Final Covers (Maybe)

Whew, that was a lot of messing about. I finally found Microsoft Photo Draw on this computer and got that going for cover design. Ugh, if only I'd used it from the start. Oh well, I'll just chalk it up to blonde-ness and move on. I'm ready to send Katherine some covers and either get a decision on which to use, or get suggestions on what else to try.

Here are some of the finals:

This one is my favorite:

Transparent

"What are you reading now?"

-One of Jenny's favorite questions

Book Review: Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers, by Cris Beam.

I ventured out to the library last night, and this book caught my eye. I found a place to sit, opened it up, and read almost half in one sitting. Let’s face it, gender identity and sexuality are interesting topics which are growing less taboo. You definitely never would have seen Queer as Folk in the fifties.

So, what happens is you end up with about three categories: biological sex, gender, and sexual preference. For most people, biological sex and gender match, and sexual preference is heterosexual. For some, there’s a shift. The weird thing is, a lot of people seem to get uncomfortable with anyone who’s outside the “norm.” It’s scary to hear of all the gay bashings and other assaults, some of which Beam talks about. Just because someone’s a biological male who wears female garb, that’s enough to permanently injure them? Come on.

Beam, a non-transgender lesbian, talks about the transgender/transsexual teens she met while volunteering, and talks about those teens’ experiences in the transworld. There’s some crazy, hateful stuff. Kids who are literally thrown out because they identify with the opposite gender. I can’t imagine throwing my son out because he wears dresses, that’s too cruel. Of course, these examples come from overall dysfunctional families, so it’s not as big of a stretch to imagine an abusive crack addict disowning their child as it is to imagine people like my parents doing the same – though I know my parents would be uneasy with the concept.

Anyhow, good book. Beam only wanders into the realm of the sappy “I want to be your mommy” once or twice, and she gives a lot of information, most of it disturbing. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone interested in the topic.

Writerly Blogs

"In which Miss Snark vents her wrath on the hapless world of writers and crushes them to sand beneath her T.Rexual heels of stiletto snark."
-Miss Snark's Blog description

For a while now, I've heard Deb talk about the agent and editor blogs she reads on a regular basis. So, I've decided to check some of them out. You'll see I've added links to two of them on the sidebar. Funny stuff, and very informative. Go read them. Now.

February 2007 Meeting

"I just wasn't interested."
-Part of Oliver's critique of he who shall remain unnamed

I walked in to the back room of Barnes & Noble to find two surprising things:
1. A whole four visitors
2. A member who previously went AWOL, presumed dropped-out

Visitors can be fun, so no worries there. However, I was markedly less pleased to see the returned member. We worked long and hard to chase him away, damnit! Why am I so mean? He wrote a saga about a twelve-year-old girl prodigy hero who had, like mood swings, vast changes in character. She often went from whiny sprat to the gal all the adults followed within the distance of only a paragraph. There were other problems, too, some of which were kinda creepy – like how the EVIL spaceship captain was going to rape her. It just wasn’t right. Whenever you are an adult male writing about a twelve-year-old girl threatened with rape, you must tread very carefully. Not to mention that he stayed with the rape/violence to young gals in a handful of short stories he submitted to the group after giving up on the space saga. A bit disturbing. Now he’s back. On the bright side, he did mention that he might move to one of the other groups. I’ve got all my fingers, and toes, crossed for that one.

The good news is that our own child (okay, not child, he’s legal) prodigy, Oliver, has returned after missing two months to go sing and be at a sibling’s birthday party. Also fortunate was his critique of another member’s submission. Brief note on this other member – he’s arrogant, condescending, and writes poorly (excellent combination). So, hearing Oliver’s critique was definitely a high point. While very smart, Oliver lacks tact, so while you can count on him to make good points in a critique, you can also count on him to sound a bit insulting – not intentional, but still there. He’s known to make comments like, “this annoyed me” or “I just didn’t care if he died.” Great fun.

During dinner after the meeting, we got on the topic of a group romance novel Jenny got some of us English majors started on a few years ago during a night at the bar. The hilarious part was that each person would take their portion right up to the point where things were about to get dirty, then pass it on. The next person would then do a fake out in the lines of “but just then, her father walked in…” then build up to getting dirty and pass it. This wasn’t planned, but things just worked out that way, much to our entertainment. She’s planning to take some seeds from that night to create a whole novel, the outline of which sounds hilarious. I told her she should start it ASAP, but she was being obstinate and talking about some other project she wanted to do first. Bah!

