Full of Fall

As of today, I am no longer a barista.

It's the home stretch for me. I'm supposed to be in Seoul on November 9th - that's so close! I've been running around in a tizzy trying to figure out how to make everything work out in time.

Fall is my favorite season. Hands down. There's something about the not-too-hot, not-too-cold weather that I love. I love sweaters and boots and scarves and I'm such a sucker for everything seasonal. I could mainline apple cider at this point and be a happy camper. So imagine my anxiety when I realized there are no pumpkins in Korea.

No pumpkins? What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to get through autumn without my continual imbibing of pumpkin spice lattes, devouring of pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin anything I can get my hands on? 

Old Books and New Clothes

I saw my friends this past weekend, and loved every minute of it.

It's strange to see people outside of college, but doubly so to see them on the other side of graduation. Everyone seems to have this same aura of "what the hell am I doing? What the hell are they doing? Maybe I should be doing what they're doing?" insecurity that permeates every conversation about getting out from under our parents' thumbs and finding "grown-up" jobs and coping with not being in a fishbowl of parties and schoolwork. At the same time, it's comforting to know that we're not all alone in this blind scrambling around for some kind of place to exist in.

Maybe Friendship IS Magic

Hey guys, I'm back again.

I had all these awesome plans for posts to write these past couple weeks. Unfortunately, I had basically the equivalent of an entire Degrassi season's drama dumped in my lap out of nowhere and things got a little tough. (Lots of lying around in bed and listlessly watching anime instead of doing...like...anything else.)

But I'm here now, and that's what matters. Or rather, that's not what matters, what matters it that this is probably what'll stand as my Valentine's Day 2013 post - belated, which is funny, because I celebrated Valentine's Day early to begin with. So this post is twice as late than it would be if I ever actually did anything ON TIME.

How I Spent My Weekend Vacation (A Slightly Irrelevant Food Story)

Clearly, you can see that I took all these pictures from the last entry with the intent of posting them sooner than four days later. So what happened?

Japan happened, you guys. Japan happened.

I went to Purchase for the weekend again, and in between a bottle of chocolate wine and my very first trip to the gym (which I remember fondly every time I try to lift my arms over my head) I took a trip with the apartment dwellers to a Japanese shopping center somewhere in New Jersey. (I don't know where because no one listens to me and we always get lost.) (You know who you are.)

"Oh, Sam," you might be saying to yourself, "I didn't come here to listen to you talk about anime."

Well, good, because I haven't decided if I'm doing that yet. No, my friends. Today I would like to talk to you about our lord and savior, omurice (オムライス).

But first, a foreword.

We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story

            

Rena.

My heartbeat quickened for an instant; it was as if someone had whispered my name, right in my ear. I bolted upright, but the only noise in the room was my own breathing. The room was still, dark. I lay back down and burrowed under the heavy military-grade blanket the Rangers had left on my bed. Maybe I was just going crazy. Hearing voices and seeing treason every which way did seem a little nuts.

But I couldn’t be wrong. Something had happened to Alex. Mikael had threatened me. One plus one equals two, right? So why was I the only one who saw it? What kind of evidence did I need to prove that something was very wrong here?

It was frustrating, so frustrating, and I was so tired. I felt my eyelids growing heavy and I knew I was fighting a losing battle. I needed sleep. After all, I was only human.

Poor BB, too much foreshadowing for one 15 year old to handle.

Hey guys, I'm here to formally apologize for the delay - a mixture of work, social life and to be perfectly honest, Pokemon kept me from being more on the ball about updating. But I'm here today with many things, mostly about food, because lets be real: this is really the best part about my blog.

There's a Special Place in Hell for the Dude that Invented Outlines

I'm trying.

The thing about writing is that everyone does it differently. You can buy a dozen different books on writing the perfect story for $19.99 in the Writing/Publishing section of the bookstore, they'll tell you a dozen different ways to plot out your novel or design "realistic" characters or hook the reader, and likely you'll never use any of them, instead developing some strange and half-crazed method of your own to do it.

The thing is, I've tried the strange and half-crazed methods. I've tried programs (Liquid Story Binder was a genius and fascinating program, with so many things to do that I often got lost just playing around with stuff instead of actually writing*), I've tried switching from writing to typing and back to writing, I've tried the stopping halfway through your ideas thing (which is risky, and while it often works, often leads me to just completely lose the rhythm of the scene), I've tried turning around seven times, bringing it around town, and stepping on my right foot before finally settling down to work.

