and active (like me) and now this monster has laid her low.

But not TOO low. Because since her diagnosis she quit her job, traveled to the Galapagos with my sister, and to Alaska with me (on the worst-weather-ever-but-at-least-the-boat-didn't-sink-cruise.) Soon she's headed to Hawaii and Russia.

Best news yet, her doctor told her this week she was in remission. Yes, remission! That was a word none of us expected to hear ever. Not that she's cured, her doctor sternly told her. This thing could rear its ugly head in another three months or another year. It will rear its ugly head again, says Dr. Oncologist.

But while the monster is in hibernation, she can take a break from chemo. Yay! She can get back the two weeks out of every month that she loses from being poisoned. Yay! Her eyelashes can grow back and food might taste normal again and she'll regain some of that vibrant energy that has made her such an unstoppable force for creativity and social justice and adventure all her life.

So that's what I've got for you.

Plus:

I'm speaking at the AWP conference in February (along with some staggeringly famous authors). Who-hoo, freezing Chicago, here I come!
I'm teaching an online blogging class for the Editorial Freelancer's Association starting Feb 15.
I just finished my first screenplay, called "Planet of the Ex-Boyfriends."

Ok, maybe "screenplay" is a stretch. It's a five-minute script. For my class at Experimental College called "Let's Make a Movie!"

Tonight we'll be voting on a script to make movie out of (anyone in the class can submit one) and I want mine to win! If it doesn't, it was hell of fun to write, which is more than I can say about a lot of things I've written recently.

Alaska, Eugene, and Other Fall Adventures

2011-11-13T18:10:00.000-08:00

Dave and Snuffy

Hello everyone and happy fall! This is my favorite season. There have been many beautiful autumn days here in October and November and while I haven't gotten up into the mountains to see the larch trees (grr) I have taken many nice bike rides.

Mom in Juneau, Alaska

One of those great bike rides was in Eugene, Oregon, where I was on assignment for a story about Oregon's designated scenic bikeways. Dave and I lived it up in the lap of luxury at the Campbell House Bed and Breakfast, then thoroughly enjoyed ourselves amidst fall splendor on a bike trail variously referred to as the Lake Dorena trail, the Covered Bridges trail, and the Row River Trail.

It's the newest of Oregon's designated scenic bikeways - so new that it's not even on the website yet but it will be soon. And it's well worth riding!

You'll get to read all about it when I write the article for OutdoorNW's special cycling edition in the spring. Speaking of OutdoorsNW, I recently took a part-time job there as an assistant editor, and it's an absolute blast. Check out the blog post I wrote for them about my August backpacking trip to the Cascades.

As for other fall adventures, there was the ill-fated Alaska cruise that I went on with my mom in September. The cruise (which started in Anchorage and went to Vancouver) got delayed for two days because of the weather, and the seas were so rough that we had to skip most of our ports of call. However, on the positive side we got to see some great fall colors there too when we weren't being tossed around on stormy seas and getting seasick. Above is a photo of my mom taking in the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, the one port that we did get to vist.

Late Summer Report

2011-08-19T10:23:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

Snuffy prepares for a day at the office

It's finally summer here in Seattle and about time - it's late August! Even though the sun has been reluctant to shine, I've still been quite restless, running around hither thither, and dipping my toe into all sorts of things.

Besides working hard at a new part-time editing job Geeksoft (I KNOW! I CAN'T ESCAPE THEM!) I've been leading trips for the Seattle Mountaineers, taking part in a new writing group, taking classes at Richard Hugo House, kayaking on various northwest bodies of water such as the Duwamish River and Deception Pass, attending writing workshops at Field's End, getting all sorts of writing, speaking, and teaching events lined up for the next few months, and working on a novel for kids 8-12

I'll be teaching my popular "Roughing It" class in the fall and this time I plan to write a rough draft in six weeks right along with my students.

And this weekend I'll be cleaning up horse poop as a volunteer for Hope for Horses! If you happened to catch my reading at Salon of Shame in 2006 or Cheap Wine and Poetry in 2009 you heard an excerpt from a novel I wrote in sixth grade about "the love between a girl and a horse" during which many melodramatic things happen including my protagonist falling off her beloved horse into a pit of rattlesnakes.
I was in love with horses when I was a girl and I still am. Alas, I just haven't had the funds to buy or ride one, much less board one somewhere (although Dave suggested we might have room in our 10' by to 10' storage locker). So I'm looking forward to some horse time this weekend.

That's all the news that's fit to print for now. Aurevoir and see you in the fall.

2011-06-16T12:17:00.000-07:00

Hello Darlings,
It's been a fab spring for publishing!

Besides getting published in Harbors Magazine and Modern Love Rejects (*with an essay that is about to be reprinted any second on the fabulous site Dating Diva Daily*) I've now published a story very dear to my heart on Literary Mama for their Father's Day edition.

This essay looks back at the formative years I spent backpacking with my family in the high Sierras. In particular it celebrates the way my dad threw himself into backpacking - dragging us along with him - after a major heart attack nearly killed him at 33.

I first wrote a version of this essay when I was about 11 years old. My parents - convinced I was a literary genius - sent it off to Backpacker Magazine, which promptly rejected it.

Then I took another stab at it in a college creative writing class with the the late great Leonard Michaels. That version had some damn good description in it if I do say so myself (Lenny's faint praise be damned):

"The most exciting part of the trip was glimpsing Wire Lake for the first time. It would appear in a sudden flash of silver through the trees. My dad usually offered a nickel to the first kid who saw it. Fifteen minutes later, we would come upon the lake in its entirety, sparkling blue and immense. Time would reduce its size and brilliance in my imagination, so that its beauty was always shocking."

Still, it was another 10 years before I dusted the thing off to try again: this time as an attempt to get published in a Seal Press anthology about father-daughter travel adventures. I never finished that version though I did come up with a good opening for it.

And finally, three more years after that, I dug it up, thought "that's a good opening!" and then polished it the rest of it to a fine sheen for a travel writing contest at Wanderlust and Lipstick.

Which I did not win! I did not even get an honorable mention! Hmmph. But in the end, that is not the important thing. The important thing is I finally (finally!) wrote the essay to my satisfaction, and now it has been published. Just in time for Father's Day.

Here's to you Dad - who taught me to love and feel comfortable in the mountains, so that they are now like a second home to me. I miss you very much but you are always there with me on the trail, in the meadows, on the peaks, and - most of all - on the peaceful alpine lakeshores as the sun goes down.

Happy Birthday to Me

2011-05-20T12:22:00.000-07:00

Greetings all. Late spring has finally arrived here in Seattle, meaning it's sunny (sort of), warm (sort of), and yet another birthday is about to roll around. (Yay! Cheering despite fears of creeping decrepitude!)

Besides the many lavish gifts I'm sure I'll receive from friends and family, one of the best is coming in the form of publication. Though I've published quite a few things over the years, never has something gotten published on my actual birthday.

The backstory: Five years ago, on the eve of the publication of BreakupBabe: A Novel , I attempted to get over my postpartum novel-writing depression by pouring my energies into an oh-so-witty and incisive essay about blogging and how it had blessed my writing life and cursed my love life. This was not just any essay, though. This essay would be published in "Modern Love" in the New York Times!

I slaved over this essay with Modern Love in my sights. I don't know why I wanted to be published in Modern Love so bad. I wasn't looking for an agent or a book deal - I already had one of those. I just wanted to. Since I was now a bonafide expert on writing about love, lust, and relationships, my writing (so I believed) was a natural fit for this most coveted of columns.

You know where this is going, right? My story got rejected. Oh, the hubris! I even turned down the chance to contribute an essay to Single State of the Union because I was working on this stupid, soon-to-be-rejected essay.

After picking up the pieces of my broken heart, I submitted the essay a few more places. Then I gave up. Because after all, this piece was written expressly for Modern Love. It didn't belong anywhere else, damn it!

So imagine my delight when a writer friend told me recently about a new website called "Modern Love Rejects," a site that publishes - well, just what it sounds like. I checked out the site and found out that I was in very good company indeed. Lots of good writers get rejected from Modern Love. Multiple times! Including the founders of the website, who are widely published journalists and authors both.

I also found out that the site doesn't publish just any reject essay: the editors have to like it and think it fits the "Modern Love" format. You also have to forward your rejection from the Modern Love editor to prove your claim that you actually submitted there.

Here's mine: "Dear Rebecca, I read your piece with interest, and it's nicely handled, but I'm afraid we've done a few 'blog' pieces, including one early on that had the writer starting the blog as a means to vent after a break up. Even though that was a while ago and yours heads in a different direction, it still feels a bit too close and familiar. But thanks for trying me."

I was therefore tickled pink when Modern Love Rejects not only accepted my essay but told me it was one of the nicest rejections they had ever seen from the Modern Love editor without it actually being an acceptance. Whoohoo!

So there you go. My favorite birthday present of the year (though more lavish gifts could roll in at any minute). Look for it on Monday, May 23rd!

Meanwhile, while I'm bragging about my own accomplishment, I do want to give a shout-out to two of my Seattle writer friends who actually did get published in Modern Love recently: Kathy Harding, who writes about finding love and getting pregnant when she least expected it, and Nicole Hardy, whose essay is called "Single, Female, Mormon, Alone."

Spring arrives with a crash

2011-04-13T16:34:00.000-07:00

Pre-collision skiing at Scottish Lakes

Happy spring!

A lot has happened since my last post, including smashing into a tree while skiing at one of my favorite places, Scottish Lakes High Camp. Luckily I walked away with only a minor knee sprain. It hurt like h*ll when it happened but it could have been a whole lot worse. So while I feel dumb (Hello! why did I not steer away from that stupid tree?) I also feel lucky.

Meanwhile, things have been going a little more smoothly in the writing world. Here's the latest:

*Two articles that I wrote came out in the spring issue of Harbors Magazine. Check out my Portfolio page to see them, or better yet, read the article about kayaking the southern Gulf Islands right now!

*Also I'm excited to announce that my essay, Once More to Wire Lake, is going to be published in Literary Mama's Father's Day Issue. I have literally been trying to write this essay since I was about 12 years old. This is my fourth version of it and I finally got it right. It's all about my family's adventures in the high Sierras when I was a wee lass, focusing particularly on my dad's motivation for bringing us there.

*For National Poetry Month, I recited one of my favorite poems for Richard Hugo House, which is posting a poem a day on YouTube for the month of April. The best part of it is that Snuffy, my oh-so-literary pug was part of the proceedings. Check out my video now, or look at Joe Lambert's Hugo House blog to see all of them!

*I'm hard at work on my novel for middle readers, and though it's going slowly (what else is new?) it is going!

*My spring Hugo House class, Roughing It: Write a Draft of Your Book in Six Weeks, is filled to the brim with eager writers ready for the masochistic challenge of writing a book-length manuscript in just over a month. I will be encouraging them with wine and chocolate. Thanks to student, and writer in his own right, Evan Peterson for the shout-out in his blog, Poemocracy.

March Madness

2011-03-05T13:12:00.000-08:00

My niece has clearly inherited my sense of style

Hello darlings. Hope you are weathering the weather out there.

Bad weather is always conducive to creativity for me, and I've been particularly productive during these late winter months. Here are a few things brewing.

First and foremost, my spring class at Richard Hugo House is now open for registration and it's already half full! Find out more on my classes page or go directly to the Hugo House class catalog and sign up for it there. It's called "Roughing It: Write a Draft of Your Book in Just Six Weeks."

I hope to be speaking again this fall at the Write on the Sound conference on the topic of blogging, this time with an all-star panel. Stay tuned!

I've really enjoyed the Novel Revision class I'm taking at Hugo House and highly recommend Joni Sensel as a teacher.

I've added a new element to my writing routine: doing fifteen minutes of free-writing every day in my notebook by hand. Author and writing teacher Priscilla Long convinced me of the importance of this in her great book, The Writer's Portable Mentor, and now it's a habit I can't live without.

I was thrilled recently to receive two comments on my blog that talked about how much my book had meant to people. Here they are:

"In January a friend and I took a trip to Chicago after my boyfriend of nearly 3 years broke up with me and in a used book store. I wasn't looking for anything in particular but stumbled upon breakup babe and read it in about a week. I couldn't put it down! Being that when I started to notice distance in my relationship I attempted to start a blog about it your book really hit a nerve with me! I loved it and it gave me so much hope for my future in dating and life in general. It made me laugh, made me cry, but most of all made me hopeful that what everyone is saying is true, time heals!! Thank you for your wonderful writing and sharing your story of love, loss, and being single." - posted by Sammie on 2/13

"I stumbled across your book in my public library and am so happy I did. I could not put it down as I could relate to it on many levels. So yes, four years later, it is still helping to mend broken hearts and put some things into perspective. Thank you for sharing and putting it out there. It is nice to know one is not alone in troubled times." - posted by A New Fan on 10/18

Thanks so much for your comments Sammie and "A New Fan!"

Funtastic February News

2011-02-02T17:42:00.000-08:00

Happy February all! Here are a few things that are shaking in my literary world lately:

Saw poet extraordinaire Kate Lebo read at Mary Schile's world-famous pie party
Am taking a class called Novel Revision from Joni Sensel at Richard Hugo House
Have two travel articles coming out in the spring issue of "Harbors" Magazine (the new inflight air magazine for Kenmore Air)
Am teaching a reprise of my popular class "Roughing It: Write a Draft of Your Book in Just Six Weeks" class at Hugo House this spring. It hasn't been formally announced yet but the class will be on Thursday nights starting on April 7.
Coached a writer on her suspensful entry for the Ninth Annual Speculative Fiction Contest (good luck, Karyn!)
Have been reading my friend and colleague Waverly Fitzgerald's book "Slow Time" and finding it both intriguing and practical.

Happy New Year and Happy New Blog!

2011-01-04T17:26:00.001-08:00

Yo peeps! I got a new blog! Undoubtedly every writer who uses Blogger is using this bookish template, but whatevs.

It's a new year, time for a new blog. Notice I've imported all the entries from SparklySparkly (RIP) for posterity. I still need to flesh this baby out with all the gadgets and whatnot but here it is for now.

*NEWS* *NEWS* *NEWS*
Uh, let's see.

In travel news, I made it back alive from Costa Rica. Had a lovely trip, complete with monkeys, toucans, sloths, poison dart frogs, and lingering stomach ailment. Went whitewater rafting, strolled through the rainforest canopy on suspension bridges strung hundreds of feet over rushing rivers, swam at the foot of waterfalls, and was awakened at dawn by howler monkeys starting their day.

Also ate lots of "casado," the typical Costa Rican dish of rice, beans, plantains, salad, and some protein or other. Drank lots of "Imperial" - one of five (or so) beers made in Costa Rica. We suffered through some torrential rain on the Carribbean coast but got in one very sunny day there which Dave and I spent strolling through the lovely Parque Nacional de Cahuita.

Photo courtesy of El Viajero Contento

It not only featured stunning white sand beaches but monkeys and sloths at close range plus lots of magnificent blue morpho butterflies.

Perhaps I'll write more about the trip shortly. Meanwhile, in writing news, I have a class coming up this spring at Hugo House - the ever-popular Roughing It: Write a Rough Draft of Your Book in Six Weeks. So stay tuned for details about that!

I also recently submitted an essay for a travel-writing contest at Wanderlust and Lipstick, a fun travel website geared towards the ladies. I dusted off an essay I'd started three years ago about my family's trips to the Sierras when I was a kid, in particular our annual backpacking trip to a place called Wire Lake. Here's how it begins:

It is half an hour into our first ever family backpacking trip and things are not going well. My little sister, age six, is crying. On top of her pack, her decrepit stuffed elephant Freddie bobs around with a little stuffing poking out of his pink, earless head.

“What’s the matter?” says my father, as if it isn’t obvious. Since leaving the trailhead, we have been hiking upwards at a suicidally steep angle with heavy packs on our shoulders. It is hot. It is dusty. On a normal Saturday, Erica and I would be living the high life: roller-skating, reading books, or watching Brady Bunch reruns. Now, inexplicably, we are being tortured...

A New YouTube Sensation is Discovered!

2010-12-04T15:07:00.000-08:00

I am getting ready to unveil a new blog.

Yes, I know, you are quivering with anticipating right about now! It's not really that exciting. I'm just going to rid of my "professional" Wordpress site and merge it with my personal blog. There's really not much difference between them except the professional site is BOORING.

Anyway, with me the personal is the professional. Whatever that means.

Now, on to news. There is none, really. Except that I "YouTubed" myself for the first time the other day and found something exciting. ("YouTubed" meaning I typed my own named into YouTube to see what came up).

It's a video showing the March 2009 installment of Cheap Wine and Poetry at Richard Hugo House (now Cheap Beer and Prose) during which yours truly gives a dyno-mite appearance! The whole video is worth watching if you're interested in Seattle's literary scene, but if you really must just see MY part the fast-forward to minute 3:32 to hear me being introduced; minute 3:56 if you must hear me right away!)

You don't get to hear much of my talk but you do get to see all the parts where people laughed the most! in this video I'm reading from BreakupBabe: A Novel, but I also read from two of my sixth grade novels that night, entitled "A Life to Love" and "Roxana's World." Maybe those will be on YouTube someday too!

Anyway, I just realized I am late for a pedicure. More soon.

xo

BreakupBabe lives on

2010-10-09T15:03:00.000-07:00

BreakupBabe at Half-Price Books

On a busy intersection in lower Queen Anne just now, around the corner from my condo, stood a guy in a hooded sweatshirt. Slung around his chest was tennis racket that he was "playing" like a guitar. "Air tennis racket" you might call it.

He had headphones on, and besides playing air tennis racket, he was also playing air flute, air drums, and other associated air-instruments.He was doing all this in the pouring rain.

I see this guy around Queen Anne all the time. At coffeshops, hanging out on benches, almost always listening to his headphones. Always puffing on a cigarette. Always alone.

He looks normal enough--even handsome in a shaggy, graying way, kind of like my arrogant old writing teacher Leonard Michaels (RIP Lenny, I wrote a novel IN SPITE OF YOU!) - but after seeing him a few times I realized that this guy was maybe just a little bit off.

Not that he ever did anything too strange or acted crazy, except for maybe muttering to himself on occasion. (I realized, at some point, that he lived in subsidized housing a couple blocks away from me.)

So when I saw him acting fully delusional today my heart broke. I thought: he's been holding it together and now he's lost it. He's not taking his meds. He took too many meds. But what do I know? Absolutely nothing, that's what.

On the other hand, on this gray, dreary, wet day part of me felt a little happy for him that he was so happy. Because he was. He looked blissed out and oblivious to anything else except the music he was pretending to make.

Still. What happens when the music ends?

In happier news, GalPal #3 and her husband "Henry" spotted - at their daughters' gymnastics meet - a woman hungrily devouring a novel called BreakupBabe. They fell upon her, regaling her with tales of how they are prominently featured in the book and how the novel was started in their house!

They didn't go so far as to offer their autographs but they might as well have for all the bragging they did. She told them she worked at "Empire Corporation" (ahem) and was going through a divorce, and a friend told her she knew just the book for her.

Now isn't that dandy that at four years old, BreakupBabe is still helping hearts mend? Why look, I even found a copy on the shelf at Half Price Books last week!

Snow in the Cascades, Sun in the Gulf Islands

2010-09-07T18:21:00.000-07:00

Fall colors in the forest

Fall made its shivery entrance into my bones this weekend by visiting SNOW upon me during my much-anticipated three-day backpacking trip to Horsehoe Basin in the Pasayten Wilderness.

No amount of layers or meditation ("You are lying on a sunny beach in Zihuatenejo, Mexico; it is 90 degrees. You are lying on a..etc etc".) could keep me warm in my super high-tech but NOT WARM ENOUGH, DAMN IT Big Agnes sleeping bag.

Dave and I both squeezed into my sleeping bag a couple times, which warmed me up but was ultimately unsustainable as a way to actually sleep. So he heroically let me sleep in his bag at six in the morning, and after I added a layer of rain pants on top of my soft-shell pants and long underwear; after I added another shirt underneath my polypro top, my fleece jacket, and my down jacket, then, and only then, did I warm up enough to fall asleep for two hours. (Let's not forget the two pairs of socks, two pairs of gloves, and two hats I was also wearing).

In Horseshoe Basin

So I hightailed it out of there after only one night - even though the trip was planned for three, and it's a five-hour drive to get there (well, seven hours if you take bad advice on which way to go, which I did on the way there!) But at least I did get to see the desolately beautiful Horseshoe Basin, high and mighty at 7000 feet, especially rugged as snow and wind alternated with sun.

Before that I had a nice bit of summer on Gabriola Island (in British Columbia), and then sea kayaking in the Gulf Islands with Gabriola Sea Kayaking. Naturally the weather was beautiful until the morning we were supposed to set off in our kayaks, when pouring rain and gale force winds delayed our launch. But then it cleared up nicely. I'll write a little more about that trip soon, when the sensations have fully returned to my limbs. For now, here is a photo or two.