However, those of us at dinner decided to honor the endeavor by creating our own multi-authored romantic saga. Starting with Oliver, one person each month will write a sequential chapter of the novel. It should be fun.

Designing the Cover

"You'll have to buy Adobe Photoshop, I can't just download it."
-Tech Help Guy

What a pain in the ass. I have no photoshop programs on this computer, nor is buying one an option. Thus, I had to scramble and do some trial and error to figure out just how in the hell I was going to design the Anthology cover. Finally, I figured I might be able to pull it off in Word.

Converting from word to PDF creates problems, but at least I have something to work from. Here's my first prototype cover (includes front & back).

Dangley

Green seed beads and blue and purple faceted pony beads hung on chain.

Dumbass Undergrads

"I'm looking for the office of __"
-Undergrad

Okay, yes she has office hours here. But, this is not the time for her office hours. Then, he asks me when her office hours are, like I keep track. All I know is that I don't come in until 11:30 on Thursdays so I won't interrupt them. The brilliant thing is, though, every professor in the world has this nifty thing called a syllabus, and guess what? That's where their office hours are listed. Pay attention, it helps.

See? Still a bit grouchy. I really want to go home, not to the bar. Ugh, again.

Close, But Not Quite

I got up this morning, plugged my camera into my computer and started downloading pictures from yesterday - 84 total - while I hopped in the shower. When I got out, all the pictures were on my computer, so I stuck them on a disk and put it by my keys. Well, I later picked up my keys and walked away, knowing I'd be back for the disk.

Right. I got to campus and said, "Damnit!" No disk. No picture editing fun today. I'm inordinately bummed about that. I don't think it helps that I'm still sick, though not as much as before, and I'm going to be working at the bar tonight. So, I sound bad because of my congestion and I get to talk to people all night when I'd much rather be at home in bed. Ugh.

Anthology Progress

"Ok, I've added Adobe [on his end] and it'll take up to an hour to get to you."
-David from the Tech Office

In the process of trying to do this anthology, it’s been funny to see what kind of problems have popped up. For one, the printer prefers PDF documents, and until today, I had no way of making any. Then I called Tech help and, with minimal trouble, got him to upload/download/whatever-the-hell Adobe onto my computer via the network from his computer. Wow, mouthful. So, now I have PDF capabilities. Then, I got to do cut ‘n’ pasting for a while, then spend some time making formats consistent, then E-mail Katherine to find out which schools the 2005 TCs (Teacher Consultants/i.e. Institute Participants) are affiliated with.

The fun part is that I brought my spiffy new digital camera along today and just spent a good forty minutes wandering around campus in the wind, regretting that I didn’t have some kind of hair restraint device, and taking pictures. I took two kinds of pictures: textures and images. I’m thinking a two-layer cover design where one of my texture pictures will go from the front to back cover, and the front will be highlighted with a piece of artwork I photographed. The University likes artwork, so I got to get some mosaic pictures and one of a giant (10 ft. or more tall) paper airplane sculpture. The sculpture makes me excited, because paper airplanes fit in with writing! Hey, it’s a notebook paper airplane, so it’s even lined. The trick will be if it works. I’m not sure because there’s a lot of background to it, even if I crop. I guess I’ll just have to try it and see. Cross your fingers. I'll put up some pictures once I get them downloaded.

Another highlight of the day was realizing that the price quote I got from Fidlar Doubleday is now a moot point because I used a page count that included the 2005 essays, but not the 2006. So, we go from approx. 105 pages to 165. Whups. Still, I don’t imagine the price will be that much different (I’m really hoping not).

Special bonus: my cold is fading, a bit. I’m no longer the walking plague, though I still sound horrible. Less mucus, though, which is always good.

Purple Net

Sometime ago, maybe a year already, Beadbox went out of business. During their clearance, I ordered some square-ish purple swirly beads. Then I tried to figure out what to do with them. Over Christmas break, I found myself sitting in front of the TV working on bead projects. Since I had a lot of time to kill, I focused on necklaces that were a little more labor intensive than straight forward stringing. This necklace started out as a daisy chain, then, when that didn't take long enough, I added a few layers of net and finished the last off with the purple beads I'd been trying to do something with for a while. Viola!

When I was trying to get good pictures of my jewelry, I tried using a piece of tan flannel as my back drop. While I like the texture, I don't care for the color. Ah well, I'll just have to keep trying.