So I wanted something less kooky. I wanted an outline. I loved the idea of a stack of loose leaf papers, with scrunched up, tiny letters all penned in with multi-colored ink, a different color for every different day an idea struck me. Notice: I loved the idea of it. I had (and to be honest, still have) absolutely no idea what I'd be doing once the paper was in front of me. Luckily, I knew some people who did.

I went to my monthly sci-fi/fantasy writer's group at Barnes & Noble and as my first honest attempt at accomplishing my resolution, I flat out asked them, "how do you guys do outlines?"

Well, I received a ton of good advice, which is exactly what I was hoping for. I kind of already knew that there was no real "right" answer. So I decided to pick what felt the most comfortable for me.

One guy suggested that I take a ream of paper and tape it up against the wall, then start drawing a timeline.
Pros: This was awesome and I almost immediately wanted to do this. A GREAT BIG FRIGGIN' TIMELINE ON MY WALL. I would feel like the manic writer, chain smoking cigarettes and sipping whiskey while I squinted at the lines in the poor lighting of my room, fervently scribbling something out with a marker while cursing under my breath...
Cons: My mom just got angry because I "helped decorate" for Christmas by stringing a 100ft long ethernet cable across multiple floors in our house. Highly doubting she would appreciate butcher paper wrapped around the kitchen.

EVERYONE suggested index cards.
Pros: Small...portable...I could work with this. One index card for each scene, I can move them around in order, throw them like Gambit when I get frustrated at the lack of continuity, could still incorporate multi-colored pens and maybe even stickers...
Cons: I am very clumsy. I drop things. I can just imagine spilling the pile of cards out of my bag (which has developed a habit of turning itself upside down on me while I'm getting out of the car or picking it up off my floor) and being blown away by the sudden and unfortunate gusts of wind that accompany such things. Also cards are tiny and I need room to fight with myself.

And then, just when I was starting to feel disheartened (maybe the outlining life is not the life for me? Maybe I am doomed to a long future of abstract thoughts and stream of consciousness writing?) someone offered up this: Instead of index cards, why not Power Point?

Power Point, the program I touched once to make a Daft Punk slideshow for a French project in junior year and promptly never used again.

But, why not Power Point?

Let's go over this:

Pros: I have a laptop. I love my laptop. My laptop does not get blown away in the wind. With fonts and colors? Possibly more fun than multi-color pens.
Cons: It's not exactly as writery and glamorous as a ream of paper stuck up on the wall. And if my laptop crashes...then everything is gone anyway so maybe that's not so much a Con as a worst case scenario for my life in general.

Basically, I walked out of that meeting knowing it was Power Point or bust. I felt rejuvenated. I would write the shit out of this outline.

So the next night, I got out of work with my entire evening planned out for me: I was stopping by the grocery store, picking up some ingredients, cooking myself a fine meal and settling in for a night of some sultry, sexy Power Pointing.

I decided to make something good, you know? I eventually settled on some chicken salad from a recipe I'd been sitting on for quite some time. I did make it, and felt like a real chef barring the part where I accidentally cooked the chicken while defrosting it in the microwave and sent emergency, tear-filled texts to my mom asking if I had ruined everything.

That bacon? Dogs love that bacon, apparently. 

(If you make it, though, take note of the "for one" part of the recipe. I'm a big girl and I need more than 2 ozs of chicken and ballparked some combination of ingredients that seemed proportionally alright for human consumption. Still turned out awesome.)

Check out that 300-some odd calories of salady awesomeness. Also I'm too broke for wine, so note the 85 cent bottle of sparkling water. 

Class? Class.

With my gourmet** meal ready, I settled in on the couch and fired up my program. Somewhere, "Eye of the Tiger" was playing. I picked a theme, a font - centaur, for all my fantasy outlining needs - and went to work.

It took me far longer than I want to admit to figure out how to make this first slide.

This was three days ago.

Where am I at now?

THAT'S THREE DAYS OF WORK, PEOPLE. THREE DAYS OF WORK - AND I ALREADY HAD THE FIRST TEN OF THESE WRITTEN IN A NOTEBOOK. I WAS ONLY COPYING THEM OVER.

*Sigh.* I have my work cut out for me, you guys. Outlines? More like Poutlines. = [

* Everyone should play with this program at some point, it's addicting.
** YMMV. Make it, though.