Blackberry Point, Valdez Island

Of Mice and Madmen

2010-07-29T18:39:00.000-07:00

Well if it isn't one thing, it's another.

On my last wilderness trip a mouse caused a ruckus in the middle of the night.

This time there was a bonafide crazy (and/or drunk or drugged) person wandering round the tiny Mowich Lake campground (at Mt. Rainier) in the middle of the night with a large, silent dog. He would yell indecipherable but angry-sounding things, sing loudly, then disappear into the woods behind the campground with his dog to do who knows what.

Then he would go silent for a while only to re-emerge from the woods and walk back to the parking lot.

And we were all trapped there, about 40 of us, at the end of a 17-mile gravel road with no ranger in sight. Alas, Dave was not with me or I would have felt much safer. Why you should have seen the way Dave took charge and masterfully dispatched the mouse from our tent! I know he would have done the same with the crazy/drugged guy had that guy menaced me, which luckily he did not.

I heard him drive off around 1 a.m. and only then fell into a troubled sleep, feeling very vulnerable in my little tent with the rainfly off so I could see the moon, which shone like a spotlight all night long.

The trip - a day hike to glorious Spray Park - got better after that, if also more mosquito-ridden. The Mountain was out in all her glory, as were the glacier lilies, Indian paintbrush, and many other flowers I swear I will someday learn the name of.

In writing news, there is not much, except that I'm slowly, steadily working on the second draft of the children's novel I wrote last November. I imagine it should be finished in about 20 years.I'm also archiving, in PDF format, every damn thing I've ever written or published which is a rewarding project because it makes me realize - wow, I actually HAVE been a prolific writer in the past (even if I don't feel that way now).

The idea of doing an inventory of all my writing came via the brilliant writing teacher Priscilla Long, whose new book about writing I intend to purchase soon!

Also, my friend, colleague and writing coach Waverly Fitzgerald, wrote this provocative blog post about favorite children's book for the Hugo House blog that mentions me. I'M FAMOUS!

Blogger, You Rock

2010-07-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my new website!

Blogger has kindly evolved to the point where I can now use it as my professional site - having recently added static pages to their offerings, along with some lovely new templates. Yay Blogger!

And thanks to Super Brother in Law for hosting my site lo these last four years using Wordpress.org. Wordpress, you have your benefits, I know, but I have always been a Blogger fan - as those of you who take my blogging classes can attest.

Midnight Mouse Emergencies in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness

2010-07-12T14:45:00.000-07:00

A few updates from SparklyLand:

My poor pug Snuffy has only just recovered from all the explosive action around here on 4th of July. Next year he is going on DOGGIE TRANQUILIZERS.

Dave and I took a fabulous backpacking trip to Pratt Lake (left) in the the Alpine Lakes Wilderness over Independence Day weekend.

Highlights:

It took only 45 minutes to get to the trailhead from home. Yay, easy-to-acess Cascade Mountains!
Wildflowers abounded, misty and dew-laden, all along the lakeshore trail.
A mouse breached our tent in the middle of the night and Dave bravely chased it out while I cowered in my sleeping bag. (The mouse had apparently been pooping and enjoying various snacks in the tent for quite some time before it woke up Dave; I slept right through the ruckus. And yes, I KNOW you should never store food in your tent. I'm a professional hike leader, for crying out loud! I decline to discuss why the food was in our tent - suffice it to say, it will never happeng again. And thank God it wasn't a bear.)
It poured down rain most of the night but our tent kept us dry despite the hole the aforementioned mouse (nicknamed"Rhoda") put in it.

In other news, I'm continuing to work quite steadily on my next novel project, thanks to my great writing coach Waverly Fitzgerald. Yes, even writing coaches need writing coaches, didn't you know that?

Toodaloo for now.

Rebecca

Watch out, Michael Phelps!

2010-06-28T19:40:00.000-07:00

It's go-time at GLOWS 2010

This weekend I successfully completed the 1/2-mile course of Greenlake Open Water Swim. Yay me!

My major goal was to complete it without being rescued by "the boat of shame." My other goal was to come in under 25 minutes, which I also achieved. I finished the race in a blindingly fast 22 minutes and 57 seconds, and that included a lot-of time-wasting maneuvers in the water such as waiting around for the nearest lifeguard-on-a-paddleboard to catch up to me so I would never be farther than a few yards away from a lifeguard-on-a-paddleboard!

I also lolligagged at the finish line, looking behind me to see if I was the last one out of the lake, and lo and behold, I WAS NOT! There were at least five people behind me!

It was a nice-ish morning, sunny but cool. I wore a wetsuit, which is something I've never done before in all my local swimming adventures. At first I felt rather wussyish wearing one, but in the end I was glad I had it. It's intimidating enough swimming across a body of open water on a "Juneuary" day without having to deal with gasping for breath as you adjust to the water temperature.

There were all sorts of people doing the event - grandmothers and grandaughters, fathers and sons, musclebound triathletes, very unmusclebound people, and, me - jack of all sports, master of none.

I probably would have gone even blindingly faster if I hadn't forgotten my secret weapon - the Powerbar(R) Double Latte Gel. This little gel gave me turbopower for 20 whole minutes on a bike ride last week and I was counting on it to do the same as I kicked my competitor's butts in the lake. But alas, I forgot it in the excitement and had only a banana to fuel me across the stormy seas.

Actually, Greenlake is much mellower than Lake Washington, which is always churning with wind and boat wakes. Greenlake is placid and peaceful, though of course you can't see a anything as you're swimming across it except greenish-black murk.

I did, sadly, have to make sure there was a lifeguard near me at all times. And the few times when the closest lifeguard had to stop and help some poor soul who was even slower than me, I sorta freaked out and didn't know whether to keep going. In the end, I did, with the help from my mantra:

"If I can climb Mt. Rainier, I can swim across Greenlake. If I can climb Mt. Rainier...."

I was also trying to sing the song "All Down the Line" by the Rolling Stones in my head but it didn't work because I only know one line: "All down the li-ine...".

Next time I need to pick a song I actually know the words to.

Rain, rain, come back when I'm stuck inside and need to work

2010-06-24T19:15:00.000-07:00

I've had mucho fun outdoor adventures in June thus far, most of them in the RAIN.

Backpacking on the Olympic coast. Rain!

Biking in the Mount St. Helens blast zone. Rain!

Here's a lovely photo that shows what the Olympic coast looks like in the sunshine. Nice huh?

And next - a close up and personal view of Mt. St. Helens - not that I saw it when I did the "Tour de Blast!"

Actually despite wet and cold weather I had plenty of fun on both those adventures though I could have done without the wet shoes and socks, which are always demoralizing. (My shoes still smell nearly a week after that bike ride).

In other news I find myself employed by my favorite sugar daddy these days - you know the one. This, despite the fact that Bill Gates' security guard came out on the dock the other day when Dave and I paddled by in our kayak and gave us the evil eye!

If anyone looks UN-intimidating, it's gotta be me and Dave shuffling along in that big orange inflatable kayak going slower than anyone on Lake Washington. The only way we could have been less intimidating was if perhaps Snuffy (right) were sitting on the prow.

In writing news, I'm hard at work on the novel I wrote during NaNoWrimo 2009, and planning on teaching my all-time fave class at Richard Hugo House again this coming fall: Roughing It: Write a Draft of Your Book in Six Weeks. Stay tuned for details on that.

Meanwhile wish me luck as I attempt another possibly ill-fated venture this weekend: the Greenlake Open Water Swim. The thing is, I'm terrified of open water. I hate to be more than 10 feet away from anything I can hold on to. I'm also a little afraid of what bacteria might be swimming around in Greenlake but that's a lesser fear. At least I'm not afraid of a giant squid eating me like some people I know (hint: my sister).

xo
Rebecca

By my next birthday, I will be more organized

2010-05-25T09:29:00.000-07:00

What a wild and kahrazy birthday weekend!

Here are just a few elements it included, in no particular order.

Chocolate spice cake with whipped cream
Dancing at the Little Red Hen
Teaching two classes at Finding Your Readers in the 21st Century
Cleaning the kitchen floor on hands and knees
Eating a most delcious "French Dip" sandwich made of field roast at the Georgetown Liquor Company
Getting handcrafted birthday cards from my niece and nephew to "Ant Becky"
Strolling around the festive Ballard farmer's market

I also went to to two excellent classes at Finding Your Readers in the 21st Century and learned a lot. For example:

I give up way too easily with submitting my work. In the class taught by Priscilla Long, she said she submitted 300 times last year. (Out of those 300 submissions, she got 11 publications).
In the other class, teacher Wendy Call said she submitted her work 100 times.
Priscilla l suggested keeping an extensive inventory of everything you've ever written. She pointed out that very productive, famous artists have a habit of doing this, and that it's a way of "respecting" your own work.
Wendy tracks all her time down to the last minute and has very concrete writing goals that she sets at the beginning of each year.
She plans how she will meet these goals through every month of the year and spends 90 minutes every week just prioritizing to make sure she's on track with those goals.

Phew. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I learned, essentially, that I could be way more organized than I am. Of course I knew that already but it was nice to get some really concrete tips as to how to do it.

And now...on to the "earning a living" portion of my day.

Photo from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Cranberry Chicken revival

2010-05-21T10:19:00.000-07:00

Last night I made a chicken dish of my grandmother's. She made it for us all the time when we were kids. For a while it was my favorite dish of all.

When my seventh grade class was polled about our favorite foods, all the other students said "pizza."

I, on the other hand, would say "Cranberry Chicken!"

The recipe is a little...anacronistic. Here's what the famous cranberry sauce consists of:

-1 envelope dried onion soup
-1 can cranberry sauce
-1 bottle French dressing

You mix all those ingredients, then throw it on top of some chicken breasts and bake it for two hours (At 325, in case you were wondering - one hour covered, one hour uncovered). Then you throw a whole bunch of bow-tie noodles into the sauce when it's all done.

It did taste just like Bubby used to make it. And for two hours my kitchen smelled just like ours used to when she cooked for our family and took care of my sister and me (as she often did). Those smells brought back good memories.

But my modern-day palate has gotten a little jaded. The dish tasted good, but a definite queasiness lingered after I ate it. So I don't think I'll be making it again. (Sorry, bubby).

Her brisket recipe, however, is a classic. It's delicious, and similarly 1950s-ish yet not quite so...um...French dressing-y. I'll be sure to share that recipe in the future, as the brisket time of year approaches.

An oldie but goodie from my tortured twenties

2010-05-19T14:10:00.000-07:00

1. In honor of Mimi Smartypants, who, I am happy to see is still blogging after all these years, I am doing today's entry as a numbered list.

2. Pity the poor Hugo House conference attendees who will be attending my classes at Saturday's conference because I have just taught myself how to use animations and sound in Power Point! (Loud sound clip of extended applause here).

3. I forget.

4. This morning, awash in nostalgia, I hunted down the lyrics for a song I wrote in my twenties with galpal Karen S during our brief tenure as a "band" called The Underwear Stains (We never actually performed. Or wrote any other songs. Or played instruments). Herewith I present it to you, published for the FIRST TIME!

Boys in Torn Leather Jackets
[chorus]Boys in torn leather jackets
Want you to think they’ve been around
Turn your life into a cliché
Don’t want you to tie them down

Always drunk or stoned at night
Watching Star Trek when you come over
You’re too real, he just can’t deal
He’s his own one true lover

Ohhhh...

[chorus]Boys in torn leather jackets
Just wanna play guitar, wanna get stoned
Boys in torn leather jackets
Wanna get laid and left alone

No skin broken, just his jacket
But he says he’s been hurt before
Just an excuse to make excuses
So why does it make you want him more…

[chorus] Boys in torn leather jackets
Want you to think they’ve been around
Turn your life into a cliché
Don’t want you to tie them down

[Insert another loud sound clip of extended applause here plus flashing animation of stadium crowd going wild].

5. The end.

Wandering among the ancient lakes

2010-05-17T09:46:00.000-07:00

I realize that it is Blog-Every-Day-Month and I haven't blogged for four whole days.

I was backpacking for two of those days without any Internet access but never mind the excuses. I'll tell you about my trip instead.

We went to the Ancient Lakes and Dusty Lakes area (nearest town: Quincy, Washington). There we wandered among tiny lakes in a sagebrush-scented area sculpted by ancient volcanoes.

This is a landscape you couldn't find in lush, rainy, Western Washington. It was pure desert - filled with coulees, striking basalt columns of rock, endless sunshine, and very little shade. Plus rattlesnakes, naturellement. And raptors, who soared above the jagged rock in lazy circles.

I haven't felt that much warmth since I was in Mexico in January. It was so hot, in fact, that a few of us jumped in Dusty Lake (pictured to the left), despite the rumor that these waters are tainted with irrigation runoff. (People fish there, and eat the fish, so water can't be that contaminated, right?)

We did carry in all our own water, just in case - no easy feat. But worth it to spend time in this sun-dazzled, geological wonderland so different from my urban, rainy home. And to feel like I was experiencing actual summer, complete with a symphony of singing bugs and birds in the warm night air.

Anyway, now it's back to the real world after the sunshine and peace of eastern Washington. I start a new editing project today, which is a good thing for ye olde wallet. But it also means I must go groom myself presently. So toodaloo!

Rebecca

Off to the hills

2010-05-12T22:17:00.000-07:00

I waited until too late in the day to blog and now my mind is blank. Abosolutely devoid of the slightest bit of creativity. Nada. Zilch.

So, instead, here is a photo the Ancient Lakes area, where I'll be leading a backpacking trip this weekend. It's in Central Washington, where it's all dry, and desert-y, and oh-so-different than lush green Western Washington. I hope to see lots of wildflowers. The only bummer about this hike is you have to pack in all your water because these lovely lakes are tainted by irrigation run-off.

On the bright side, the hike is flat. And short. So maybe ten pounds of water won't be so bad.

These photos are from 2008. I don't expect it's changed much. Except this time I'm going earlier in the year so hopefully it will be cooler and there will be even more flowers than last time.

In that picture there is Mary Rohlman, also a hike leader for the Seattle Mountaineers. She has a great Web site with tons of photos of all the Northwest hikes she does. You can definitely get some ideas from her about where to go hiking in Washington.

Oh, and just for fun, here's a picture of me and my sister backpacking in the good old days. Bet you can't guess which one of us is which.

Hint: I am the more stylish one.

Celebrity obsessed author hard at work

2010-05-11T09:09:00.000-07:00

I clearly have an obsession with celebrity.

For one, my favorite Web site is Go Fug Yourself. Next, since BreakupBabe, I've written drafts or partial drafts of at least six other novels, and four of those are celebrity-themed in some way.

There is, for example, the story of two adolescent girls and best friends who are in a rock band together. The experience, naturally, tests the limit of their friendship (2006). There's the one about the woman who has a son with a guy who later becomes a famous rock star and the rock star comes back to meet his son fifteen years later (though the son has no idea who is father is) (2008).

Oh yes, and let's not forget the one about the barista with the cute stoner musician boyfriend who become an "accidental" celebrity when she stars in an ad campaign put on by her mega-Starbucks-like coffee (2007).

There's more where that came from too.

As you can see I've been quite busy since the publication of my roman a clef. It's not like I've stopped writing or anything. Au contraire.

It's just that...well...I can't explain how my own writing process works. One of these days the right celebrity-themed story will come along again, and so will the right way to tell it - as long as I keep sitting myself in this chair day after day.

If not, I will just have to console myself with being another Harper Lee or Ralph Ellison or other such genius who produced only one perfect book in their career. Wink wink. (I am winking so you understand that I understand that To Kill a Mockingbird will, of course, never quite compare to the sweep and literary perfection of BreakupBabe.)

Anyhow, I know I missed Day 10 of Blog Every Day Month and for that I profusely apologize to all two of you who might be keeping track.

Happy birthday BB!

I just realized we're coming up on BreakupBabe: A Novel's fourth birthday. A celebration of some sort is in order I think! Hmm...what should it be? It needs be special for my only child and should definitely involve hot but inappropriate guys. (HBIBs).

I'll have to see what I can come up with. Maybe a party in which we get all Breakup Babe's HBIBs together. Silent But Deadly Boy, Alt Country Boy, Indie Rock Dad, Cute Train Boy, The Charming Canadian, The Doctor, The Propagandist...(and so many more).

Where are they all now, I wonder? At least four of the above are married now. At least two of the married ones have kids, or so I hear.

But I'm sure they look back with fondness from their diaper-filled domestic bliss on their days as Breakup Babe's muse. When the music played, the good times rolled, the cocktails were drunk.

And, of course, when the secret blog entries were written: celebrating their commitment-phobia, mocking their manhood, drooling over their dashing good looks...and so on.

Day 8 sees me wondering if I really should be blogging every day

2010-05-09T20:55:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year when flowers are blooming everywhere and people are going crazy in their gardens. Even moi, who has not had a garden in eight years joined the hordes of people at Home Depot yesterday.

There I bought window boxes to hang on the railing of my teeny-tiny deck. It is not actually a deck because it is so small and there is probably some technical term for a teeny-tiny deck but I do not know what it is so I will just call it a teeny-tiny deck

Anyway, last time I had a garden I lived with You-Know-Who. I had a lovely container garden that I cherished and fawned over. Then when things went haywire between us, I went to stay elsewhere for a while and he let my flowers die. That's when my heart really broke.

I wrote about it very eloquently (IMHO) on Breakup Babe, and since I am all out of ideas for *fresh* things to write, I'll recycle that flowery prose here. I'm realizing belatedly, that I should write something about my mother, it being mother's day and all, but maybe I'll do that later this week. Mom will understand.

SCRATCH THAT. I cannot seem to find that erstwhile entry in my cobwebbed-covered Breakup Babe archives.

Now I've really failed to produce a worthwhile blog entry but at least I've produced something, which maybe, in this case, is NOT better than nothing.

xo
Rebecca

Breakup Babe in illustrious company

2010-05-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

The Victory Review - an online magazine about the Seattle acoustic music scene - featured an article a a few months ago that mentioned my Breakup Babe blog.

The article is called "I Can't Stand the Rain, " and it's all about artists and musicians who've been inspired by the rain. Here Breakup Babe and I are mentioned in such illustrious company as Janis Joplin, Gary Snyder, and Glenn Gould.

We were very flattered!

This article was written by my old coworker Hank Davis, with whom I shared one of those windowless cells at ye olde Empire Corporation. See what Hank had to say below and definitely and check out his article too! It's fun to see how he weaves all his thoughts about music and the rain together. His mention of BB a tiny part of a much longer piece.

A pair of contrasting rainy days from 2005 and 2006 turn up on the "Breakup Babe" blog. For a brief while, I shared a cramped writer's room at a software company with blogger and author Rebecca Agiewich, who converted her blog into the popular book Breakup Babe. (No one quite so earnest as a hungry writer with literary aspirations and a Web site.) She likes the rain:

Wednesday, March 16, 2005 (5:33 PM)

[Rebecca] It rained. Finally! ...Do you remember the days that playing in the rain was just something you did? Running around with your friends, splashing through the gutters, getting as wet as can be? Without a care for what it might do to your hair, your clothes...

On the other hand, the rain doesn't always like her. When she heard Australian country singer Kasey Chambers sing that the rain was useful for washing away tears, this happened:

Wednesday, October 25, 2006 (8:58 AM)

[Rebecca] All through this overly sunny week, the Kasey Chambers song "On a Bad Day" has been running through my head:

Every time my tears

have ever fallen

I've kept 'em in my pocket

for a rainy day.

So when it's pouring

I take them outside

I let the rain start washing

my tears away.

[Rebecca] Then it poured down rain yesterday and instead of

washing all my tears away, it just got me really, really wet

Day 7 of Blog Every Day Month a a bit slow. Yawn.

2010-05-07T18:38:00.000-07:00

So it's Blog Every Day Month and I am out of things to stay.

So without further ado check out one of my favorite videos. Don't worry it's only about five seconds long. And no, this is not my pug, though he is equally dramatic. (Be sure to have your sound on; it's the music that makes this video).

This video apparently has a long and distinguished history; it hails from the even more famous Dramatic Chipmunk,which I will not subject you to. (But which is worth watching in moments of boredom.)

The jailbird and the hummingbird

2010-05-06T14:30:00.000-07:00

I was out walking the dog a while ago on my peaceful urban street. I'd noticed two police cars on the street as we walked to the park, and then forgot about them.

But as we sauntered home, I saw a cop leading a guy in handcuffs to one of the cruisers. Neither of them spoke a word.

Without meaning to, I caught a good glimpse of the handcuffed man. He was youngish and white, with a scruffy beard and a baseball cap. Unremarkable looking.

Except for his expression. Fear and regret wrote themselves all over his pale face and wide-open eyes. He looked doomed.