What SCWP is About

"The best teachers of teachers are other teachers.
The best teachers of writing are writers themselves."
-Writing Project Saying

I realized that, while I make mention of the SCWP (Southern Colorado Writing Project) here and there, I have never actually said what it was. Oops. The jist: The Writing Project got started in Berkeley in the 70's. It emphasizes that learning any subject will be helped by writing. The idea is to gather together local K-16 teachers to get them writing and thinking about how to use writing in their classes. It's a neat idea, and I believe it really works - and I've seen some evidence, too. The SCWP is a relatively new pranch of the National Writing Project. If you're still curious, here's the website http://www.scwponline.org

My part in it is as Katherine's assistant. The particulars of my job vary quite a bit, but focus on peripherals - like making copies, creating lists and documents, or sending out mailings. The real fun/challenge comes from the anthologies. SCWP does two types of anthology: an essay anthology which comes out of writing produced during the Institute, and a Writing Marathon anthology which comes out of writing produced by Marathon participants. So far I've done editing work on both types of anthology, and now I'm working on publishing the 2006 essay anthology. It's scary, because I'm more or less doing it all: formatting, design, layout, etc.

The bonus of being the SCWP assistant is that I get to pick up a lot via osmosis. Transcribing feedback sheets tells me about what's going on in teachers' heads. Copying hand outs gives me an idea of general discussions. Going to meetings gives me gossip on local school politics. The list goes on. The osmosis has been helpful for me in terms of thinking on how I ought to run my own class - assuming I'm accepted for a TA this coming fall.

Kids, Publishing, and Chocolate

“You rock, Ali!”
-Katherine

The past couple of days have been fairly eventful for me. Eventful enough so that I’m very much looking forward to Friday, when I’ll have a day off.

Saturday: Okay, mostly positive. When I saw the schedule, I knew it was too good to be true. Me, the first one in on a Saturday (and thus, the first to go home)? Right. The minute I got to the bar on Saturday, Dave told me that Rebecca called in sick, so it was just me all night. No problem, I thought, it’s been dead for over a month. Ha! Saturday was not so dead. In fact, I set a new personal sales record $908. A hectic night, but ultimately a profitable one. Next month’s car payment, here I come!

Sunday: Polymer day. I spent about four hours experimenting with canes and making beads – ended up with about five or six necklaces worth.

Monday: Started an overnight babysit, which means a nice check in my wallet.

Tuesday: Did the substitute mom thing, including waking up really early, getting a five-year-old ready for school, picking the five year old and two of her friends up for lunch and tennis (and oh-what-fun it is to wrangle two four-year-old boys with lots of energy), and going to gymnastics. Then, after Carly had her bath, I corrupted her mind because we watched Miami Ink while I combed out her hair. Okay, I’m not worried about the corruption. Miami Ink is a nifty show which emphasized artistry and personal stories vs. the “so cool” non-conservative aura of tattoos. To top it off – this gal who lives and breathes cartoons actually liked it.

Wednesday: Finished babysitting once the kids were off to school and came to the office to find a nifty e-mail. I’ve been collecting publishing price quotes for the Writing Project’s 2006 Essay anthology. Fidlar Doubleday can do the project (approx. 100 pages, 150 copies) for about $500, which is nearly a grand less than Katherine’s total budget for the project. I’m feeling kinda pleased with myself on that one. Now I just have to get the anthology ready for publishing – which is something I’ve never done. Right now the anthology is a handful of Word documents which have been proofread, but that’s about it. I have to now combine them, format them, create a contents page, etc. and then convert them to a PDF so I can send the “output ready” document to the publisher. Oh yeah, and Katherine’s given me the job of designing the cover also. So, aside from actually printing the book, I’ve kind of been delegated to being the publisher. On one hand – mundo cool. On the other – very scary and intimidating.

In other news - it's Valentine's day, so there's chocolate cake in the main office. Yay!

One for Katherine

In lieu of getting each other Christmas gifts, Keith and I took a trip to Denver where I picked up some bronzite and gold pearls. I put them together and when I wore it to the office, Katherine asked to buy it. She quite liked the bronzite - which I think is cool, it's a very unusual looking stone.

Lightly Frosted

"Wow."
-Misty

Last night as we were leaving Katherine's class, Misty and I were more than a little surprised to find pea soup fog waiting for us. Thick stuff. It was pretty impressive. On the first stretch of the drive home, through mostly deserted highway, I could hardly see beyond my headlights. Pretty unusual in Colorado. This morning was neat, though, with all the fog frozen on the plants. Here are some pictures from my back yard.