It struck me that I'd never seen anyone get arrested before except on television. It's much more jarring in real life, on a tranquil street, when just a moment before you'd been enjoying a shady park where a grandfather fed his little granddaughter with tender care.

I felt so sad, suddenly, for that guy, even if he had done something bad. So sorry for whatever hard circumstances in his life led to him this humiliating and frightening moment.

Just after the cop car pulled away, a flash of green caught my eye. I saw a hummingbird hovering over a nearby bush. I'd never seen a hummingbird in the neighborhood either. The bird flitted about, shimmering and free.

And suddenly I felt even worse for the poor doomed guy in the cop car, and for all of us who are held by shackles of any kind.

I watched the hummingbird for just a few seconds before it disappeared, upward into the lightening sky.

What does it say about me that...

2010-05-05T15:49:00.000-07:00

...despite being an obsessive reader, that I have never mastered the art of using a bookmark?

Sure, sometimes I turn the corner of the page down (if I'm not reading a library book, which I often am).

Most often though I waste valuable minutes trying to find my place even though the simple act of using a bookmark would save me this agony.

There is some parallel with my life here but I am not quite caffeinated enough to articulate it.

In other news, I recently met Ray Pompon, with whom I'll be speaking at Richard Hugo House's upcoming writer's conference.

He did a very cool, inspiring thing, which was to take a novel he'd written and turn it into a well-written, page-turner of a web comic - basically teaching himself to draw in the process. Check out his site!

OK back to the business of making a living, which today involves writing gazillions of blurbs about watches.

xo
Rebecca

Computer problems and snoring pugs

2010-05-04T08:17:00.000-07:00

Oops. It's Blog-Every-Day Month and I forgot to blog yesterday.

I have an excuse, which is that I was having computer problems last night. My $%(ing laptop, sole source of all my income, wouldn't charge.

(This is after spending way to much on a power cable for it a couple months ago AND getting it a pricey"check-up" at Office Depot.)

Time to bring it back to PC Doctor, that rather disreputable-looking little place under a brothel on Aurora Way with the nerdy tech who talks endlessly.

Pug Alarm Clock
In other scintillating news, here's how my morning has gone so far:

6:20 a.m. - Dog starts caterwauling in his crate because he wants to get out / have breakfast / come on our bed.

6:30 - I give up on the hope that he'll stop the racket. I get up, give him breakfast, and put him on the bed.

6:33 - The dog commences to groom himself vociferously, with much smacking of lips.

6:40- Dog stops grooming himself and walks over me to the side of the bed, where he lies down in the six inches of space between me and the edge. He will fall off if I make the slightest movement. I pick up up and put him back in the middle of the bed.

6:45 - Repeat.

6:50 - I have momentarily dropped off to sleep when dog starts licking his lips loudly. Then he rolls around enthusiastically on his back.

6:57 - After dog at last quiets down, I make heroic effort to go back to sleep. Try not to dwell on the million things I have to do and the fact that I really should have gotten up at 6:20 when he woke me up in the first place.

7:00 - Drop off to sleep.

7:01 - Dog starts snoring loudly.

7:05 - Dog is still snoring.

7:09 - Dog is still snoring.

7:10 - Get up.

So there you have it. A morning in the life of a spoiled pug owner.

P.S. I recently watched On the Waterfront for the first time in my life. Whoa - what a great movie! If only I could come up with a plot like that. You know how, with some older movies, you immediately feel their age when you start watching them? Not so with this one. The story and the characters instantly grip you. I didn't even notice it was in black and white until close to the end.

Yours truly,
Rebecca "Two Thumbs Up" Agiewich

Happy New Backpack Day

2010-05-02T21:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I bought a new backpack.

This was momentous because it is the first new backpack I've had in 15 years. It's also the first one I bought without my dad's direct input. Last time around, he informed me that I should buy the Osprey Isis (after researching it extensively in various outdoor magazines), and took me to Marmot Mountain Works, where he supervised while I tried it on.

I insisted it "leaned to the left" but he didn't believe me. "It fits you perfectly," he said.

He was wrong. It never fit right. But I bought it anyway and have doggedly used it for the last 15 years, bringing memories of my dad with my each time. In fact, that's the very pack I'm wearing in my profile picture to the right, where I'm smiling on the High Divide trail in the Olympics. (That pack got to see a lot of great stuff before it retired).

He bought me the Arc'Teryx daypack I own too - more than 10 years ago. I love that pack and use constantly, even though a buckle is broken and it probably weighs at least three more pounds than all the new packs out their on the market.

So yesterday I took a big step in buying my own pack. I did no research, whatsoever, of course, except to ask my friend Fredd (who works for REI) which pack to buy. He recommended the REI XT, which didn't fit me quite right. After twenty more minutes, I'd tried on two more packs and decided on the Gregory Jade (pictured above).

Hopefully the new pack will be more comfortable than the old one. But it certainly won't be as special as that old Osprey.

Day 1 of Blog Every Day Month

2010-05-01T14:02:00.000-07:00

Since I decreed May to be Blog-Every-Day-Month, here I go.

May is also the month of my birth, did you know that? One the one hand, I love my birthday and start talking about it months beforehand so that those around me can start planning wonderful surprises and gifts.

Then again, the rapid rate at which my age is increasing is frightening.

Then AGAIN, I am no older than Jennifer Aniston and Halle Berry and they're looking pretty good, don't you think?

But enough about me.

If you ever get in a self-pitying mood about, silly things how old you are and maybe how your arms aren't quite as toned as Jennifer Aniston's, then check out the movie War Dance. It wil simultaneously break your heart and uplift it like any good piece of art should.

Oh - there is another birthday this month! On May 5, two years ago, I adopted my pug, Snuffy. I don't know his actual birthday of course, but May 5 is the day he began his new life, bringing much flatulence and joy into my life.

Happy birthday Snuffy!

xo,
Rebecca

May is Blog-Every-Day Month

2010-04-28T21:48:00.000-07:00

You know what? I miss blogging.

Once upon a time, I blogged with great regularity. It was such a revelation at the time, too. After years of struggling to get published only here and there, all of a sudden I could publish EVERY DAY if I wanted to.

With the click of a mouse, I had actual readers. And you know the rest of the story.

I will always love the Internet for the way it helped me recover from my broken heart AND become a ~~famous, bestselling,~~ published novelist.

I don't think I'm quite done with ye olde Internet either. I miss having readers that I talk to on a regular basis. (Although I did recently publish this article on MSNBC - did you see it?)

So, just for one, I hereby dub May to be "Blog Every Day Month." Maybe, just maybe, by blogging every day, I'll discover my Next Big Topic.

Or maybe I'll just bore you to tears.

In other news, I'm going to be talking at a conference at Richard Hugo House next month called Finding Your Readers in the 21st Century; get the details here! I'll be talking about -- what else? -- blogging.

P.S.- Did you know you can download BreakupBabe onto your Kindle? Yeah, you CAN! And naturally you should. BreakupBabe began life in the digital world; it's very fitting that you read about her that way too.

P.P.S. - Last night while teaching my class "Hot Chicks of 19th and 20th Century Lit," I had the very pleasant revelation that I am a direct descendant (writing-wise) of Dorothy Parker. Have you ever read A Telephone Call? I recommend you do that right now via that there link. And tell me that Rachel, aka BreakupBabe, is not part of a lineage of utterly neurotic female characters, pioneered, in part, by the brilliant Mrs. Parker.

Funny, I did that A Telephone Call as a monologue in my 7th grade drama contest, long before I had any idea what it meant to sit by the phone waiting for a telephone call from some guy who never called you! I'm sure I could do it much better now.

Toodaloo.

Rebecca

Hail to the garage attendant guy

2010-03-23T16:38:00.000-07:00

Currently I have a contract job at an office in downtown Bellevue.

The view is spectacular from my cubicle - on a sunny day (which most are lately) I can see the Olympics, Puget Sound, and downtown Seattle.

The view in the garage, however, where I lock up my bike, is not so good. Nonetheless there's a garage attendant who, every day, stations himself at the exit on the second level, and waves goodbye to every single person leaving the building.

At first I thought he was crazy and avoided looking at him, even though, naturally he waved and yelled out a friendly farewell to me too. It took me a while to figure out what he was saying to me, but now I know.

"I'm so proud of you! You're so strong!" he says to me as I unlock my bike. "Goodbye!"

Now instead of avoiding his gaze, I look forward to his enthusiastic salutation. This guy not only makes me feel good about myself, but he's also the living embodiment of a Good Attitude. He's happy. His happiness radiates out and affects us jaded souls who have trouble maintaining our Good Attitude even though we work on the 11th floor and feast our eyes on mountains and ocean all day long.

Thank you enthusiastic garage attendant guy, for giving me a little (a lot) of perspective.

Reading is Sexy

2010-03-18T14:17:00.000-07:00

I like that Hugo House promoted my upcoming class under the heading Reading is Sexy.

"And finally, there’s Hot Chicks of 19th and 20th Century Lit. The name says it all, but in case you’re wondering who teacher Rebecca Agiewich considers a hot lit chick, try Eudora Welty, Willa Cather, Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers. Can I get some love for Edith Wharton too? "

I don't know about you, but I never go to bed without a book.

2010-01-20T16:55:00.000-08:00

Bleh. I am in a post-vacation funkaroo. After five sun- and fun-filled days in Mexico, I now have a cold and too much work to do.

Plus I have to start cooking for myself again.

While staying on Eric and Valerie's boat in La Paz, we were treated like royalty - eating fresh Mexican food prepared by Valerie every day, including (but not limited to): fish tacos, tamales, grilled shrimp, tostadas, tropical fruit salad, homemade guacamole, and margaritas.

Lots of margaritas.

Besides eat and drink, all we did was sleep, read, swim, snorkel, sail, watch movies, and hike on deserted beaches.

And now my brain is expected work?

Ha ha.

Since there are no cute pictures of me in a bathing suit or mixing a margarita (sorry Teahouse Blossom!), I instead give you Dave enjoying a margarita (on the wave-lashed Pacific), along with some other photogenic moments.

2010 Starts with a Bang

2010-01-09T13:12:00.000-08:00

Happy 2010 everybody! The year has started off with five extra pounds and a lot of work flowing in. Whoohoo!

But work will just have to wait, because on Tuesday, we're off to visit Eric and Valerie in their yacht in La Paz, Mexico (the place where Loser was once bitten by a sea lion, ha ha).

I'm trying to lose those pounds, naturally, so as to look good in the bathing suit I'll be wearing 24/7. Dave is busy figuring out how to create a margarita-mixing station that he can attach to a snorkel.

Seriously though. It has been too long since I've had a sunny vacation. And I think I deserve it after the financially precarious slog that was 2009. Oh wait, I guess I did go biking in Finland. And kayaking and skiing in British Columbia. And backpacking in the Cascades. And mountain biking in Eastern Washington. But never mind about that.

(As you can see in the photo above, I was backpacking practically before I could walk. Back then, apparently, I actually managed to look stylish in the process.)

I need a REAL vacation. Like the kind where you get tan and snorkel with sea creatures! And stay with your long-lost friends on their yacht! After that I have a packed-full Hugo House class to look forward to, in which I will propel 15 eager students toward the goal of writing a draft of a book in six weeks.

Plus a blogging class in March and a whole bunch of other stuff that I can't think about now because it's time to go buy some sunblock and unearth my summer clothing. After January 19th, however, I'll return to the realities of a Seattle winter and start working in earnest.

Things I Have Done in November: A List

2009-12-04T13:13:00.000-08:00

I will have you know that I have already put three whole holiday gifts in the mail, which is very organized, don't you think?

I also completed a novel for National Novel Writing Month while tackling a high-stress, all-consuming editing project.

Additionally, I watched many episodes of Big Love. There's just something about immersing yourselves in the trials and tribulations of a polygamist family that's a good antidote to stress.

I taught a day-long blogging workshop at Richard Hugo House, one of my favorite places in all the world. It was a good class but it made me I realize I prefer longer classes where I get to know my students. (Speaking of which I have one coming up in January, so check my web site for more info!)

This week, for the first time, I also met the high-school students that I'll be co-leading to Morocco this summer. That really energized me after being cooped up in my condo for a month with my gassy but adorable pug (posing above with his special commemorative pillow) editing until I was cross-eyed, and indulging in too much polygamist soap opera. They seem like an amazing and accomplished group of kids and I think I will learn so much by being involved with them, and with this project.

And last but not least on this *spine-tingling* list, I went on the first ski of the season at our old favorite haunt, the Cabin Creek Sno-Park.

We had the exhilarating little ups and downs mostly to ourselves since no one else was out there on the day after Thanksgiving. It was very satisfying when Dave wiped out trying to pass me on a hill; I only wish we had a video if it.

In the good old days, we always skied there with our dear friends Eric and Valerie, who recently sailed off to the southern hempishere on their boat (along with their intrepid cat, Miette).

Sailing all the way from Seattle to La Paz, Mexico, they've braved huge swells, storms, broken sails, and whales that actually attacked a boat in their regatta on the way from San Diego to Baja! You can read about their adventures here.

Meanwhile I'm trying to be patient until my own next big adventure...and trying to remember that LIFE ITSELF is an adventure even if it's feeling dull because I haven't been to a foreign country in FOUR WHOLE MONTHS.

Ahem. Have I convinced you yet?

Happy National Novel Writing Month!

2009-11-02T14:47:00.000-08:00

Darlings! I hope you had a fabulous Halloween!

I an on Day 2 of National Novel Writing Month and keeping up the pace so far. It will be tricky as the month wears on and I start a new job. But I'll take that as it comes!

If I can write a novel on the beach in Mexico, like I did during 2007 Nanowrimo, I can do anything. (Because believe me, it's not easy to write in a lounge chair in the tropical sun with a Corona in your hand. It's much easier in a cafe in rainy Seattle when you're hopped up on caffeine and surrounded by depressed, pasty people).

I'm writing a brand new story that I can't tell you about quite yet but have tender hopes for. Meanwhile I have various personal and travel essays in the hopper which I hope you will see someday soon. Once someone realizes what a GENIUS I am and publishes them.

This is one of those periods, folks, where I just try to keep the faith. Yes, it feels like forever since I was last published. Yes, I endure horrible fits of jealousy over writer friends who seem more prolific (and profitable) than I. I question my career path all the time. Yet every single day (almost) I write. And I beat down the stupid voices that tell me I'm a loser and ask me why I bother and tell me to just give it up already and take a job where I might actually get a paycheck.

So! To all you writers out there who might be despairing: fine. Go ahead and despair. For a little while. Then start over again tomorrow with a strong cup of coffee. And tell the voices to shut the eff up while you get to work, even if its only for 10 minutes. Or just keep working anyway even if they DON'T shut up.

Because, believe me, they will haunty at you for as long as you let them. And look at it this way: at least you're not being forced to wear a male stripper costume like my justifiably angry pug Snuffy up there.

Or - and here's a novel idea - take one of my upcoming classes! Then we'll laugh and suffer together.

Happy November.

Rebecca

Fall Foliage and Circus Dreams

2009-10-16T09:45:00.000-07:00

Hello from underemployment land!

Things are getting a little kah-razy around here what with the lack of regular employment lo these last many months. This economy, however, is forcing me to open my eyes wide to all kinds of possibilities, that, in my laziness, I hadn't considered before.

Why in the old days, I could shoot off a mediocre resume into cyberspace and I'd have a high-paying job instantly. Usually with my fleshy old sugar daddy, Geeksoft.

Nowadays even Daddy Geeksoft doesn't want me! So for the first time in years I've really been looking around at what's out there (Food services worker with the Ringling Brothers Circus! Language instruction coordinator with the FBI!) and thinking about what I might actually do for a living (until my book *bursts* onto the bestseller list or I finally crank out another one, which I'm working on, don't worry, it's just taking a while OKAY?!!).

And you know, it's kind of refreshing to see the wide world of jobs out there! And to imagine myself doing something other than that mind-numbing work I've done for the last ten years to support myself. Even if all the ones that appeal to me are abysmally low-paying. But, like I always say: "Do What You Love and The Money Will Drain out of Your Bank Account."

I've also been - gasp - actually working on my resume for the first time in years. I mean, of course I revise it all the time, but I haven't really WORKED on it for a long-ass time, if you know what I mean. Because I haven't had to! It's been so easy up til now.

And though it practically killed me at first (I wouldn't have survived the process if it weren't for a gargantuan maple bar from Top Pot Doughnuts), the revisions have actually made me see MYSELF as a better employment prospect.

Why did you know I received an AWARD from Amazon.com from my creativity and initiative during those brief months that I was incarcerated there? Yes I did, thank you very much and I forgotten about that until I put it in my snazzy new resume!

(I am also getting much help from a career coach, who I highly recommend if you are in the market).

Anyway, enough job-related drivel. I got some classes coming up, yo, that you might be interested in. Check them out here!

I've also been getting out and about in the mountains and spent a gorgeous two days up in the Cascades FREEZING MY A*S off a week ago. The foliage was splendiferous, the views were poetic (see photo above), and the temperatures dropped to FIFTEEN DEGREES during the night.

I was prepared with a warm sleeping bag but still had to put on every layer I had with me when I went to sleep (at 7:45 p.m.), including:

long underwear bottoms
down pants
two long underwear tops
fleece shirt
down jacket
gloves
two pairs of wool socks
wool hat UNDERNEATH a fleece balaclava that was cinched around my entire face (nose included)
chemical heat packs on my hands and chest

I'm probably forgetting something but you get the picture. With all that I was STILL kinda cold. Not to mention I pitched my tent at such an angle that my head was pointed seriously downhill most of the night, which, along with the cold, made for many disturbing dreams.

At least when you're battling the elements you're not thinking about your stupid resume, your credit card balance, and whether or not it's a good idea to run off with the circus (as a food service worker).

xo
Rebecca

Self-Pitying Rant du Jour

2009-09-09T14:35:00.000-07:00

Grr. Only with the help of a very strong latte on (top of two cups of strong drip coffee) have I been able to dig up my usual optimism today.

Let's just say there has been more than the usual amount of rejection lately, what with getting FIRED from my last band and getting SHUT DOWN by ye olde Geeksoft for a job for which I was way overqualified and only sort of wanted anyway, and by the way paid utter CRAP.

(P.S. Yes, that's my pug Snuffy. When you work at home, you take a lot of pictures of your pug wearing glasses.)

Oh, and the band? Let's call them "The Old White Guys" cause that's what they are - especially now without the younger, perkier additions of me, Dave, and the drummer, who also got fired because we "couldn't put music first in our lives." Seriously, everyone in that band is like 60+ and playing tired old classic rock covers. I AM MEANT FOR BETTER THINGS!!

So it's true, I was stretched way too thin and not putting any time into the music, even though I wanted to. Thus my rock star career is currently on hiatus as I do a little soul searching but never mind. I SHALL RISE AGAIN. SO EFF YOU OLD WHITE GUYS AND GEEKSOFT. JUST YOU WAIT.

There. I feel so much better. With another five lattes, I might feel even better.

SAY. You'll indulge me for a minute if I point you to an article about me and my book from 2006, when I was briefly FAMOUS. I just discovered in my so-called "files" the hard copy of an article from King County Journal that is no longer available online, and was thrilled to see myself not only a giant photo of myself on the cover of a pullout section of the but also to see a giant photo of myself on top of Mt. Rainier on the inside. Yay, me! Those were the days.

And, to top it all off (no pun intended), it was much bigger than the photo of Hannah Montana, who was the subject of the next article. Ha ha ha hahhahah. EFF YOU HANNAH MONTANA.

I just scanned this sucker and put it on my web site so that we can relive 2006 in all its glory! Enjoy! (But be warned. It's a PDF. You'll read it anyway. WON'T you?)

Getting Religion in the Goat Rocks Wilderness

2009-08-20T17:11:00.000-07:00

Ugh. I have just moved. That's right, moved. Back to the condo in Queen Anne from whence I came.

I won't bore you with the details of why we moved out of our lovely Greenlake rental back to the condo I own, which is a great size for one person (and one small dog). We'll just have to see if Dave and I can apply the living-together skills we learned in the two-bedroom house with the huge-ass basement to the 650-square foot one bedroom condo with one tiny storage locker.

Luckily, nothing was thrown during this move. (See the previous blog entry for details on last year's throwing incident). Or not really, anyway. Late last week I did throw an ear of corn. And while it wasn't directly move-related I think it the fit of pique in which I threw it (oh the shame!) was related to stress brought on by the move.

Anyway, moving on. (Get it? MOVING on?) Last weekend, because of course, I had no PACKING to do or anything, I took a backpacking trip to the Goat Rocks Wilderness area south of Mount Rainier. And Oh! My! It was a high-altitude world filled with wildflower-washed meadows.

I've posted a few of my (amateurish) pictures here for your enjoyment. Let's just say that going to the mountains is never a mistake, even if you're up to your eyeballs in stressful sh*t to do. Especially this little corner of the Cascades. Unless, of course, you make get lost, die of hypothermia, or fall off a cliff.

Rebecca

Return from Vacation Alive - Check!

2009-08-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

I am back from a week of paddling in the Canadian wild! Tan, ~~rested, raring to go.~~ We kayaked for five days in 80-degree weather: lounging on white sand beaches, paddling protected aqua waters, drinking red wine from our beachfront campsites while watching the sun go down.

Oh, there was mouse poop and banana slugs and snakes, but compared to last summer's Alaskan grizzlies, they didn't disturb me at all. Starfish and sea lions were our main animal companions on this sun-dazzled journey in the Broken Group Islands off west Vancouver Island.

We did, however, have on exciting wildlife encounter. Here's a snippet from an article I'm writing about it; you'll just have to wait until it gets published to read it all! (And if you haven't ready my article about last year's Alaska paddle, you can download it in PDF format here).

I’d just put down my book and pulled my sleeping bag around me when a loud noise broke the silence of our coastal campsite. Crash! Snort!Indeterminate rustlings!

“What the--?” Dave sat up straight. He peered out into the night through the door of our tent but his headlamp didn’t make a dent in the blackness. My mind groped at possibilities. My heart launched into a rock and roll beat. Deer? Wolf? Escaped prisoner in a murderous rage? Bear?

Now it's back to the grind (granted my "grind" is rather slow these days) but also to the dreaded MOVE. Yes Dave and I are moving back to my condo in Queen Anne for long, boring reasons I shall not go into.

Just pray for us, that's all I can say. Hope that there is not a repeat of our dramatic meltdown of the last year's move, which involved me topless and sobbing in a heat wave throwing bottles of household cleaner at Dave. (Although if there is a repeat this year, we really hope to catch it on video).

xo, Rebecca

The Summer Sun Has Made Me Loopy

2009-07-10T17:36:00.000-07:00

Greetings Earthlings!

I have been most busy being underemployed and enjoying Seattle's precious summer months in our beautiful Olympics and Cascade Mountains where I enjoy taking bad photos of wildlfowers and wandering knife-edged ridges.

Oh yes, sometimes summer bothers the h*ll out of me with all its demanding sunshine but lately I LIKE it. Maybe because Dave's mom has a house on Lake Washington and I get to lounge on the grassy beach watching the yachts go by, pretending like I'm rich and famous even though I'm a downwardly mobile professional, albeit one with a cleaning lady.

Or maybe it's because I'm currently not lonely and therefore not in one of my melancholy states of mind which is not to say I'm MENTALLY WELL-ADUSTED because then what kind of writer would I be? (Underneath that dorky "Seattle Sombrero" lies a tortured mind. I swear it.) But moving on...

Coming right up on Monday night at 5:30 p.m. is my long-awaited class at the Seattle Public Library called "Blogging for Beginners."

If you never saw me play the part of Helena in a "Midsummer Night's Dream" (sixth grade); if you didn't catch my small but pivotal role as the Russian duchess in "You Can't Take It With You" (eighth grade) if you failed to wintess my small but pivotal role as Amaryllis in "The Music Man" (senior year of high school) or God forbid failed to see any one of my million piano recitals when I was a kid or my rock debut at the Crossroads Mall or my on my SMASHINGLY SUCCESSFUL west coast book tour (all except for Bellingham, where no one laughed, and San Franciso where hardly anyone showed up, and - oh never mind), NOW IS YOUR CHANCE!

Or maybe you'd rather go have a pomegranate mojito at El Chupacabra on Greenwood. Cause if you did I would *totally* understand.

Monday Monday

2009-06-22T17:01:00.000-07:00

Hello hello from work-at-home-never-leave-the-house-don't-talk-to-anyone-but-the-dog-land.

Things are peachy keen here! I'm getting supremely buffed by doing the workouts in Kathy Kaehler's Celebrity Workouts: How to Get a Hollywood Body in Just 30 Minutes a Day, which also does not require me to leave the house! OK, maybe "supremely buffed" is an exaggeration. "Slightly worked" might be more apt or "a teeny-tiny bit of defintion which I'm probably imagining" is more likely.

You can be the judge when I don my swimsuit for the Greenlake Open Water Swim next weekend! Oh hell. Maybe I'll do the Greenlake Open Water Swim. You know I have a fear of giant squid, even in freshwater lakes. No wait, that's Li'l Sis! Ha ha. She still manages to be a much better swimmer than than me, even though I beat her in that one impromptu swim race in Hawaii (not that I still gloat about that 10 years later). There are other things to be afraid of in Greenlake, like children's pee and goose poop. So we shall see.

It would actually require me to leave the house and "interface" with other people so I don't know if that will work. I have everything I need at home, like tofu, coffee, an Internet connection, and several Canon cameras circa 1980 that I can't bring myself to get rid of. Plus, of course, Yogi "Classic India Spice" tea. C'mon, buy some! I'll get like two cents if you do!

Just kidding. I get out a lot. I even went to a birthday party and band practice; led a hike at Mt. Rainier National Park, and went to a Mexican restaurant this weekend, where I drank a ridiculously huge margarita. (See, there I am at left in the mountains, fooling an unsuspecting member of the Mountaineers into thinking I am capable of reading a map, etc..)

On this gray Monday, however, it's back to the grind. Just me and the dog doing our celebrity workouts, drinking Classic India Spice tea, and simultaneously being annoyed and fascinated by stupid Twitter. Oh yeah - looking for a job too! (In case the unemployment office asks.)

A Walk in the Woods

2009-06-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

Phew! I've been out of the blogosphere for a while, having spent last week taking a bunch of 7th graders into the wilderness. Yes, I know, very Lord of the Flies.

But in fact these kids were all sweet, well-adjusted, kind, friendly, and helpful to each other. There was nary an awkward teen among the bunch. No exclusionary cliques or power-mongering "popular" people out to destroy the "nerds." Oh, sure, they were fond of throwing rocks the size of coconuts and dancing around with their pocket knives in hand, and they often spilled dinner on the ground when cooking it (then threw it back into the pot, because after all, we had to eat).

Yet overall I was quite impressed with their group dynamics. They all go to a very small private middle school in Seattle, and I tell you, their seeming well-adjustedness was enough to make me want to send my future (hypothetical) kids to private school after being a lifelong, die-hard believer in public schools.

Anyway. It's all part of my plan to move into lower- and lower-paying work, which is going quite nicely, thank you very much.

"This is so much better than school!" yelled one kid as he plunged into the icy, sparkling Skokomish River on a 90-degree day after hiking for five hours. Insert the phrase "sitting in a windowless office doing work that makes me despise myself even though it pays a lot (though not as much as it used to)" for "school" and you have my sentiments exactly.

The Great Finnish Adventure, Part II

2009-05-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

...Continued from last week

All right, I know you're wondering whether I made it out of the Turku Archipelago alive. But guess what? I did!! So, without further delay, the second installment.

Day 4, continued. When I arrive in the town of Turku I meet my second couchsurfing host, tall blonde Thomas, who kindly greets me at the train station. Next I venture into the center of Turku proper, where the only truly touristy thing I do is go to the grand 13th-century Turku Cathedral. Then I wander around the Turku Public Library, initially looking for Internet access but getting drawn in by how sparkling and hip the library is. Eventually I end up at the Turku Art Museum high on a hill, a stunning old building with a big photograph of a naked woman outside it advertising the latest exhibit (see photo below). I drink a glass of Hungarian wine in the hushed and relaxing museum cafe. (At left above: Turku public library)

The rest of the day speeds by; I meet with friendly Dafna from Saaritours who helps me plan my bike trip and arranges everything for me. Thomas and I eat dinner at a funky, delicious restaurant called Kerttu; I shop for supplies for my bike trip (1. bread 2. cheese 3. chocolate); then walk back to Thomas's place with a blister that's grown to half the size of my foot (thank God I'll be mostly biking, not walking, the next few days).

Day 5. At last I am on my rented bicyclette! I pedal out of Turku on a super-duper bike path that makes me feel as if I never want to bike in the U.S. again. I am doing part of what's known as the "Archipelago Ring Route," which takes you over several of the 20,000-some islands in the Turku Archipelago via a combination of bridges and ferries. Unfortunately it's early season so many of the ferries aren't running yet. Instead of doing a loop as cyclists normally do, I am doing an out and back route. But hey, it beats sitting at home in Seattle where it's undoubtedly raining. (Um, it's raining here too on this particular day but never mind that).

My first destination is the island of Nauvo, some 45 or so kilometers away. At first the scenery is dull and urban with a few too many cars. But when I take the ferry from the island of Pargas to the island of Nauvo, suddenly I am out in the country, surrounded by the placid Baltic sea and empty(ish) roads.

The ferry is nothing like the monstrosities we have here in Washington state that holds hundreds of cars and passengers. No, this bright yellow raft-like vehicle carries only about three cars and me. We scurry across the water in about 10 minutes. I'm glad it's sunny by this time because there's no place to go inside. Everyone stays in their cars and I stand by my bike. (At right, the ferry from a distance).

Because I fail to consult my map I end up riding almost 10 kilometers too far when I am already exhausted. Luckily a road sign confuses me and I take out the map to puzzle over it. I realize I've gone too far and missed the turnoff for my guesthouse. But just exactly where is it? (The map I have is somewhat less than stellar. Combine that with my less than stellar navigation skills and I have no idea where the h*ll I am.) Thank God for cell phones. In Finland, they actually work everywhere because that's all anyone uses.

A few calls and everything is cleared up. I backtrack, turn off the main road and find myself pedaling along incredibly tranquil roads. Leafy. Sun-dappled. With calm bays and red cottages around every corner. Finally I reach my lodging in a "town" called Gyttja. If you can call a few houses, one guesthouse, and a jetty a "town." (At left, the Gyttja guesthouse.)

To be continued! (I know, the tension is unbearable, isn't it?)

Fun Times in Finland

2009-05-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

I know you're all *dying* to know just exactly what happened in Finland. You haven't been able to eat or sleep wondering what the hell did she actually do there? How did she survive? Was it dark all the time? And how much cheese did she really eat?

You know, like in the old days when you were on the edge of your seat waiting to hear about my next date with The Doctor or Silent But Deadly Boy or (pick a random silly nickname here). Only now you want to hear the blow-by-blow about my travels through a far-flung country you know nothing about. Well here you have the first half of my ABSOLUTELY AMAZING ADVENTURE (TM). Stay tuned for the rest.

Day 1. Arrive in Helsinki to sunny skies. Utilize amazing, easy-to-use transportation system to whisk myself to the city; meet my couchsurfing host #1, Hilkka, who lives in an apartment just outside the city center.Together we have "evening tea:" that is, bread, meat, and lots of cheese. The sun stays out til 10:30.

Day 2. After a breakfast of dark, delicious Finnish bread, meat, and lots of cheese, meet up with my long-lost friend GalPal #1 and family in Helsinki in crisp, clear weather. We stroll the "Esplanadi," where the outdoor cafes are full and summer is in the air. Jet lag hits full force around 3 in the afternoon. Too bad there's still eight more hours of daylight.

Day 3. Fueled by a breakfast of bread, meat, and lots of cheese, do more sightseeing

in sunny Helsinki, including dining at the outdoor market (with the Baltic sea a few feet away), strolling around the "Kauppatori" (fish market), and visiting the quiet neighborhood of Katajanokka Island, the centerpiece of which is an elaborate Russian orthodox church that sits like a giant ocher confection on a hill overlooking the city.

Day 4. A morning meal of bread, meat, and lots of cheese propel me to the train station where I say goodbye to Hilkka and board a train for Turku, the oldest town in Finland. I am very impressed by the high-tech, spacious bathrooms on the train, so unlike the small stinky stalls one finds on Amtrak. As the rather bland scenery speeds by, I am mentally preparing my four day solo bike trek through the wild and wooly "Turku archipelago" with its thousands of islands.

Will I be able to navigate all by myself or will I end up living on some remote Finnish island because I get so irrevocably lost I can't make it back?

Will there be food to eat besides Baltic herring and (of course) cheese? Will it be as horrible as American food is in out-of-the-way places?

What if I get chased by a moose?

Tune in next time to find out about high adventure in the Turku archipelago!

TO BE CONTINUED

Welcome Home to Me!

2009-05-06T09:03:00.000-07:00

When would a person such as moi have 1)gotten up 2)walked the dog 3)drank an overly large Peet's coffee, and 4)scribbled pages of caffeinated notes for various articles, all by 9 a.m.?

Or, even better, already have gone to a Nordstrom Rack sale and spent $150 on clothing by 10 a.m.?

When one is jet-lagged of course! Never mind the crankiness that befalls me when I have to return to daily life after a trip. Even the shortest getaway brings on this malaise, so you can imagine what it's like returning from Europe and facing my jobless future in an exhausted state.

Like I said, never mind. We'll let my poor boyfriend bear the brunt of that. I'll just say for now that my trip was full of sun and adventure and bad coffee (but at least there was a lot of it.)

I "couchsurfed" with strangers who were warm and generous; biked across Finnish countryside so tranquil that it was, at times creepy; and ate far, far too much cheese.

I left determined to come back with a career "strategy" but came back only with high cholesterol, More later, when I am coherent. For now, these few pictures can tell the tale.

Sandal Season!

2009-04-20T12:31:00.000-07:00

Last week I got my first pedicure in ages and just in time -- it's sandal season! Well, almost. Just because we are having a few sunny days here in Seattle doesn't mean that it's not going back to rainy cold nastiness. It undoubtedly will.

But I did actually take my sandals out of "winter storage" for the first time to show off my sparkly pink toes to the world. They were previously hideous due to a variety of deformities and broken toenails caused by ski boots and God knows what else. I could never quite achieve Inner Peace in Yoga class because I was always looking enviously at everyone else's toenails, hoping they weren't looking at mine.

In other news, I am sort-of-frantically preparing for my upcoming trip to Finland. I now have total of three couches to sleep, on due to my active membership in Couchsurfing.com: the generous Hilkka, Caizu, and Thomas. Why I've gotten so into it that Dave and I are even offering ourselves up as hosts now! (As long as our guests don't mind a lot of dog hair and few screaming fights with household cleaning products flying through the air.* )

And back to sandals...I have not yet decided whether to bring a pair to Finland with me, where the weather is promising to be 50 degrees and sort-of-actually-sunny. If I do, should I bring my "dressy" sandals so as to show off aforementioned sparkly pink toes, or my "sport" sandals to bring with my on my mini bike tour through the Aland Islands?

It will be one of those tough, last-minute calls. I am especially fond of the new Tevas I bought last year, the Karnali Wraptors (which they claim shows off your pedicure but most decidedly do not!) As usual I bought quickly with no previous research, for my trip to Alaska.

Had I actually been researching, I might have watched this video about Keen sandals from my pal Webtogs, who have a series of helpful videos about outdoor gear on YouTube. Since I will shortly be in the market for new hiking boots, I'm hoping they'll have a video about that soon. I imagine they will since they offer a lot of walking boots on their site.

So, back to vacation. If I don't chat with you again before my departure on April 24, perhaps we will speak again from the frozen north (even more frozen than Seattle).

[*OK, household products only flew through the air once, when we were in the midst of moving, when one can totally justify having a mini-nervous breakdown.]

Hail hail the IRS!

2009-04-08T17:14:00.000-07:00

At least I am making an honest living these days. Except I am not actually making a living but never mind that for now.

This week I am working my a*s off (writing, teaching) and earning every one of the few pennies that I make. Whereas whenever I go to work for - well, you know who, I have so many names for the giant, bloated behmoth to the east - I am rolling in dough while hardly having to lift a finger.

I can't decide which I like better. Or worse. Or whatever. I do know I'm grateful to have work - any work! - and I like feeling honest rather than like some corporate slug.

Yet, would it not be for ye olde IRS refunding me a bunch of moola this month (Thank God for deductions! That kayak - yeah, a business expense! Trip to Alaska - deduct) I would not have enough to pay my bills in April nor for my upcoming trip to *Finland* where I will be crashing on the couches of friendly Finlandians via the rather impressive site Couchsurfing.com.

Anyway, I really don't have time to talk to you right now so goodbye.

xo
Rebecca (currently clad in dog-haired covered fleece, a stocking cap, and Tevas, thoroughly grateful that the paparazzi is not stalking her anymore because God, she looks awful)

Snow-o-Rama

2009-04-01T09:38:00.000-07:00

This weekend I was not exactly at my sparkling best. For one, I was *supposed* to go backcountry skiing on Saturday. Then I bailed because of "winter storm warnings," etc. And because when I woke up in the middle of the night, rain was falling in Biblical proportions.

These are perfectly good excuses not to go outdoors. But I know myself better than that. I know that if I do not get out in the mountains at least once a week that my outlook on life gets extremely grim.

I secretly hoped everyone else would cancel. That weather would turn them around. That they would arrive at their destination and be so miserable that they gave up in despair.

But this was not the case. They all had fun! While I, on the other hand, stayed home and got increasingly agitated, getting everyone else (dog, boyfriend) increasingly agitated along with me so that a massive fight broke out by 8 p.m.

So I made a choice. The next day I blew off all other responsibilities and went skiing. The weather wasn’t much better. It was snowing the whole time. All the slopes were a big slab waiting to avalanche so we just skied along a road. But, Glory Halleleleujah, I got my exercise and my dose of UV rays and a few mountain views and I was golden.

I stayed toasty dry in my jaunty blue Marmot Oracle jacket (pictured above). I am one of the least gear-savvy outdoor freaks around but I do know this: if your jacket doesn't keep you dry, you're doomed.

This video from British company Webtogs actually taught me a lot about rain shells that I didn't know -- for example, that all these years I've been buying "membrane" jackets as opposed to "coated" jackets - and that Gore-tex is a type of membrane. The cute outdoorsy British dude mentions Berghaus jackets (a Euro brand) as an example of a good membrane jacket but I'll stick with my Marmot, thanks very much!

And I’ll be sure to get out it in next weekend, or else.

Viva la Cheap Wine and Poetry

2009-03-27T14:28:00.000-07:00

Last night was the first time I ever appeared at--and went to--Richard Hugo House's Cheap Wine and Poetry series (brainchild of brilliant Brian McGuigan) and all I have to say is this:

Get there early next time!

The place was packed. Not a seat was to be had by 7:05 p.m., five minutes after it was supposed to start. I have never seen Hugo House so full of people having a good time. Thanks mostly to the recession-busting $1 glasses of wine and free admission.

Sure, we readers were talented too. And funny! I knew from the moment wisecracking Nicole Hardy stepped on the stage that I could not afford to be any less than endearingly hilarious.

So I read two selections from "BreakupBabe" that got lots of laughs from the cheap-wine-lubricated crowed, and selections from two earlier novels called "We Shall Never Part" and "A Life to Love."

Never heard of them? That's because I wrote them in sixth grade--during which time I actually produced three novels in the space of a single school year. (The third, "Roxana's World" was simply too depressing to read from, since the protagonist's mother dies and the girl is shipped off to an orphanage and then an insane asylum, where she dies a raving lunatic. Yeah. I was all melodramatic like that back then.)

Those went over well, especially the "A Life to Love," which is about a girl who gets in a horrible horseback riding accident in which she gets bucked off a wild filly and then bitten by a swarm of rattlesnakes. She thinks she will never walk, much less ride again, but she survives, recovers, and her parents even buy her her favorite horse, "Huggy Bear." Here is the ending:

"Lanna and Huggy both lived to a ripe old age, spending their lives together in blessed happiness. A love between a girl and a horse."

For some reason everyone in that novel has these 50-style names like "Lanna," "Ray," and "Audrey." Whereas the other sixth-grade novels are very gothic and British in tone, with sadistic middle-aged spinsters with names like "Miss Nebbins" who torture the (always-twelve-year-old-female) parentless protagonists in various ways.

I had a great time all around, despite the cheap wine hangover this morning. And for once I dressed up, which was good for my self-image. (Of course the dress was bought in a thrift shop years ago for about five bucks. But it still works!) Not so long ago I was always mincing around town in cute slinky outfits. But these days my uniform is dog-haired covered pajamas, or, for variety, a dog-haired covered black turtleneck with baggy green corduroys.

Last night, wandering around Capitol Hill in my pointy-toed boots, peeking into Victrola, where I spent so much of time (and so did the protagonist of my novel) I felt almost like, well, Breakup Babe. In a good way.

Kindergarteners Rock

2009-03-19T16:07:00.000-07:00

It is hard to maintain one's blahness when 20 kindgergartners rush you and hug you, exclaiming, "Miss Rebecca, I've missed you!" "Miss Rebecca, I love you!"

Which is what happens to me about once a month when I read stories to a kindgergarten class in Seattle through Page Ahead.

No matter how glum I feel, no matter how bad my hair looks, no matter how dog-hair-covered and dilapidated my clothes (if I may take the liberty of using that word to describe clothes, and I will, because I'm a Writer with a capital "W") their unconditional love makes me feel better. Briefly.