A Dog Named Jack and the Metafictional Girl

Hostess at exclusive restaurant: And when were you hoping to dine with us?

Alex: Two years from tomorrow.

Hostess: Two years from tomorrow?

Alex: Yeah.

Hostess: Two years?

Alex: From tomorrow.

-The Lake House

Movie Review: The Lake House. A lovely romance adapted from a Korean movie. Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock both give good performances and I love their dog. The only problem is that the main premise - the time crossover - doesn't make sense. Obviously, these people missed their prerequisite Star Trek episodes. Moral of the story: don't fuck with quantum physics. Well, that's exactly what Bullock and Reeves do. Okay, that minor incident aside, what about the damn mailbox? Why the hell is it suddenly a time portal? I mean, as far as premises go... If they had some kind, any kind of explanation for it, I'd be willing to bite. The problem is, they don't. So, it's a nice story as long as you ignore the logic holes and lack of continuity.

Movie Review: Lady in the Water. I heard mixed things about this one. Some liked it, some didn’t, and most figured it worthwhile for the metafiction more than the story itself. Well, when the gal’s name is Story, the metafiction is pretty obvious. I liked the sweetness of it, the metafiction stuff was interesting, but come on – why does everyone go along with it so easily? If my neighbor said, “Hey, this girl is a sea nymph and you’ve got to help me fight sod monsters,” I’d probably nod, smile, and lock the door. Most interesting was the writerly stuff, very fun was the critic stuff, and kind of lame was the rest of it.

Picture

Your dad failed!
-Mom

N.O.W. & Sales

"Which one do you think Tamar would like better?"
-Chris

Last week some of David's friends from PA came to visit and Anissa talked up my jewelry, saying they shold buy something for their wives. I brought some necklaces to Eilers on Friday (where David was singing) and Chris picked out the red necklace from my first N.O.W. post, while Brent ordered one to match the necklace I made for Anissa. She picked one out, also, which she wants modified. So, three necklaces in one night. Not bad - makes me smiley.

Anissa liked this necklace, but without the pendant and with a silver toggle vs. a gold one. Okay, no problem. A quick remake and viola! Another necklace for Anissa.

Grr...argh

Alas, 'twas not meant to be.

http://whedonesque.com/comments/12385#more

Hopefully, this means he can get to work on Goners, finish it up quickly, and get on to the next project. TV, Joss, do more TV. I'd much rather have the forty-odd minutes of show every week than two hours of movie every other year.

Dope, Dogs, and Stop Animation

Matthew: "She doesn't want a relationship with someone irresponsible. And I don't want a relationship with someone who isn't Nicky."
-Craig Ferguson, Saving Grace

Movie Review: Saving Grace. Sure, the blurb on Netflix sounded good, but I wasn’t expecting to laugh so much. I got to hand it to Craig Ferguson, the man’s funny. As both co-writer and co-star of the movie, he does a good job of showcasing his talent. Though it has some sweet, emotional, and even tense moments, the movie is founded on clever lines and goof ball antics. Great performances from the cast, and wonderful, wonderful humor.

Movie Review: As Good As it Gets. Okay we have a neurotic Jack Nicholson, gay Greg Kinnear, and frustrated Helen Hunt. Should be funny, right? Yeah, it’s funny. Nicholson is good at doing crazy and the way he and Kinnear play off each other is beautiful. There’s the dog, too. Beautiful. But, then something goes terribly wrong. Somehow the film makers thought they could get me to believe that Helen Hunt would somehow be attracted to Jack Nicholson. Come on folks, he’s crazy, he’s old, he’s not very pretty, and more than a little gross. Oh hubba hubba. Give me a break. The funny is good, the lovey falls apart.

Movie Review: The Corpse Bride. Nifty stuff, really. Stop motion animation is crazy stuff, and the crew on this movie put in a lot of TLC. Add to that the talents of Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, and Christopher Lee, and you get a very fun movie. At just over an hour, it’s a quick watch, but very worthwhile.

Nuggets

This is the necklace I'm wearing today. It's made up of dark dyed shell nuggets (which I thought were super nifty when I found them at the Bead Gallery in Springs), metallic seed beads, and irregularly shaped red glass. The pendant was salvaged from a necklace I had years ago.