Until I go back home, where no phone messages are waiting to tell me I have a job. Where no emails offering employment fill my inbox. Where, it's true, my dog greets me with great enthusiasm but mainly because he thinks he's going to get dinner even though it's only 2 p.m.

But enough whining. There are people a lot worse off than me. It's just hard not to feel down when there's nary a prospect of employment in sight and your meager savings are poised to dwindle rapidly while the debt incurred from LAST YEARS' stint of unemployment is about to go up, up, up.

Which makes it a perfect time to go to Europe, dontchya think? Especially if you bought a nonrefundable ticket back in December! So off I shall go at the end of April to Helsinki, where GalPal #1 has been having babies and braving eternal darkness.

In the spirit of adventure and saving money, I just signed up on CouchSurfing.com and have already found one potential couch to sleep on. Back in my Geeksoft days, when I could barely keep track of all the money rolling in, I would have never deigned to sleep on the couch of a stranger. I would have stayed in some fancy, sterile hotel, getting older and more fossilized by the minute. But now...well...I like to think that my (relative) poverty is making me more adventurous.

That's looking on the bright side, n'est-ce pas? Meanwhile if anyone has any recommendations for where to go or what to do in Finland in early spring, do tell! (Photo above courtesy of The Rating System).

Oh! And speaking of travel, my friend Dave Fox, travel writer and tour guide extraordinaire, is teaching an intensive class on travel journaling that looks like a lot of fun and is a great deal to boot. So those of you in Seattle, check it out.

Oh How the Mighty Have Fallen!

2009-03-11T14:16:00.000-07:00

Those of you who've read my book know how I railed against the slovenly citizens of Seattle who regularly go out for a night on the town attired in their finest fleece. Witness this passage from BreakupBabe (a fairly witty one if I do say so myself). It takes place in a restaurant lit by green glass lamps (thus the mention of "sea green pools").

"There were several couples of the early middle-aged Seattle variety swimming in the sea green pools. One couple looked nearly identical with their metal-framed glasses, gray-streaked dark hair, and matching REI fleece jackets. If there was one thing that disturbed me about Seattle, it was that fleece was the uniform of choice. Fleece at fancy restaurants. Fleece at the theater. Fleece at the opera! It was a citywide illness, REI the ever-breeding host! I myself owned at least six fleece jackets and tops in different colors, styles, and weights (as well as a pair of fleece pants), but I had the sense to know they were for outdoor activities and outdoor activities only.

Well, people, guess what? Now, not only am I a person of the "early middle-aged variety" (ok, lets say, early, EARLY) - minus the gray streaks because I dye my hair, naturellement - but I often wear a fleece jacket when I go out now. Not only that, it's a black fleece entirely covered in white dog hair.

Hell, just the other day, I went to the pool attired in a down jacket, capri-length Yoga pants, Tevas, and wool socks.

I've deteriorated, I tell you. And you know, the one time I wore a cute, sexy dress all winter, I got chocolate all over the front of it the first time I wore it. So maybe it's for the best I stick to the dog-hair-covered fleece. It goes very well with the dog-hair all over the upholstery of my car, which is liberally interspersed with a layer of crumbs and unidentified sticky substances.

xo
Rebecca

BreakupBabe's Book Pick: Twilight

2009-03-05T11:16:00.000-08:00

OK so I am three years behind the curve or whatever but I loved Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1)!Perhaps even more so because I had a horrible cold when I read it and so wanted to do nothing more than lie down and get lost in another world (even though that other world happens to be the unglamorous town of Forks, Washington, where I have spent my own rainy days and nights, although who knew it was the ideal place for vampires?).

I consumed the first volume in less than 24 hours and the second in just a little more than that. Having recently been immersed in Donald Maas' Writing the Breakout Novel and seeing him speak on the same topic, I could totally understand why this novel hit it big.

The heroine is unswervingly strong and decisive even when what she's doing is stupid (i.e. falling in love with a vampire). She's very self aware and self-deprecating but also larger-than-life -- braver and more self-sacrificing than we could ever be. A bit sickeningly self-sacrificing but never mind that. (Maas calls forgiveness and self-sacrifice the ultimate traits for the protagonist of a breakout novel).

Also, the stakes are high -- another thing that Donald Maas harps on as being crucial for the breakout novel. Bella, the protagonist, risks her life every second that she's with the guy she loves. (Breakup Babe could relate to that, only she was just risking her self-esteem--not her life--with every Hot But Innappropriate Guy that she dated.)

It's plain old good storytelling and it's only mildly annoying that Stephenie Meyer just up and started writing this thing one day out of the blue with no years of slaving away over unpublished manuscripts, writing classes, etc - and the reason it's only mildly annoying is that she seems so damn nice that you just can't dislike her.

Wanna Buy Some Stuff?

2009-02-26T17:32:00.000-08:00

I have discovered a great way to ride out the recession AND clean out my basement: sell all my crap on Craigslist! It's absolutely brilliant. I don't know why I didn't think of it before. Maybe because there wasn't a recession and I wasn't unemployed and I used to be the kind of person to hold onto stuff I haven't used in 25 years but no longer!

Here's a list of stuff I've recently sold and plan to sell:

An overpriced nightstand I bought with my icky ex-boyfriend who had tons of money and in fact I think he paid for it and guess what, I made the $85 profit!

A bike trailer I haven't used in nine years

Pots that haven't seen a plant in them since the new millenium

The flute that last saw tongue action in the 80s

My "classic" Canon cameras

Etc etc.

Of course it would help if I could actually find my flute but I'm sure it's down there somewhere with all the letters from the 80s that I'll probably never read again and my journals from 7th grade that I'm keeping because they'll definitely be worth tons of money someday. Unless I get REALLY broke in which case I'll try to sell them to unsuspecting sucker as collectible literary memorabilia, haha.

xo
Rebecca

Crazed Fan Harasses Jane Smiley Lookalike

2009-02-23T15:28:00.000-08:00

I totally forgot to mention a fun story from the San Francisco Writer’s Conference…and that would be how I kissed up to Jane Smiley, heaping praise on her like a lovesick fan, only to find out that…

She wasn’t Jane Smiley.

No, she was someone who looked very much like Jane Smiley – tall, blonde, willowy, with an infectious smile -- minus about 10 years and the gigantic glasses that Smiley is always sporting in her author photos. (Photo courtesy of the Seattle Times)

But who was I to know? The other conference volunteers that I was having coffee with at the time told me she was Jane Smiley. Since she had been a keynote speaker at the conference earlier that day, I assumed they had seen her speak and knew what they were talking about.

We were hanging out in the Peet’s Coffee in Grace Cathedral, on the top of Nob Hill when I made my sycophantic overture to the Ms Smiley lookalike.

(And yes there’s a Peet’s Coffee in Grace Cathedral, only it’s under the cathedral, next to the gift shop, so it’s not quite as bad as it sounds. At least it's not a Starbucks.)

My companions had just assured me that it was Ms. Smiley herself who was ordering coffee and so I marched right up to her and started telling her how much I wished I had seen her speech earlier that morning; how good and “inspiring” I heard it was; working my way up to how I loved her novels A Thousand Acres: A Novel and Horse Heaven
and how one day I hoped to be as brilliant (and maybe as rich) as her, when she gave me a blank look.

“What speech?” she said. She had been smiling and nodding at me up til then and I was thinking gee, Jane Smiley is so nice. “Do you mean…my pitch to the agents?” The tall blonde woman looked confused. At which point I realized it wasn’t Jane Smiley at all but a conference attendee who had been pitching her heart out to agents all morning, hoping, just like me to be a brilliant, best-selling novelist like Jane Smiley one day.

Then I told her about the confusion and we had a good laugh.

I still wish I had heard Jane Smiley's speech, however!

Fun Facts from the San Francisco Writer's Conference and More...

2009-02-19T14:26:00.000-08:00

Greetings all from me and Snuffy! Hope your February is looking springlike like it is here in Seattle, WA, where the bitter cold and snows have momentarily receded.

I was just down in the Bay Area volunteering for the San Francisco Writer’s Conference, and wouldn’t you know, the weather was worse there than it is here. Which was fine because mostly I was indoors for the conference and then suffering from a horrible cold so had little use for the outdoors anyway.

I learned a lot of interesting things and met some great people at this conference, as well as getting a few of my burning questions answered. Here are some fun and not-so-fun facts I picked up:

Only about 50% of books are actually sold in bookstores today; the rest are sold through alternative channels
Most fiction manuscripts submitted to agents are boring and predictable because they don’t have enough FAILURE in them
Your “numbers” (that is, how many copies you’ve sold) stick to you like “toilet paper on your shoe”

My favorite speaker was agent Donald Maas; his wife Lisa Rector kindly gave me some advice as did agent Kimberly Cameron. I also met the author of the book Surviving Five Daughters, who was charming and fun, and refers to his daughters in conversation as D1, D2, D3, etc.

I did think there was an overemphasis on the business side of writing and publishing, and would have liked to see more talks devoted to good old-fashioned craft. That’s why I liked Maas’s talk – even though he was talking through one of the chapters in his excellent book Writing the Breakout Novel - and the material was familiar to me already. I liked his talk because it actually made me focus on my story instead of stressing about my "web presence" or how I can get my "numbers" up before I'm entirely wrapped in toilet paper.

His theory about breaking out as an author is that it’s not about how big your publicity budget is that makes your book a bestseller, but word-of-mouth generated by readers--and that you get that word-of-mouth by writing a book with larger-than-life characters going through conflict where the stakes are very high and where unexpected twists ensue.

Sounds easy, right? Especially when you read his book and he lays it all out for you. Then you try to actually start constructing a high-stakes plot with larger-than-life characters. And it's so effing hard! It’s like my piano lessons when I listen to my teacher play all kinds of cool honky-tonk riffs than even shows me exactly how to do them and I go home inspired and excited. But when I try to do them myself they don’t come out right at all and I feel even clumsier and more unskilled than before, especially when the more I practice, the worse I seem to do them.

But if I have faith (or even if I don’t) and I persist even just 15 minutes a day I eventually get better. And that’s how it is with writing too. If you’re feeling discouraged, just trick yourself into writing 15 minutes a day. Because the hardest part is sitting down at your computer. Once you actually start, you’ll want to write much longer than 15 minutes. And once you get in the habit of sitting down every day to do it, it gets harder not to do it than to do it.

Anyway. I digress.

In BreakupBabe news, for those of you Seattleites who would like to support your local businesses, you can find a copy of my novel at Balderdash Books in Greenwood! And soon at Lemon Meringue Boutique, also in Greenwood.

You’ll also be able to see me read at Cheap Wine and Poetry at Richard Hugo House on March 26. And no I’m not actually reading poetry! I *hope* to read something from the new novel! You know the one that’s full of colorful characters that you can’t stop reading and won’t be able to stop talking about – once it, er, finally gets written.

Finally, the moment you've all been waiting for. You can read my Alaska Airlines article about paddling in Glacier Bay here (warning: this is a PDF file). Remind me to tell you the real story behind this trip sometime -- you know, about how we got stranded, almost drowned, feared for our lives 80% of the time, etc etc. Plus, don't miss an update about my upcoming blogging class!

(Wait - I forgot one little thing. Recently I met someone who had downloaded my book onto a Kindle. It was a very cool thing to see; the Kindle was super-sleek, felt good in my hands, and the text was easy to read. And that's all I have to say about that. Except that I would love to have a Kindle and maybe one day I will actually be able to afford one.)

How to become a writer when you grow up

2009-01-25T13:19:00.000-08:00

Greetings Earthlings! I hope you have finally recovered from holiday bloat and that 2009 is speeding along smoothly. Soon we will all be another year older and deeper in debt but for now, enjoy!

My busy January is in full swing. Coming up next week the second class of my six-week Hugo House class and a panel discusion at Hugo House on Friday January 29 (see the details here!).

I'll also be appearing at a career fair in Seattle's lovely south end. Wherein I'll be standing in a booth dispensing advice to children who come by and ask what it's like to be a writer.

Child: How can I become a writer when I grow up?

Me: First you must undergo years of post-college angst as support yourself in a variety of humiliating jobs. Then you waste a lot of money on graduate school. Next you finally start to write but face much rejection. Then you get horribly dumped by a cheating weenie, which propels you 1)to go on antidepressants, and 2) to start a blog and then write that novel you've always dreamed of. Get an expensive author photo taken; go on an expensive book tour; sleep with a a lot of inappropriate men. Revel in the oh-so-brief spotlight, then and lapse back into obscurity while you struggle to do it all over again. More questions?

It appears too, that the boyfriend and I might have found a new band to play with. It's too soon to say for sure whether this could be a long-term relationship but we "jammed" yesterday in a garage in Woodinville and were enthusiastically invited to join the band and pursue the rock star life on the Puget Sound festival circuit -- i.e. Taste of Tacoma, Bite of Seattle, Flavor of Federal Way, Tang of Tukwila, etc.

In other news...I have officially launched the blog consulting arm of Rebecca Agiewich Incorporated-o-Rama this week. (Well all except for putting the "offical" information about it on my "official" web site which shall officially happen soon.). If you have friends in the non-profit or small business world who need to get on the ball and leverage the power of blogging -- send them my way!

And if you missed my appearance on BlogTalk Radio a couple weeks ago, DON'T DESPAIR. You can still check out the archives and hear my awesome advice on how to get over a breakup (hint: it involves lots of sex) and what my top five breakup songs are.

xo
Rebecca

Many opportunities to hear me blab in January

2009-01-06T15:02:00.000-08:00

Happy 2009! There I am at left toasting you with the glass of water I had on New Year's Eve. Yes it's water and no I'm not drunk even though I sort of look like it. It's a long story. Anyway.

January is a big month, peeps! I have no less than *five* public appearances coming up. That's a lot of dough going into the coffers for moi!

Oh wait. No it's not. Because I'm not getting paid for any of them except the class I'm teaching (which you should definitely take and which I'll tell you more about later).

Right, right. I forgot. I don't like to do things for money. I much prefer spiritual enrichment than cold, hard cash which is why my wardrobe has gotten so f*cking crappy lately and I can't afford that trip to Mexico this winter. But never mind about that. Who needs Mexico when you glow with Inner Light?

Public appearances are fun! You'll want to note all of these in your calendar. Well, except the *book club* I'll be talking to and the *career fair* at which I'll be convincing impressionable children how glamorous (not) it is to be a writer. So that makes three for your keep track of:

Sat., Jan 10, 6 pm PST
No matter where you live, be sure to log on and tune in for this BlogTalk Radio interview! Witty host Greg (who gets extra points for referring to me as a "renowned" author) hosts "Breaking Glass," a weekly music show. Writes Greg: "The theme of this week's show is "break-ups" and the music and discussion matter will center around breaking up (and maybe even getting back together). To this end, we have renowned author Rebecca Agiewich (The Breakup Babe) joining us in studio so check it out and call in with questions about breaking up!" *Bonus* You'll also get to hear my (recently disbanded) band Hank and the Milkmashers play!

Wednesdays, Jan 22 thru Feb 25, 5-6 p.m.
My class "Turn down the volume, pump up the word count" starts at Seattle's Richard Hugo House (read more about it here). The great breaking news about this class is that bestselling Seattle writer Garth Stein has just agreed to talk to the class February 4! And if you haven't read his latest novel, The Art of Racing in the Rain,you are in for the best, most heartrending, and beautiful read of your life.

Thursday, Jan 29, 7 pm
Online Publishing, Blogging and Marketing for Writers
"Hugo House's InPrint Series presents a panel discussion with writers, bloggers and editors, including Rebecca Agiewich and Eileen Gunn, who have made the Internet work for them. $7/$5 for Hugo House members. Cabaret. Thursday, January 29th, 2009, 7:00 PM

All right, that's enough publicizing for now. Oh wait -- if you're flying Alaska Airlines in February, be sure to look for my article about kayaking in Glacier Bay!

OK that's really enough. Here's to your holiday recovery!

Deadlines are a writer's best friend

2008-12-16T09:47:00.000-08:00

Hello from sunny, freezing Seattle. My car is still sitting under a foot of snow, while I walk everywhere in this bright, bitterly cold world.

Alas, I am supposed to get in my car tomorrow for a three-hour drive to Mount Rainier where I'm working with the park on a *super cool* *top secret* (not really) project. After months of trying to set this meeting set up, I cancelled last week because of abominable weather and predictions of the WORST STORM OF THE DECADE.

Miraculously, we managed to reschedule the meeting for tomorrow, and now...the news is predicting DIRE FREEZING TREACHEROUS weather. Which, of course, for anyone in a state used to snow would be no problem but here in Washington we Seattleites stay home at the merest hint of the "s" word.

Oh well. Mother Nature has her own ideas. My *top secret* project -- to help Mt. Rainier launch an artist-in-residence program -- will just have to wait a little bit longer.

Meanwhile I have been working very hard on the article about my kayaking trip that will be published in the February issue of Alaska Airlines Magazine. It's amazing what a deadline and a strict word count will do to galvanize you. I had been slaving away on that article since SEPTEMBER, writing draft after horrible draft, which is what always happens when I don't have an actual deadline or assignment.

Then - glory be! - I got the assignment and suddenly I whipped that thing into shape. I wouldn't have been able to do it without my writing bible, however, a book called Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction by Jon Franklin. Not only does this book break down story structure for you and give you bomber formula for outlining, it also describes in detail the different types of narrative in any given story or article and how they should be used.

It made me understand, for example, how in the *climactic* scene where Dave and I *face down* a *ravenous* grizzly in our camp, that I can't tell the reader how I feel but must SHOW it.

Oh. Wait. I should know that already, shouldn't I? Well it's a lot harder than you might think to show rather than tell. There's only so many times you can talk about your "heart pounding" to show that you're effing terrified (which happened about every five seconds on that trip).

Anyhoo. I'm proud of the article. Most of the travel articles I've written have been newspaper-style pieces, and while the writing is just fine, I don't dig very deep. I do believe I took a step forward with my writing. Even if there are still some cliches that need to be weeded out. (Those are harder to avoid than you might think as well). In fact, I do believe I actually used the phrase "untamed wilderness."

Eh. Whatever.

As I've been writing about Alaska, I've been dreaming of Mexico. Hawaii. Warm. Places. Mmm.

Just Call Me "Martin Scorcese Junior"

2008-11-26T17:25:00.000-08:00

Is it really already Thanksgiving? Seems like just yesterday I was pondering writing a "Highlights of 2007" post and now it's already 2009. Sheesh. (Left: one last glimpse of fall's glory in the North Cascades).

Things are pretty quiet here in the neighborhood of Greenlake, town of Seattle, state of Washington. Mostly I'm working, writing, and scheming for what my next big adventure is going to be. (Aspiring to live a life on the road a la my friend Amanda, while still holding down a relationship, a well-paying job, writing a novel, and taking care of a spirited senior pug).

My band broke up, which is a big bummer. We were livin' the dream, man! Then our singer/songwriter/star decided to move to effing Florida. When I expressed my disbelief about this (I mean, come on, Florida?) to my long-lost friend The Captain , he said "Tom Petty is from Florida, I can understand the draw for your lead singer."

So whatever. For some reason, I get/got more satisfaction out of listening to our roughish but tuneful recordings than reading my book (And yeah, that's my b-friend wailing on lead guitar!). Hell, I can't actually read my book. I can hardly look at the damn thing because I spent so much damn time writing it.

But you know, it would be nice if I could actually feel good about my novel instead of worrying about when/if the next one will done and when/if the current one will go out of print. That's akin to saying that it would be nice if I could become a Zen Buddhist, which ain't never gonna happen (despite my occasional attempts at Yoga), so let's just forget it and move on.

To what I'm not sure, exactly. Why not end it there while I'm ahead?

Despite my complaints I am grateful to be alive in Seattle's sunny shivery fall (even though the leaves have fallen off the trees) and especially grateful for Top Pot doughuts and full use of all my bodily parts. Oh yeah and my boyfriend and family and dog and job. And warm place to live and Peets coffee and..

The list goes on.

(Oh -- and if you're bored during this long holiday weekend, enjoy this video montage put together by yours truly from "Pug-o-Ween 2008.")

xo
Rebecca

Fall Turns to Winter

2008-11-08T14:34:00.000-08:00

That dreaded time of year is about to arrive when all the beautiful leaves blow off the trees and lie on sodden piles on the ground waiting for full-on winter to descend.

Of course full-on winter means skiing! In case you never saw the ski film that I produced and starred in last winter - well, here's your chance. It will get you pumped for this year's powder. Warren Miller, watch out!

In other news, the fall has been a productive time. I've made progress on all my gazillions of projects, that include my novel-in-progress, an article about my trip to Alaska, a plan that would have me lead a lot of unsuspecting Mountaineers members on a bicycling trip in Finland, a nascent blog consulting business, and - uh - a bunch of other stuff that I foreget but will undoubtedly remember two days before I'm supposed to have it done.

I'm also going to start marketing my novel again with the help of an able assistant (once I find one). I've accepted that I simply don't have the energy/enthusiasm to do it myself. But I still think it needs to be done.

Because my book effing rules, that's why. Oh, sure, it's no "Ulysses." It's better than "Ulysses" because people actually finish "BreakupBabe: A Novel." And so what if the main character is a bit "annoying" at times. Aren't we all? The small fraction of the population who read my novel love it. As I was reminded by an e-mail I got recently.

Wrote Andrea:

I am one of your biggest fans. First and foremost for your great writing ability, and secondly for your book. It has helped me a great deal in coping with my recent break-up. Sure it didn't make the pain completely disapear, but it gave me some great laughs, and also put a smile on my face. Thanks for making me remember that there are other people who go through heartache in this world!

You are welcome Andrea! In other, extremely irrelevant news, I finally joined Facebook after months of pressure from my friends. Now I regret it because I am addicted to the stupid thing and must limit my visits to one per day lest I spend too much time there trying to increase my popularity. Though I really SHOULD use F*ckbook as a marketing tool so if anyone has any ideas as to how, please let me know! And, of course, be my friend.

Finally, I am still waiting for a topic to blog about that will set my heart on fire. I did start a blog about my new book-in-progress that I was thinking could be a sort of interactive thing between me and my readers, but then GalPal #2 said she worried that people would steal my BRILLIANT ideas! But you wouldn't do that would you, dear readers?

xo
Rebecca

Would you kindly shut up?

2008-10-28T18:40:00.000-07:00

You know what I am really good at?

Telling people to shut the eff up.

I am often forced to do in coffee shops, when people are blabbing on cell phones (AT MY TABLE AFTER I HAVE CONSENTED TO SHARE IT WITH THEM, NO LESS).

Or when, like today, they are simply clueless (and perhaps crazy) and talking in a very LOUD voice about NAZIs and HOMOSEXUALS.

I made one pointless attempt to ask the help at Peets to kindly ask this guy to shut the eff up, since I didn't want to antagonize him (as I am wont to do in these situations). But this being Seattle, the barista said yes she would do it, then didn't; nor did any of the other patrons who kept staring at him and wishing he would shut up or at least lower his damn voice but of course, would not say anything because they are from SEATTLE, LAND OF WUSSES.

Finally I couldn't take it anymore and I said "SIR EXCUSE ME CAN YOU PLEASE LOWER YOUR VOICE?" And to my surprise, he politely apologized, and then did lower his voice. For about seven minutes.

Sigh.

I am also known for telling loud people in campgrounds to shut up; for example, when they are playing guitar loudly (and badly) in the next campsite. Two weeks ago, however, there was a big group of hunters camped next to me in the north Cascades blasting country music well into the night.

But I had seen their guns and I was afraid. So I kept my own mouth shut (for once.)

Basket-tastic Household

2008-10-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

After sleeping in to an obscene hour today and and making several feeble attempts to be productive, I give up. I simply have no interest in any of the ten million projects I should be working on.

I'm just too worn out after a weekend of camping and hiking with some friends of mine who are frighteningly fit and formidable. After bumbling along in their wake for two days on ice and snow-covered trails, I need a rest! Apparently my brain does too, because it simply won't function.

The North Cascades scenery was stunning - as you can see-- despite much of the fall foliage being covered in an early dump of snow. And it was especially soothing, while freezing my a** off in the tent on Saturday night, to be lulled to sleep by the sound of hunters in the next campsite blasting country music and getting increasingly drunk.

I'm usually the one in any campground scenario to tell people to shut the f*ck up, but these guys, had really big guns. So I kept my trap shut, cinched the sleeping bag as tight around my balaclava-encased head as it would go, broke out the handwarmers, and eventually fell asleep. (Although the old Breakup Babe part of me briefly contemplated going over and joining the party. You know, in the spirit of bipartisanship, with the goal of eventually getting them to vote for Obama).

Harmony has returned to my household - in case you were worried because of last week's melodramatic post. Now I'm ready to share my latest home-decorating fetish with you. Are you ready?

Baskets! That's right. I have "discovered" the art of decorating with baskets and oh, boy, my house has never looked better. How did I fail to discover them before? Not only are they attractive and cheap, they let you organize things without really organizing them.

A little mess here? Throw it in a basket A little mess there? Throw it another (matching!) basket! Soon you've got one organized and delightfully Cost-Plussy household. I now have no less than eight baskets in my new house and I don't intend to stop anytime soon.

So there.

Me and Blogger -- Headed to Couples Therapy

2008-10-06T07:34:00.000-07:00

Sigh.

Look how early I'm posting today. You can always tell I've had a bad night if I'm posting before 8 a.m. in the morning.

You know, I wish I could blog like in the old days. If I could, I would tell all: from how sexy my boyfriend is when he's playing the guitar to how we got in a stupid fight about (insert mundane household item here) last night that has extended into the wee hours of this rain-lashed morning.

I would have delved more deeply into the relationship dynamics that played out in Alaska. What happened, exactly, as we piloted a kayak over too-big waves and got stranded on beaches that we couldn't get off? Who took charge? Who panicked? Who spotted the first grizzly (And the second? And who was ready to pack the kayak up and flee and who insisted we stand our ground?)

Hell, I would tell you the most private details of our s*x life if I could. Because God knows, I don't have anyone to talk to about that now my best girlfriends have dispersed to far-flung corners of the world.

I would share our thoughts on having kids and adoption (who's pro, who's con?) and that I think he would be great dad but that the thought of kids still terrifies me. I would talk about how my niece gets a googly, lovestruck look in her eyes every time he appears.

I might even talk about how I saw my most recent ex-boyfriend last week for the first time since our breakup more than 2 years ago and how bittersweet (but mostly sweet) that was.

I would talk about how I worry I'm emotionally shut down and might never be able to open up except to people I can't trust because they can't hurt me as much. But then I might say how that's stupid psychobabble and I should just shut the f*ck up.

But no. I don't talk about those things anymore. And, therefore, I don't really blog anymore, because nothing engaged me like talking about love and sex and dating and boys.

There I was, talking to a blogging class at Write on the Sound yesterday, telling them how the #1 thing they needed for a successful blog was PASSION.

And here I am, blogging day after day without passion anymore.

Me and Blogger need to go into some serious therapy.

Brown Bears in Alaska, Moving Boxes in Greenlake

2008-09-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

Yours truly has returned from the Great White North and gone all the way south to Moving Hell. OK, so maybe it's Moving Purgatory now. But whatever it is, it's transition and it's hard.

Things have started to get organized but there are still random pieces of furniture scattered hither and thither, and numerous unpacked boxes, which have been stored in the haunted basement for me to deal with "later" (i.e. next time I move).

I also can't find any of my clothes and currently have a "nighstand" made of unpacked boxes. (Hmm, I bet THAT'S where my clothes are!)

The dog has not adjusted well to the move and starts making an unholy racket in his crate every morning at about, oh, 5 a.m. We try to ignore him and show him who's boss, but this morning the racket got so loud I had to check on him to make sure he wasn't suffering mortal injuries.

But nooo. Once I opened the door, he trotted out healthy as can be, wagged his curly tail, and waited expectantly for me to take him on his morning walk around the neighborhood. Which I did NOT, thank you very much. I grumpily took him outside to the yard, then put him back in the torture chamber where he finally went back to sleep after another half hour of caterwauling.

Anyway, I am sorry to whine. I have many non-whiny things to say about everything. Like how stunningly beautiful and mind-blowing Alaska was. And how it was the most intense wilderness camping I've ever done in my life -- with no people around for miles, a churning ocean between you and safety, and brown bears (aka GRIZZLIES but BIGGER) hanging about nearby.

But it might have to wait for another time when I am cranky and less sleep-deprived to wax poetic about that.

I also have more to say about dogs. Like why is it so much easier to shower love ondogs than people? Even when dogs make you so mad, i.e. by waking you up at 5 a.m., you can't hold it against them and you constantly hug and kiss them and tell them how lucky you are to have found them, how they are your best buddy, how cute they are, etc. Do you know how much more often I say these things to my dog than to my boyfriend? Ahem.

And speaking of that, when you go for walks and see people with cute dogs, why can you only ask the name of the dog and not the person? WHY? And why can you pet any old cute dog that you see and not the person, even if they are cute and adorable and you want them to be your friend??

Sigh. I'm a bit lonely here north of the ship canal bridge. Can you tell I need some new friends?

Delirious in Juneau

2008-08-22T17:45:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes, I have been gone but I'm not dead. Although I might be soon, seeing as I am Juneau, Alaska (rainy!), about to embark on a kayaking trip in Glacier Bay National Park toute solo except for the boyfriend.

You know, I wouldn't be quite so worried except for the grizzly bear factor. Although I should probably be more scared of the the moose. That is, if we don't flip over and drown and/or freeze to death in quick order, or possibly, get crushed by a calving glacier.

Things did not get off to a smooth start at the airport this morning when I *forgot* to bring the "bonus ticket" that would have allowed me to fly for free (and which I had used to secure my flight months ago), and therefore had to fork over $600 bucks if I wanted to get on my flight.

Well, naturally, I did fork it over, because you know how well I'm doing financially - hey, I still have a couple thou left on my credit card before it maxes out! I can only pray I did something smart with that bonus ticket like "file" it at home - which always gets me in trouble. Whenever I "file" something instead of leaving it on the massive pile of paperwork that generally adorns my dining room table, it disappears from my pathetic memory, which has been recently more overwhelmed than usual by MOVING.

Yes, we found a place to live that wasn't in some far-flung wasteland but in fact right in the city with plenty of room and hardwood floors and a yard and basement (albeit one with dirt floors, numerous frighteningly dark crannies that I assume house a ghost of some sort --- after all the house is almost 100 years old -- and that the pug insists on exploring every time we makde a foray into the basement. One of these days he will lead me straight to the ghost, just like in the movies, and that will be the end of things, unless of course it's a friendly ghost, but only time will tell.)

Yet-to-be-discovered ghost aside, it is a very pleasant and spacious house, except for a few minor things like, oh, the windows don't open and none of my furniture fits in it. Moving went as smoothly as moving could go, which is to say, not very, although it really only entailed one screaming fight that happened at the very end when we were both exhausted and involved me throwing 1)a bottle of all-purpose cleaner and 2)a package of dog biscuits at Dave, who luckily dodged them both.

Anyway. Where was I? Oh yes, Juneau. It is rainy and cold, much like Seattle, so I feel right at home. Mountains rise up right around the streets of downtown, which are twisty and turny and steep. There are lots of people in rubber boots as well as grizzled old men who look like sea captains. I thought flying into Seattle was scenic, but when you land in Juneau, you plunge right into a luminous gray green mountain seascape. (Is that phrase gramatically correct? I am so f*cking delirious I cannot tell.)

And yes, I am very much looking forward to our flight to Glacier Bay on a tiny plane in thick gray clouds, and perhaps a little thunder if we're lucky, thanks for asking.

I'm sorry I have no charming photos for you today of my pug in a sweater or some such thing. One day soon things will be back to normal. Maybe. Anyway, I will talk to you all when (if) I return.

xo
Rebecca

Money, Moving, Many People in One Apartment

2008-07-22T09:11:00.000-07:00

Well! How the summer flies by. As usual, I am involved in numerous spiritually-enriching non-paying ventures while my bank account shrivels still further.

Though I have momentarily picked up a short job with my former Master, ye olde Hotel Californiasoft. The money was so alluring, that I simply couldn't turn it down.

So I tore myself away from my hip and charming new employer -- you know the one who paid me (not much) to write about toys, but, you know, who I still wanted to be with, despite his inability to support me, and trundled sadly off to prostitute myself to my old, jowly, and obscenely rich boss once more so that I could eat and feed my pug (along with his "special" friend, pictured here. Extra points if you can figure out what makes him special!)

Hopefully we'll be reunited in the future after the Master uses me one more time and I close my eyes and pretend to be somewhere else.

In other news, the demoralizing house hunt/attempt to rent out condo goes on. I have found a charming young couple to rent my place, but whether I and the boyfriend can find a place for us to live (along with pug and "special" friend) before the condo board shuts me down is another matter. Why, we showed up to an open house in a somewhat desirable neighborhood the other day only to find about 8 other young white, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed couples with applications in hand, ready to pounce! Losers.

We've gotten so desperate that we've considered such far-flung neighborhoods as "Burien" and "South Park" -- names which don't mean anything to you, but to us Seattle-centric hipsters, conjure up barren stretches of nothing but convenience stores, freeways, and worst of all, no coffee shops!

Dave has even gotten me to entertain the idea of - if you can believe this -- Bellevue! Even though I told him it would cause my soul to shrivel up and DIE to move to his hometown, because talk about a lack of cool coffee shops to hang out in (I'm sorry but Tully's and Starbucks don't count)!

However I have hope that the God of Housing will smile down upon as any day now and grant us a cute bungalow in a sweet neighborhood where the pug can poop in they backyard (instead of on my living room carpet); I have cafes to hang out in; and where Dave won't face TOO brutal commute every day.

Most likely we'll end up living right on top of each other in my little place, trying to pretend we live in some other country where people don't require tons of PERSONAL SPACE, but oh well.

Rebecca

A Life of Loud Desperation

2008-06-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

Well darlings, post-enslavement to the 9-5 workaday world, I find myself mired in all sorts of paperwork hell and not even able to pay my mortgage without the help of a credit card.

First, there's the paperwork nightmare that my unmployment claim became. I won't go into detail except to say I have had to fill out about 100 forms, am not getting any more money, and have to pay back a bunch because I turned down a job and was honest about it! (Ah yes, a job back at Geeksoft that would have made me rich and desperately unhappy. Now I am poor and desperate but not moderately happy, as much as a person can be happy anyway, when they are sinking under the weight of debt).

Then, because health insurance companies wouldn't be health insurance companies if they didn't try to SCREW you, there have been bureaucratic snafus galore with LIFEWISE, who, unbeknownst to me, cut off my health insurance due to an adminstrative error on my part and then nicely gave me a ONE-TIME REINSTATEMENT. I can only thank God I didn't get diagnosed with cancer during the time I was CUT OFF, UNBEKNOWNST TO ME, or that some other administrative error does not occur ever again so that I lose my health insurance altogether right when I do get diagnosed with cancer!

F*CKERS. If I had more than five pennies to my name, I would go after them with a lawyer (preferably a hot one with six-pack abs) but alas, I'll have to settle with sending in an "appeal" to a bunch of faceless underpaid unemployees who don't give a sh*t about anything except getting off their shift so they can stop dealing with BIG-TIME WHINERS like me.

Let's see if I can find something positive to say here. Oh but wait. I forgot to complain about my housing search and simultaneous search for a renter. That's been hell too, with all sorts of bad human behavior coming to the surface. I got two prospective tenants snatched away by a sleazy-ass landlord and nearly got $500 taken from me by a prospective landlord. All plans to move in July to the lovely townhouse in the Central District have ground to a halt for lack of someone to rent my house, meanwhile we've caused the landlord in the CD to have a nervous breakdown (not really our fault, but we can't help but feel guilty about it because we're nice people like that).

Finally! On the positive side! I'm marginally employed at the moment doing fun work that involves playing with new toys and writing about them. The dog gets to join me at the office, which is in lovely downtown Seattle, in a big loft with hardwoord floors, where we write reviews of Cabbage Patch kids (flexible but not floppy!), the Polly Pocket Ultimate Party boat (complete with personal watercraft!), and more. The dog and I don't get paid much for this (only the truly soul-sucking jobs pay a lot I've discovered, except maybe MOVIE STAR or ROCK STAR) but any money is better than the no money I've been making, and plus we feel like contributing members of society again. SO THERE.

Meanwhile, Dave and I took our inflatable ~~dinghy~~ kayak out for its first marine voyage last weekend and had the great pleasure of being followed by a seal named Emile for half an hour. Watch the video!

Birthday Parties and Little Dogs in Sweaters

2008-06-09T11:13:00.000-07:00

Well darlings, it has been a crazy time. Somehow I am working very hard and making very little money. Meanwhile
(as you can see) the pug must be kept in fancy sweaters.

One thing I've learned about myself during this period of no structure is that I take on too many projects when faced with an empty schedule. TOO MANY PROJECTS THAT DON'T PAY ANYTHING BUT ARE OH-SO-SPIRITUALLY REWARDING!

But I still refuse to believe the only option for me is Hotel Californiasoft. So what if I'd actually be able to buy shoes again and get decent healthcare if I went back there?! I am going to make these OH-SO-SPIRITUALLY REWARDING jobs pay something *one* of these days and meanwhile as the pug has a sweater to wear, we are fine.

Meanwhile I have spent the last four days in a training for a girls outdoor education organization, during which I 1)camped in a leaky tent in the pouring rain 2)got in touch with my "ancestral spirits" (who said, "have you found a nice Jewish boy yet?"); identified my own oppressive role in the patriarchy; and spent time around a group of women who were so warm and and community-minded that it blew my mind.

On the one hand, I really wanted to be part of it; on the other, it made me want to run back to the world of high-tech where we each sit in our own little sterile offices with no crying or hugging or discussion of racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism (and no performances of interpretive dance about any of the above subjects).

But seriously. The whole thing was eye-opening and intense I'm grateful that I got to go. I'll bring what I learned into all the teaching that I do.

(And, in the sprit of full disclosure, during the "ancestral sprits" exercise, I actually did conjure up visions of Bubby and Auntie and Grandma Rose and my grandfathers I never met and hung with them for a while and got all teary-eyed that they weren't around and vowed to remember and be grateful to them more often. SO THERE. See how spiritually advanced I've gotten lately?)

Oh! I almost forgot to add that I sincerely want to thank whoever is in charge of the weather department for not storming upon my rockin' birthday party, which was daringly held outdoors in late May in Dave's backyard, for lack of a better venue. Not that Dave's backyard isn't fabulous, but it is much more suited for a party in, say, August, when one might have, oh, at least a 50% chance of good weather. Despite a cold and cloudy start, the sun came out, the band rocked, little children danced, and a good time was had by all into the wee hours of the morning. Happy birthday to ME!

xo,

Rebecca

Look what the stork brought!

2008-05-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

Darlings, forgive the extended absence but there has been a new addition to my family.

Nine years old, 18 pounds, a couple feet long, fond of wearing costumes, he has done what no man has yet inspired me to do (yet): commit.

So far, so good. My main criteria in a dog is that he sleep a lot, and on the same schedule as me, and Snuffy the Pug cooperates on that score.

He is also charming, friendly, and wins admirers everywhere he goes, despite a little propensity to pee on things. (We are working on that).

If you would like to meet him, he has some openings in his schedule coming up in between naps, obedience classes, running in circles around the house, and pooping on Seattle's busiest streetcorners. (He might even wear the devil horns for you).

In other news, I have put my darling condo up for rent and am now looking for a house to live in with the FriendThatIsaBoy.

Because, apparently, I am now completely settling down and sealing Breakup Babe in a vaccum-packed casing until it's time for the long-awaited sequel: BreakupBabe: The Nursing Home Years. (Or until another relationship goes up in flames. Whichever comes first.)

Public Libraries and Podcasts -- Who Knew??

2008-04-30T10:54:00.000-07:00

I wanted to clue you in to two really cool things that I've discovered lately. This is very cutting-edge stuff for helping you build your music collection. I hesitate to even mention them to you for fear of the whole world finding out and cashing in, but...oh, what the heck.

Public Libraries

Did you know you can check CDs out of the public library?? Well guess what peeps -- you can! In the last month, I have checked out CDs by Tracy Chapman, the Hold Steady, Jay Farrar, Ryan Adams, Van Morrison. The list goes on! ~~And then you can rip them onto your computer.~~ I mean, then you can BURN them into your memory forever and replay them whenever you wish! When did these public library things start up anyway?

(Wait, didn't I once meet one of my INCREDIBLY UNSTABLE boyfriends at a library eons ago? My memory must be going. [See Breakup Babe entry for August 2, 2004].)

(Photo of the Seattle Public Library cribbed from the New York Times)

Podcasts

So there's this...thing. It's called "podcasting." I know, I know, sounds kinda weird. I think only one or two people know about it, including me. But - get this - when you sign up for podcasts, you can get things (like music!) for free! Just the other day I signed up for the KEXP podcast (you have to be really super hip to listen to KEXP so, if you're like, not hip, don't even bother) and I've already gotten like 15 new songs! Of course, most of them are too hip for me! Still. At least I am no longer listening to the same two songs over and over on my (c'mon Apple, pay me a lot of money to mention the name of your ubiquitous portable music player here!)

Not So Sparkly Sparkly

2008-04-18T18:28:00.000-07:00

Alas darlings, nothing to say this week except I HAVE A HEADACHE and THANK GOD FOR HAPPY HOUR. I did post on my author blog today, however.

Kisses,
Rebecca

Gray April Day Blues

2008-04-04T16:59:00.000-07:00

You know, sometimes it is rather glamorous being a quasi-employed, underselling novelist, occasional travel writer, undiscovered rock star, and pseudo ski bunny.

There are sun-spangled days spent in the snow; music-filled nights at bars around town; the occasional reader who tells me "I loved your book!" The nights I can stay up as late as I want reading; the mornings I spend getting to know the characters in my next novel; the freedom to do whatever the hell I want, when I want (as long as it doesn't cost more than five bucks). (Photo of Mount Rainier by Chris Olson)

Then again, there are the aimless days. When I am listless and tired from music-filled nights at bars. When the lack of structure overwhelms me. When it would be good to have an office to go to or coworkers to talk to or at the very least a dog to walk!

There are the days when I think good God, this novel will be so much WORK because it's not about ME and I have to create these people out of thin air, with all their histories and desires and lovable idiosyncracies! And after all that work will it even get published?

There are the days I stress about money and miss my high-earning past when I didn't mind selling my soul for a little security. When my health benefits were all paid for (and then some!) and that employee stock purchase plan made my money multiply like crazy.

Whoa boy, that all seems so long ago.

At least I just got some work to tide me over for a few weeks, and that will also help pay for the massive auto repair bill that just came my way. (Are there any OTHER type of auto repair bills than massive ones?) Meanwhile, in one of my less glamorous ski bunny moments, enjoy this video of me falling flat on my a*s while cross-country skiing while my friend Eric mocks me from behind the camera. (I fell again around the corner but no one saw!)

xo
Rebecca

Take This Job and Shove It II

2008-03-26T10:16:00.000-07:00

Is it any wonder I'm having trouble going back to the cubicle? After a winter spent playing outdoors in the glorious Cascade Mountains?

In a fit of rebellion, I turned down a job at Hotel Californiasoft the other day after somehow managing to convince a group of four very serious techies that I was passionate about developer documentation and would do a bang-up job if they hired me. (Give the girl an Oscar!)

Only they wouldn't let me work from home at all. Hello? Excuse me? I don't DO the east side for work anymore. I don't DO cubicles anymore. Got that, MAN? You can take your cushy, million-an-hour, so-boring-I-want-to-kill-myself job and give it to some poor sucker who actually wants to make a living!

I do...uh...volunteering for good causes where I don't get paid any money but I get to ski! And read stories to kindergarten classes! And drinking expensive lattes around town as my savings account dwindles!

So THERE.

Commitment Issues - Moi?

2008-03-11T09:17:00.000-07:00

For those of you who think I might have "committment problems," I will have you know that in the last 24 hours, I went house-shopping with friend-that-is-a-boy and filled out a form for "Seattle Pug Rescue!" (picture courtesy of The Pug Blog).

As I filled out the "Pug Rescue" form , which came right on the heels of going to look at this house, I thought whoa - what the hell is happening to me, Miss-Freewheeling-Don't-Tie-Me-Down-I-Want-to-Be-Able-To-Travel-To-South-America-At-The-Drop-Of-A-Hat-or-Date-Any-Hot- but-Inappropriate-Boy-I-Want-Breakup Babe?

It's not like I feel totally ready to move in with the friend-that-is-a-boy or get a dog. It's more like I know I never will feel totally ready. Ergo I will just jump in, do it, and get ready.

Then again, maybe not. We Geminis can never make up our minds.

It was, I have to say, a very cute house (triplex, actually ) in trendy yet still mellow Ballard within walking distance of everything (restaurants, clubs, library, coffeehouses)...a spacious two bedroom with hardwood floors and a garage for 1400 bucks a month.

If we were going to move in together it would be perfect. But it would mean scrambling for me to rent out my condo toute de suite and charging a lot of rent for it to cover my a*s-- that is if I can even get approval from the almighty condo board to do so.

But it was fun to look anyway and get that feeling of promise that comes with projecting your life onto a brand new space. (Ahh, with hardwood floors, I will finally realize the full potential of my genius, etc etc).

Anyway. Moving on. Hotel Californiasoft is trying to get me to come back now that my 100-day furlough has been completed. Though I am struggling against the idea, I feel myself about to capitulate. After all, my meager savings is half gone. I have trips I want to do. Skis to pay for. And let's not forget the effing mortgage.

It doesn't mean that I am giving in. I think I will still be able to check out someday. Just not quite yet, alas.

(Cue music: strains of Hotel California play softly as heroine, head hung low, employee badge in hand, enters the vast maze of gothic-looking office buildings and the door shuts with a firm and menacing click behind her).

Honky Tonk Memories

2008-02-22T12:37:00.000-08:00

Chaos-as judged by how much crap is being stored on my bed-- descended briefly on my condo this week. For a couple days there, every inch of my bed was covered: with books, skiing gear, clean laundry, dirty laundry,and-to top it all off - a generous sprinkling of cracker crumbs that fell out of my backpack.

Now most of it is gone except a couple books, a few cracker crumbs and, the bag that I'm packing for this weekend. I'm off to do the Hog Loppet again - that fun silly ski event in Leavenworth wherein you ski 30 kilmoters just for the fun of it, thereby rendering yourself unable to walk for several days.

Not that I have time for such frippery. Numerous deadlines are encroaching on me next week: classes to teach, articles to write, all of which I am seriously underprepared for. Who knew that being unemployed would be so much work?

Meanwhile, my band played to a small but PBR-primed crowd at the Mars Bar last night (see poster above). I played a new piano intro to one of our songs that I worked and WORKED on to the point where I knew I was working on it too much and then of course I effed it up - leaving out the cool fill that would have made me sound like a real honky tonk piano player instead of some chick from Palo Alto who who grew up playing Mozart. But at least I didn't play any wrong notes; I just left out the coolest part and messed up the rhythm the tiniest bit.

I couldn't hear myself when I sang harmony either so for all I know I could have been singing something that was totally NOT harmonic at all. But people were dancing to our songs and that makes it all a success. Plus we made five bucks apiece. With that and my unemployment checks, I am rolling in it.

Grover to the Rescue!

2008-02-13T19:35:00.000-08:00

I've had a case of the blahs lately. My day to day life feels dull. Dull! And this despite the variety of exciting projects I'm working on such as a new novel featuring a lovable but repressed public defender; my blogging class full of funny, motivated students; creative writing workshops for kids, and, uh, some other stuff that is also no doubt very exciting but that I can't remember right now. (Photo of Grover courtesty of Muppet Wiki)

Part of it is that I spend too much damn time alone. Sometimes the only people I talk to the whole working day are baristas who make my coffee. Part of it is just being jaded and momentarily ungrateful of the great BOUNTY that is my life, full as it is of health, fun fame, and hot men. I mean man. Hopefully I'll snap out of it soon.

Yesterday's blahs, however, were blown away by a class full of kindergarten students who formed the uber-appreciative audience to my stellar reading of "Where the Wild Things Are" and "The Monster at the End of This Book." (I volunteer for a literacy program called Page Ahead where I read stories twice a month to a kindergarten class).

The Monster at the End of This Book (featuring the lovable muppet Grover), while perhaps not as famous as Where the Wild Things are, is a minor classic in its own right. I remember being both terrified and thrilled when I read this book as a child. On every page Grover warns you not to turn another page because there was a MONSTER AT THE END OF THE BOOK! His warnings turn to begging; his begging to desperate pleas. DON'T TURN THE PAGE! tension grows. You are terrified; and then...

Well, I don't want to give the ending away. But let me say that at first I felt guilty reading this story to these children, who started clutching each other in fear, their gasps turning to to screams after every single page ("NO NO DON'T TURN IT!"), so that by the end of the book it was mass hysteria, and I thought oh no, I've forever traumatized them!

But apparently not, because "Read it again!" they all screamed when it was over.

Now how can you be blah after that?

Me No Like Driving in Snow

2008-02-06T17:19:00.000-08:00

Sigh. Not to complain or anything but the freelance lifestyle is giving me a headache. (That is the front of my new vest. More about that later.)

Working by myself has lost some of its allure. Oh sure I get to hang out in cafe after cafe but sometimes you just get a little jaded by that. And how many grande extra hot soy lattes can I drink in a day anyway before I start moving on to more fattening things or alcoholic beverages?

I like my new gig at Mt. Rainier. But that has its challenges too. It's like going on vacation and coming back once a week, with all the attendant excitement and anticlimax and packing and unpacking and garbage starting to smell while you're gone and ignoring more practical tasks that you should be doing (ie practicing piano or earning a living). Let's not even discuss snow driving.

I don't do snow. I grew up in California and never drove in the damn snow. There are no passes that you have to cross to get to Mt. Rainier, which fooled me into thinking that I wouldn't have to deal much with snow, but I forgot. It is - literally - one of the SNOWIEST PLACES ON EARTH. In 1972, it held the world record for snowfall!

Last week not only did I have knock two feet of snow off my car(with a tiny, ineffectual ice scraper suitable for tiny amounts of ice), which resulted in snow all over me and inside my car, I then had to drive for at least thirty miles on icy, snowy roads on a two lane highway in the dark with snow doing that horizontal thing it does that makes you all disoriented. Yes, those of you from snowier parts of this country can MOCK ME NOW.

I've never been so happy to see the strip-mauled suburb of South Hill (known as as "South Hell" as those who drive through it all the time), with its lights and many lanes and rain instead of snow.

In other news, I bought a new vest. Last week I wore this vest to a party at which I encountered the Seattle rock star Rachel Flotard of Visqueen. I saw Rachel perform last spring at the Sasquatch Festival and wished that I could be just like her. So when she showed up at this party, I was too shy to speak to her for most of the night.But when I did, she was quite charming and friendly. AND she raved about my brand-new used vest I had bought that very day at Buffalo Exchange. I glowed with her compliments for the next two days. (That is the back of my vest.)

Then, just yesterday, I saw her again in Victrola (whose help has gotten kind of surly, I must say) and I was wearing the same vest! (Wouldn't you wear this vest every day if it was yours?) Anyway, I deliberately avoided her and luckily she did not see me.

OK, this story needs a better ending. But I don't have one.This is the kind of situation Teahouse Blossom--the queen of slice-of-life vignettes -- would write about. Only she would give it a punchy ending and write about it better than me.

Do What You Love and...You Know the Rest

2008-01-25T18:24:00.000-08:00

So I recently scored a rather dreamy gig being writer-in-residence at Mount Rainier National Park (one of the most beautiful places in the world). I don't know if I'm offically called "writer in residence" but that's what I'm calling myself cause it sounds cool.

It involves hanging out a lot at the park; helping update and expand their climbing blog; "patrolling" the area on skis so I can write about it; helping them develop their artistic programs, and partying with the climbing rangers. Here is a picture of the "office" from just the other day.

I'm not really getting paid, naturally, because that would be much too practical for me. As I've said before (or some variation on it), "Do what you love and you'll be forever f*cking broke."

O Where Have all the Heaters Gone?

2008-01-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

Some days you feel like you are the coolest of free-spirited, don't-tie-me-down, f*ck the Man, I am going to do everything my way and have fun doing it, including live alone forever in my airy urban condo, travel when I want, work when I need, play in a band -- aren't I cool girls. Er, women.

Other days, well, you are just cranky and cold and bored and even though you could be doing anything you damn well please (as long as it doesn't cost more than $10), you spend your whole day slogging through "work" that you should be grateful to have in coffeeshops that don't employ heat even though it is minus 20 outside.

OK so it is not minus 20 it is really mid-40s but it feel so much colder because of that icy rain that continues to fall constantly.

At least I managed to find a new book by my favorite author at the library - James Wilcox - who wrote the novel "Modern Baptists," which is one of the funniest things I've ever read (and I read a lot). No one has ever heard of James Wilcox, which, on the one hand, makes me feel bad for him but on the other hand, makes me feel better for myself because no one has heard of me either which means maybe I'm brilliant too and people just don't know it My book was also at the library - yay! - but checked in. Oh well.

Now I really thought I had something important to say today. Other than to whine of course. But I seem to forget what it is. Today started out better because I managed to get up before 10. All the good intentions in the world don't make it easy to go to bed early when you don't have anywhere to be in the morning! Because why would you go to bed when you could 1)watch bad TV 2)clean your house 3)organize your paperwork 4)practice piano etc etc, all those things you seem only to do at night, the later the better?

All right. That is all. For all you Seattle writer/bloggers out there, remember I'm teaching a blogging class at Richard Hugo House starting in 1.5 weeks and I hope to see you there!

((Photo above by my very talented friend Leslie Duss)

love,
Rebecca

Happy 2008

2008-01-07T11:07:00.000-08:00

OK! I think I have finally recovered enough from the holidays to blog again. My waistline, perhaps, has not recovered from the many pounds of cheese, potato chips, and pizza consumed during my ski trip to the Methow Valley in Eastern Washington--but I overcame my post-holiday blues during a single day of frenzied closet-cleaning and am now back to my usual level of productivity. (Sleep: Nine hours per day. Work: Four hours per day. The rest: Who knows?).

My trip, thank you very much, was delightful - full of blindingly blue skies, powdery white snow, freezing temperatures, and mountains seemingly devoid of people except for us.
They all teemed along the groomed cross-country trails on the valley floor. On "The Methow Valley Community Trail", you can ski for miles and miles past farms, through forest,over charming country bridges draped in snow.

The smiling, spandex clad skate skiers probably teemed along the many other groomed trails too - however, we were too cheap go on those trails, since they cost you a whopping $20 a day. Besides, we hate people.

And once we stepped off the groomers,it was as if we had the entire valley to ourselves. Including one area with wide-open powder slopes and expansive views (only minutes from the road) that we yo yo'd up and down with great gusto, because what more could you want? (Except maybe a lot of money, a book on the bestseller list, a vacation home on an island, and eternal life).

Now I'm back in cold, rainy Seattle where there is no structure in my mostly-unemployed life except that which I create myself. However, I've mostly gotten used to that, carving a structure out of nothing: one that consists of sleeping a lot, spending much time in coffeeshops, working on the feeble second draft of the novel I wrote in November, applying for fun and rewarding-sounding jobs that pay next to nothing, and both dreading and anticipating my return to Hotel Californiasoft two months hence.

When, just over a year ago, I returned to the place from which you can never leave, I meant to have an alternative plan in place by now: one in which I had my ideal combination of jobs and was supporting myself with them but alas, I'm still figuring out what that combination looks like, and failing to make money at any of them.

Though I must send a shout-out to the store "Yeah Baby" in Fairfax, California, which sold 16 copies of my book (on consignment) in under a month! So it's not fair to myself to say I'm not making "any" money doing things I love. I earned enough from those sales to pay for two tanks of gas! Yaay me! And yaay Yeah Baby!

It feels great to know my book can fly off the shelves in the right circumstances. On that positive, caffeine-fueled note, I bid you adieu. Until next time, enjoy this wacky ski video starring yours truly!

Do What You Love and The Money Will Drain out of Your Bank Account

2007-12-20T14:44:00.000-08:00

Well I have to say being unemployed is totally the bomb. All except for the lack of money part. But who needs money when you can go around doing good deeds for humanity with all your spare time?

Like volunteering to teach creative writing to high school kids (which I did earlier today) and being a volunteer tutor and going on "ski patrol" at Mt. Rainier where I will get to wear a radio and feel super important as I ski around sticking poles in the ground (or some such thing) meanwhile getting whipped around by 100-mile an hour winds. Oh yes, and sitting in a sunny cafe, which I am doing at this very moment.

My volunteering has centered around kids and writing because I desperately want to get a job as a "Writer in the School" next year."

I think it's because I was so encouraged and inspired by my teachers when I was young and writing masterpieces like "The Man Who Paid Only In change" (a story you're familiar with if you've read my novel, and if you haven't well, they might be publishing "The Man Who Paid Only in Change" someday if they can ever find the original manuscript which is buried deeply somehwere in my old closet at the family home, which is now blocked by my mother's file cabinets, which is rather annoying as it prevents access to the work of the "young genius" that was me. But I digress.)

I've been enjoying my work with kids so far. I was suprised today by how quiet the high school class was at first. They did not want to speak. I expected they would be boisterous and throwing stuff and saying things like "Up your nose with a rubber hose!" You know, like in Welcome Back Kotter. But no, they were shy and reticent, perhaps dazzled by my glamor or some such thing. Or perhaps they were thinking "What an idiot." In any case, my first question to them -- a cheery "What novels have you read where you really like the character's voice?" went over with a resounding thud when not a single one of them would answer.

They warmed up a bit later of course. But still, it was a good reminder of how shy high-schoolers can be. I also had a tendency to feed them answers to questions because I got nervous that they wouldn't answer and there would be a horrible, awkward silence. I got a little better at it as the class went on.

To conclude, it is a great feeling to be doing things I love rather than sitting in a sterile office, wishing I was anywhere else, editing documents I could care less about (although occasionally there is something soothing in this, it's true.)

They say "do what you love and the money will follow." Ha ha ha. It's more like "Do what you love and drain all the money in your bank account and then start drawing on your credit card until it's finally time check back into to Hotel Californiasoft so you don't go to debtor's prison." (Is there really such a thing as "debtor's prison" anymore? I guess I might find out.)

xoxo

Money. Ha. Who Needs It?

2007-12-12T11:09:00.000-08:00

Greetings from unemploymentland! Since my paychecks are still coming in from my last job, I'm in denial -- doing all sorts of things that are fun and enriching and which earn me no money whatsoever! For example:

Working on my Nanowrimo novel. Oh maybe someday in a perfect world this will earn me some money. But for now, it's a great way to avoid doing... -

Freelance work. Oh yes, this is the one thing I'm doing that is paying me. So of course I avoid it like the plague. The job involves writing marketing copy for GUESS-WHICH-GIANT-SOFTWARE-COMPANY? Yes, that's right, Hotel Californiasoft!

Tutoring at 826Seattle. Get this. Last week I actually tutored in math. Ha ha ha! Like the charming, rambunctious child I tutored I was also counting on my fingers. Luckily it was only addition.

More volunteering. I'm about to start working for a literacy organization called Page Ahead wherein I will read stories to small children, sing songs, and do crafts. Now if I could only get paid $80 bucks and hour for that gig, I could check out of Hotel California AND leave.

Playing with my band. We earned a six whole bucks apiece the other night at our first gig at *Jimmy Z's* in *Everett*, during which I only horribly messed up two songs and wore a very cute sexy new dress that made up for my lack of ability to actually play keyboards.

Going to the gym. I've developed a taste for exercise classes lately wherein loud music is cranked, we dance around with barbells, and buff teachers wearing headsets yell out "work your butt, warm it up!"

Claiming unemployment. This is marginally profitable but lemme tell you, it ain't gonna pay the mortgage.

xo,

Rebecca

I'm Baack!

2007-12-05T10:39:00.000-08:00

I believe I have finally snapped out of my post-Thanksgiving I-am-about-to-be-unemployed-on-top-of-that-I-am-a-loser-self-pitying slugfest. Numerous hours have been spent on the couch; abundant fatty coconut-milk laden dishes have been consumed; and all the routines that kept me sane and happy got left behind on a beach in Zihautanejo where they are currently enjoying margaritas, fiery salsas, and bathtub-warm waters without me.

However! I am now back in a functioning and energetic state. Perhaps it was due to the raw food lunch I had yesterday, which prompted a frenzy of post-office-going, sexy-dress-buying, car-cleaning, grocery-shopping, and, get this, cookie baking, that hasn't been seen since the likes of oh, early November.

OK, so the cookies were made from the Pilsbury dough that comes in a log and all you have to do is break of the pieces and throw them in the oven. But still. It's a far cry from the me who lay unmoving on the couch on Monday while the northwest threatened to float away.

Me. Back. Vacation. Ugh.

2007-11-30T08:37:00.000-08:00

Hola! I returned from my Mexican vacation in body if not spirit and promptly became a hibernating creature: eating too much, sleeping too much, and covering my beautiful tan in layers of wool clothing.

Whine. Whine. Yes, you know me, I always fall into a funk after vacation when I must deal with the mundane details of life after losing myself in adventure, or, in this case, sitting on a beach, snorkeling, sleeping, drinking margaritas, and eating deliciously spicy moles and salsas that makes our food here seem so blah and band and pale (which is why in my post-vacation-face-stuffing-phase, I am eating the spiciest foods I can get my hands on: Indian, Thai, and of course, more Mexican).

I am also about to enter what is certain to be a most busy and creative and financially remunerative time: unemployment. Oh yes, I have many projects in mind, such as getting two-pack abs, creating a filing system for my home (ha ha), cleaning out my storage locker (ha ha ha), and revising the 50,000-word federal disaster zone that is my is my Nanowrimo novel.

Meanwhile, as my current tenure at Geeksoft comes to an end, I look around its sterile hallways and long - slightly - for the security I once had there. The money that flowed in, the ESPP plan, the health benefits handed down directly from God.

I look at the Geeksoft job listings and think: Maybe. Maybe I could do it again. But it is like a port in a storm that I must pass by as I complete my lonely voyage to God-knows-where.

Alas. That is the idealistic view. I'll probably be back. If not as a full-time-employee with the handcuffs of gold then as a contractor with manacles of silver. 'Cause that place is like the Hotel F*cking California. Let's sing it all together now: You can check out any time you like but...

Amazon Ranking Through the Roof! Sort of.

2007-11-16T11:23:00.000-08:00

Well! I am happy to report that my novel has catapulted from its 700,000-something ranking on Amazon to --- ok, are you sitting down? -- to the 100,000's. Whoohoo! I'm raising my empty grande latte glass as we speak (which inspired yet another unpleasant episode at the coffee shop this morning but never mind about that!)

This, I'm deducing is all thanks to my inclusion in the National Novel Writing Month FAQ - in particular the question - "Has anyone had their novel published?

And there, shining like a brass ring for all those thousands of hungry would-be novelists, is the name of my book and a link to Amazon. (I am by no means the most glamorous example of a published NaNoWriMo author - Sara Gruen wrote a first draft of the wonderful and bestselling "Water for Elephants" during National Novel Writing Month).

Now I'm laboring away at yet another crappy first draft, full of gaping plot holes thousands of feet deep, shadowy corners where once-lively characters and plot lines die an obscure death, and questions that refused to be answered, like what does my main character want anyway?

But NaNoWriMo is all about not looking back. And my greatest challenge lies ahead, anyway, when I go to Mexico for five days next week and must continue to write every day -- under a palapa with a Corona in hand and bathtub-warm water only feet away!

So Many Blogs, So Little Time

2007-11-15T11:12:00.000-08:00

I'm up to my ears in freelance assignments and Nanowrimo but I have posted over on my author blog today!

xo,
Rebecca

What Do Mermaids Eat?

2007-11-06T10:15:00.000-08:00

If your life as a regular old human being working a 9-5 job for the man is getting you down, the "Character and Plot Realism Q&A" forum on the National Novel Writing Month Web might cheer you up. This the place where writers who are frantically working away on their novels this month can ask questions of other writers and self-proclaimed "experts" for advice about how to make their own stories more realistic. Recent threads include:

Things (other than arson) that could set fire to a house?
What would make a god want to have a child?
Reason for having two different eye-colors?
If you drop something down a grate on an NYC street, how do you get it out?
Mistakes a time-travelling Japanese American would make in feudal Japan?
Bounty hunters - how does it work?
Is this band name too emo?
What do you do with a dead dog?
Private detective's choice in cigarettes?
What do mermaids eat?

Stop Quotation Mark Abuse!

2007-10-29T19:09:00.000-07:00

Well I partially solved the winter wardrobe problem by spending my entire savings account at Benneton the other day for the purchase of four sweaters and a winter coat.

Now at least I have the basics.

I didn't even really know Benneton was still around. I do recall shopping there when I was about 12, thinking the sweaters were beautiful, and very-well folded, and exorbitantly expensive. I remember them costing about $200 apiece but this can't be right since they now go for about $40. Perhaps it just seemed that way because back then I only got a dollar a week allowance.

I also remember going on some rant about Benneton ads back in a graduate school class - oh yes - when they were featuring people who were HIV-positive in their ads. I don't remember what I said exactly, although I probably used the word "otherness" a lot because that's a word they like to use in grad school. No doubt it wasn't nearly as entertaining as the oral report (ahem) that I gave on sex toys, pontificating on the sociocultural implications of vibrating dildos as I waved one around in front of the class.

Those were the days.

So back to me. I want to direct to you to a blog after my own heart -- The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks . Those of you who've been privileged to ride up the elevator in my condo with me know that one of my favorite pastimes is dissecting the grammatical errors in the flyers created by the condo board, which are often full of unnecessary quotes. They are fond, for example, of using the phrase "We are sorry for the inconvenience." So clearly they are not sorry at all, not for the inconvenience, and not for perpetrating ghastly punctuation on those imprisoned in the slow (and might I add, dangerous elevator).

Perhaps, like Lynn Truss, the author of the very entertaining Eats, Shoots & Leaves dreams of doing, I should create stickers to post on offending material. "Stop quotation mark abuse!" or some such thing.

Or maybe I should just get a life.

Winter Wardrobe Blues

2007-10-24T12:36:00.000-07:00

You know, it's a good thing the paparazzi aren't stalking me anymore because I'd probably end up on some worst-dressed lists, or on Go Fug Yourself or something.

I did OK during the summer with the addition of an all-purpose denim skirt and black capri pants to my wardrobe. Those, along with the many halter tops I seem to own, did just fine.

Winter, however, is another matter. I did buy one nice sweater - a soft, gray, long thing. But it poufs out in the middle and makes me look pregnant (not that there is anything wrong with looking pregnant, mind you, if one IS pregnant). If one can't look thin AND stylish, is it better to look thin? Or stylish?

In any case, I have to wear the thing, because the rest of my sweaters have 1)shrunk in the wash so that they reveal my torso in a very unflattering and out-of-date way 2)are from Value Village and look like it. The winter pants in my wardrobe, moreover, are 1)stained 2)have malfunctioning zippers or 3)give me diaper-butt.

Sigh. How did it get this way? I love the winter but not when I have to go out looking like such a fashion reject. Used to be I had many sweaters, in all sorts of shapes and sizes. I wore miniskirts and tights and boots to work all the time! Have I gotten old? Is that why I don't feel like wearing miniskirts anymore? Or is it just that the pair of Target black boots I have are much too uncomfortable to wear for more than five minutes?

Luckily I'll be heading off to Mexico in a month and I can bring back those tank tops and the denim skirt for a few days. Not to mention my pink bikini, for whose sake I am now working out every day.

But coming up soon I will be taking the stage again so it is more important than ever that I find some cute outfits to wear. That's right, my rock and roll career has awoken from it's comatose slumber! I'm playing keyboards with a country outfit fronted by a very talented songwriter who tackles those good ole country themes like war, drunkenness, betrayal, absent fathers, hardscrabble small towns, and hardworking horses.

And I'm especially excited because I get to sing a song about a woman who 1)takes off her wedding ring than goes to cheat on her husband, but 2)then there's a tornado, and she 3)rushes back to find her house destroyed and is worried 4)that her husband has died in the tornado and 5)that her wedding ring is lost forever but then 6)her husband turns up and 7)so does the wedding ring, and 8)she realizes what a fool she'd been and all she needs is her husband and family to be happy, so screw the damn tornado.

I mean, I was BORN to sing this song even if I've never been in a tornado, or had a wedding ring, or a husband, for that matter. The only question is, what does one wear to sing such a song? Should I follow Dolly's leopard-printed lead?

--Love, Rebecca
Today's blog entry brought to you by numbered lists.

I Heart Vacation

2007-10-16T18:14:00.000-07:00

Why can't all of life be like vacation? Sleeping 11 hours a night, waking up to freshly-brewed coffee, sightseeing all day, ignoring all mundane wordly cares such as bills, where-in-hell-is-your-career-going, that article that's due why you seem to be incapable of love, etc etc.

But, on the positive side of things, all my limbs are intact, bodily organs are functioning, Seattle is awash in fall colors, and they had a copy of my book in the Williamsburg Virginia Barnes and Noble!

Most of the time I don't even LOOK for BreakupBabe anymore because more of than not, she's not there. The thought hadn't even entered my head when I walked into this B&N but then GalPal #2, sneaky little devil that she is, went and looked for it - and found it! So of course I signed it with great ceremony as all her family gathered around and they put the little silver sticker on it that says "Autographed by author."

Thus did I feel the glow of stardom once again, if ever so briefly.

The other highlight of my vacation was spending a day at the Washington DC museums by myself - romping through the National Gallery - so airy and full of bright colors, touching the moon in the Air and Space Museum, stopping for delicious fry bread in the Museum of the American Indian...

There is something very special about going to museums by yourself. All that art for you to take in at your own pace, no one to tug or bug you or tell you they want to leave. The book Artist's Way recommends that aspiring artists go on weekly "artist's dates," where they do creatively stimulating outings by themselves. I love this idea and have always aspired to do the weekly artist's date but have managed maybe twice in the 10 years since I read that book.

That day in DC made up for a lot of lost artist's dates. More sobering was my trip to the Holocaust Museum, and then, following that, dragging myself to see all the memorials in the unseasonably high heat and humidity, practically keeling over as I dutifully joined the crowds at the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam War Memorial.

Then there was the trip to the Shenandoah Valley. Once the camping portion of the trip began, of course, is when it became freezing cold (AND WHEN WE REALIZED THE FALL COLORS WERE NOT GOOD THIS YEAR. I SAID I WAS GOING TO KICK SOME ASS IF THEY WEREN'T. DIDN'T I? DIDN'T I?) But nonetheless, Dave and I managed to have fun, getting in only one jet-lag induced fight, exploring the Appalachian Trail, freezing our asses off, marveling at the Deliverance-style accents we heard, etc etc.

That's me above, looking oh-so-pensively out at the nearly nonexistent fall foliage from Hawksbill Mountain and deciding whose ass to kick. This is the HIGHEST mountain in Shenandoah National Park at 4,000-something feet, these mountains being all ground-down and rounded by age unlike our youthful and still erect Cascades.

Rebecca

O, When Will My Bed be Clean?

2007-09-28T16:03:00.000-07:00

Ah yes, pardonnez moi for being so long absent. I have been busy doing Lord knows what. Learning how to dump over in a kayak and not drown. Visiting family in the Bay Area. Working hard for one insane week at Geeksoft headquarters only return to my sun-dappled life of leisure this week. Rewriting yet again that article about backcountry skiing that I struggled with so hard the first time only to have it come back and BITE ME IN THE ASS.

As I've said I-don't-know-how-many-times before, DON'T BECOME A WRITER. Unless, that is, you want to suffer constant rejection from snooty editors who don't even bother to reply to your query letters (never mind that you are a published NOVELIST, ahem!); constant self-doubt and guilt; and the fear that you will never ever make a living doing what you love because most likely you WON'T.

I should have listened to my father when he told me to become a computer programmer. But if he wanted me to be a computer programmer why did he feed me the Great Novels from an early age instead of, say, programming manuals? Why did he tell me that I could be ANYTHING I WANTED TO BE, pay for my college tuition, and not make me do any chores, therefore ensuring that I would grow up impractical, lazy, and unfit for anything except daydreaming?

Hmmph.

Methinks perhaps I have been travelling a bit too much. You can always tell how recently I've been on a trip by how much crap is piled on my bed. When in a state of post-travel disarray, I keep the rest of my condo relatively neat and dump everything on my bed. Sometimes I can hardly sleep for the piles of luggage, shoes, books, magazines, toiletries, that threaten to push me off the side.

Right now the pile is medium high due to last weekend's whirwind trip to the Bay Area. As soon as I get it cleared off it will be time to embark on my next trip - nine whole days in Washington DC and Virginia - a part of this lovely country to which I've never been! I'll be visiting Galpal #2 in DC and then hiking around in the Shenandoah Valley hopefully where I better see some great fall colors or I'm gonna kick some serious ass. Got that Mother Nature?

Meanwhile, tentative work on the new potential-possible-novel-in-progress continues. Coming to a bookstore near you in 10 years!

xo
R

Waiting. Procrastinating. Daydreaming.

2007-09-11T09:11:00.000-07:00

Sigh.

I am in a phase where I am just WAITING. Waiting to hear from people who - damn them! - should be rushing to call me. To hire me! To stock my book! To buy my articles!

But my inbox remains stubbornly clean except for spam.

Meanwhile, Dave and I did host the best beach party ever on the face of the planet last Saturday. The weather cooperated too, spreading sunny splendor over his verdant lawn and lovely little slice of beachfront property (oh we thank you parental types for your financial foresight back in the day when you were drinking martinis at lunch, making Boeing great, and snapping up property that would one day make your children gazillionaires, that is if they could afford the property taxes, which they can't, but still, they can at least throw great parties!)

Then, on Sunday, we enjoyed the great weather further by paddling in and around the Arboretum. There were so many people there that at I felt like I was on a water ride at Disneyland but we escaped by paddling across the lake (nearly getting run over by boat traffic in the process) to the shores of Laurelhurst, where I was going for a very peaceful swim alongside the kayak until the cursed milfoil (invasive, foreign weed!) got so thick it started wrapping its tentacles around my neck, suspiciously like a giant squid, and threatening to drag me down to the bottom of the lake.

Nonetheless, I have enjoyed my many swims in Lake Washington this summer, courtesy of aforementioned beachfront property. Slipping from the kayak into the water (or jumping in from the dock), looking down into the peaceful (scary) blackness of the lake, looking up to make sure Dave is still there paddling next to me as I do my cross-city swims (Bellevue to Mercer Island!), adjusting to the temperature, and - at last - stepping out of the water exhilarated, the days worries washed away by whatever scary bacteria is in the lake.

And now. Well right now I am just procrastinating. I should be working on my next novel, you know, the one that is finally going to make me famous and let me escape my benevolent master, Geeksoft -- or at the very least I should be looking for a job that will pay the bills when my forced 100-day break comes up in December instead of waiting to hear from non-profit employers whose jobs I desperately want, the salaries of which wouldn't pay for pellets for a guinea pig (good thing I don't have one anymore, but remind me to tell you about the failed guinea pig empire of my youth) but anyway, it's easier not to do all that practical stuff and just daydream the morning away.

Finally, you should go out and buy a copy of the paperback version of Beachglass by Wendy Blackburn - not least because it's a very good novel: sad, funny, satisying -- but because yours truly has a BLURB in it. Yes, that's right. My first blurb! I'm so proud.

Post Labor Day Blues

2007-09-05T08:02:00.000-07:00

I returned from the long weekend on Monday and still have barely regained consciousness. Yesterday was a Lost Day. I went to the office but my soul was somewhere else, hiding. I was catatonic, unproductive, grumpy. Everything reminded me of my own creeping decreptitude and eventual doom.

All except the fact that I did write 1,000 words in what is my next-sure-to-be-discarded manuscript! During that hour-and-a-half period of the day, I escaped to a parallel world where I was Lord God Creator of the Universe and only my characters suffered and decayed and had stupid dreams and I floated above it all in my latte-induced omiscience.

The weekend was spent recreating in that giant playground that is my backyard. Paddling glacial blue-green lakes and hiking along trails populated with bears and eye-popping views.

(The bear, who we dubbed Carl, is not visible in this photo -- of Lake Ann taken from Maple Pass in North Cascades National Park-- but that's because, unbeknownst to us, he was right behind us on the trail).

There was a wee bit of tension in our REI tent since co-captain Dave apparently, envisioned having time to "relax" on his vacation while I pictured it as a nonstop three day marathon of strenuous mountain-related activity ending at midnight on Monday as we collapsed exhausted into our beds.

We worked this situation out by - how do you say -- "compromising." I am not very good at this "compromising" though I tried to do it with a modicum of grace. I therefore only complained quietly three or four times - instead of the usual 25 -- when we came home early on Monday for "relaxation" purposes rather than squeezing every last drop out of the weekend.

Next on the docket comes a kayaking class so Dave and I can learn to rescue ourselves should our sturdy kayak (pictured above on Diablo Lake) capsize and so we can learn about tides and currents and such so as not to get swept under bridges like those kayakers in Boston! And so I can continue my quest to become jock of all adventure sports, master of none!

Summer Reading in Sun-Deprived Seattle

2007-08-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

I am really ready to start writing another novel. I mean REALLY.

(Photo of edited draft of BreakupBabe by Leslie Duss).

The thing is, since our whale-tastic vacation, I've been dreaming about whales again. Almost nonstop. Big, barnacle-covered, bad boys.

They're both awesome and frightening in my dreams, so close that I'm afraid of falling in the water and getting eaten by one. You know what THIS means. It means there is an idea under there, bubbling around in my self-conscious, that is about to erupt and take over my life.

I have been reading some of our more bestselling authors lately. Jodi Picoult for one, Nicholas Sparks for another. Yes, Nicholas Sparks, OK! Just get over it! Someone gave me The Guardian and though I put it off I ran out of novels and started reading it and now I can't stop!

Though I find myself struggling, at times, with the ludicrousness of the plots (Picoult), the crudity of the writing (Sparks), these are books I'm dying to get back to at night. These writers are skilled storytellers. Sparks, in particular, proves you don't need a fancy plot to make a gripping story.

His writing appears so simple that he makes it seem EASY and you know when something seems easy it's not. Which reminds me of one of my all-time favorite writers, Alexander McCall Smith. Now here is a true master. With his No. #1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, he writes stories that are funny, sad, and uplifting with a structure and voice so seemingly simple you think "I CAN WRITE LIKE THIS!"

And of course you can't. So at first these stories are inspiring and then they are truly depressing - when you sit down to write your own simple, beautiful masterpiece only to produce garbled nothingness, but I digress.

In other news, I have too many effing blogs. I need to rein in my sprawling Web presence.

In other, other news, while we were on our whaletastic whale-watching trip, co-captain Dave channeled Jacques Cousteau to narrate this Academy-Award winning video "The Sea is a Lonely Place." The narration is hard to hear and gets drowned out (no pun intended, ha ha) completely after the first half but you can still see some whalies swimming around.

Whale-tastic Vacation

2007-08-14T08:58:00.000-07:00

Just returned from vacation and you all know how I feel about THAT.

Bills piled up blah blah. Boring work to do blah blah. World shrinking down from big wide wave-slapped orca-studded to an 8x10 cell encasing me and my two officemates like an overstuffed sausage.

I shall cease my whining now, however, and focus on the *positive.* Like how very relaxing it was to sit on the deck of our lodge and look out at this view.

How very excited I got when we went on a whale-watching trip and I saw more orcas than I could ever have dreamed of? Jumping, swimming, slapping their tails and generally being whale-tastic. I snapped this photo of a humpback, who would obligingly flip his tail up in this photogenic manner.

We did see a few whales while on kayaks but they were so far away as almost not to count.

Whether these whales I paid to see "count" I don't know. Now that I saw them will the idea for my next novel come to me? Or does a giant whale need to come to me unbidden in my dreams? Oh who knows. Who cares.

Before I can move on to my next novel I have to finish this $#%@! article about skiing that I keep trying to grapple to the ground and that keeps jumping up and knocking ME over. I'm the writer here? Aren't I supposed to be in charge? Huh? HUH?

But back to kayaking and my trip with Sea Kayak Adventures. The food was delicious, the scenery was stunning. There were seals, sea lions, and more bald eagles than I have ever seen in my life.

I was rudely awakened every morning at 7:30 a.m. by a breakfast bell then mocked for stumbling in after everyone else but it was a small price to pay for making an escape into this corner of the world known as God's Pocket where my biggest challenge was trying to get my spray skirt on and not gorge myself on the new desserts that appeared every single day.

More later. XO,

Rebecca

On the Trail of the Elusive Three-Toed Byline

2007-08-03T09:32:00.000-07:00

I forgot to mention to y'all that you should immediately go out and buy the August issue of Seattle Metropolitan Magazine, in which I have an article.

The article is not available online, although you can see a description of it on their Web site where it describes this month's issue.

My article has nothing to do with food. It's all about tracking wild animals. Which I guess COULD be about food, or WAS thousands of years ago, and still IS for some people but not for us yuppies in Seattle. For us it's all about getting in touch with nature and our long-lost hunter gatherers and its actually quite a cool experience. Read the article and you'll know all about it!

OK now I really am going on vacation.

xo,
Rebecca

O Whale, Where Art Though?

2007-08-02T08:12:00.000-07:00

Darlings,
I just wanted to alert you that if you don't hear from me for a while it's not because I've finally been given the big pink tour bus and carte blanche to go where I will but it's because I'm piloting a kayak in the Queen Charlotte strait looking for whales with Sea Kayak Adventures.

Yes WHALES. Do you know why? Those of you who've read my novel knows that a whale figures prominently in the book. In fact, the whale is one of the few symbols I managed to get in there.

Our erstwhile heroine, Rachel, dreams about a giant whale just as she is going through her breakup with Loseur. She realizes that this whale symbolizes her creativity and that something creative is going to come out of this breakup, though she doesn't know what it is.

That creative burgeoning is her blog, of course. Her blog, and mine, since I had the same dream. And I tell you, in my dream that whale was BIG. It scared the living daylights out of me and excited me at the same time.

But since the whale's prophesy has come true, she's nowhere to be seen. Hello? Whale? Don't I get to write another book? You can't just leave me like this! Come back? Please?

Oh I've seen a few barracuda, some Sergeant Majors, and a pufferfish or two. But nothing bigger than that in the last two years. They're cute and all but they just don't cut it as far as major inspiration goes.

Thusly I am heading north to Canadian waters. Where I will be kayaking for one week hoping to glimpse the whale again. Humpback, orca, grey whale, I don't care. Any old whale will do.

Wish me luck. I shall return August 14, God willing.

xo