Reason Breeds Insanity

Yesterday during our writing workshop, Sarah told us that another student in our program, Rachel Hartley-Smith is getting a half a table at AWP for a new digital journal she is editing: Cella’s Round Trip. The point of all of this is that we are going to make copies of our chapbook to have available, as well as some visual art and broadsides. I hope that we are even going to design a logo for our group! I am so excited to go AWP, because I have wanted to go but didn’t really have a reason to go until now. Now, I get to put my photography out there in teh form of postcards, get my poetry and creative nonfiction out there, and hang out in Chicago with three of my favorite people! Sweet. I love Chicago!

Other good news:

1. It is officially 19 days until Edwin, Abster, and Iz return! Whoohoo! Since we ride our bikes past their house every night, my anticipation grows everyday!
2. It is only three days until my family and I leave for Chicago. So far we are going to Wicked, going to a Cubs v. White Sox game, going to the fireworks at Navy Pier, going on a brewery tour at Goose Island, attending the Taste of Chicago, and possibly popping in at the Body Art Show at Navy Pier. My brother is going to run a 5K called “Race to the Taste.”
3. We started stripping our house and picked out paint colors for the outside of the house, the living room, the woodwork (we’ve decided to just paint it and wait until later to strip it and stain it), and our bedroom. Hopefully, we can get the whole house painted by the end of summer! The house is going to be a pale green, with darker green trim, and an even darker green porch. The living room is going to be a dark burgundy with white woodwork and ceiling (we are pulling up the ugly green carpeting), and the bedroom is going to be a peachy/orangish color called rhubarb. All the woodwork is going to be a nice clean white. All the ceilings are going to be the same white. I think that opens up the room and makes the ceilings look higher.
4. As we walked through McCullough Park, the Black Music Festival looked like a success. There were tons of cars parked all over, and we could hear some of the music at our house. What I heard was pretty good. On a similar note, I watched most of a really bad rerun of SNL, because Kanye West was on it. He, of course, performed “Gold Digger.” What disappointed me, and not because I like the word at all, was that instead of saying “broke nigger,” he had to say “broke broke,” which makes absolutely no sense, and doesn’t rhyme with “gold digger.” However, it was perfectly acceptable for him to say “ass” several times. Censorship will never make sense to me!
5. Finally, I rode my bicycle to my parents’ house and I wasn’t sore the next day. Next time, I will try to ride home, too. One way it is 18.68 miles. I actually ride that much everyday, but it is in Muncie where the streets are relatively flat. I was afraid because out by my parents’ house there are some hills, although they aren’t very big.

Life is good. I look forward.

EDIT:
From my other, old, defunct blog.
Here’s the recipe, because I can’t find the last post with it in there:

1 1/2 c flour
1 c sugar
3 T cocoa
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt

Blend dry ingredients well. Make three wells and add:

6 T vegetable oil
1 T white vinegar
1 t vanilla

Then pour 3/4 c water or cold coffee over the whole thing. Stir with a
fork until blended. Pour into an 8″x8″ square or 9″ round pan. Bake
at 350 for 35-40 minutes.

I recommend oiling and flouring your cake pan and/or using parchment
paper to line the bottom of the pan–the cake tends to pull away from
the sides nicely, but it can stick to the bottom.

Yeah, I tried this whole jogging/running thing once before. It didn’t work. I am trying the couch potato to 5K plan, which seems to be working so far. I did the first two days, and I was sore after Day 1 but not after Day 2. Tomorrow is Day 3, so we’ll see how that works out. I am going to ride my bike to my parents’ house tomorrow to help my mom buy tickets to Wicked for our vacation. I couldn’t sleep last night because I had the weird realization as I was trying to go to bed that our vacation is next week. For some reason, I thought we had another whole week until we went. I think I am looney-tunes sometimes. I just hope we can squeeze everything we need into my brother’s car because the gas mileage will be so much better. I think we should be able to get three suitcases into the trunk and have enough room for us all to sit comfortably. I am getting pretty excited.

Let me count the ways, oh, Internet. I have been using this website for quite some time in order to guess how far it is from my house to wherever. Little did I know that you can make a free account to store your routes. I have stored several routes, and am in the process of storing a couple of more. Here is one of my favorites. It’s called to The 505 (oh, and back again):

<a href=”http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/united-states/in/muncie/499517419788″>to The 505</a><br/><a href=”http://www.mapmyrun.com/find-run/united-states/in/muncie”>Find more Runs in Muncie, Indiana</a>
I love this tool because once you have an account, you can also track your fitness progress with a calendar. Pretty sweet. I am just using so that I can know how far it is from place to place for commuting, fitness, and dog-walking.

I really needed the weekend away. I came back and I feel rejuvenated, and ready to go. I am really excited to go on vacation with my family, and I have decided rather than to plan it like crazy like I usually do, I would just schedule the big things: the Cubs/White Sox game, Wicked, Fireworks, the Brewery tour, and the like, but the rest, we should just do at our leisure. What is a vacation when it is planned out like crazy anyway? I need to work on some pieces for the Fat Cats, and I need to read Mansfield Park. I like this relaxed, I-don’t-have-to-do-anything-if-I-don’t-want-to life. I just want to be. At the retreat we prayer what is called a retractive prayer. I can’t remember it exactly, but the final word left in the retraction was “BE,” reminding us to just be. There were six words initially and the first one taken off was love, and there was something about sacred hearts, but I don’t remember. It was beautiful, though, and I remember thinking to myself: “Self, you should write that down or you’ll never remember it.” But I didn’t. Alas.

I checked out all the books I know that I will need for next semester’s courses, so I need to just start reading them. I will have all my creative writing course books out of the way, so I can focus on my literature and theory class readings. I am trying to get some good starts on two creative nonfiction pieces as well. I am hoping to get almost everything finished for that class this summer. I will only one required class left to take in the spring, and a directed reading, then comps, and the dissertation and I will be finished! So it looks like I should be finished by Spring or Fall of 2010. I hope by then I can find a real job, but I shouldn’t borrow that stress just now. I need to concentrate on finishing my classes first!

I have two months to do whatever I want to do. I am not sure I will be able to pay the bills, but I have two whole months with no work, no school, no responsibility! I haven’t had two whole months of irresponsibility since the summer before my junior year, when I started working at Hartford City Public Library! I am not sure what to do with myself. That could be why I am sitting here, writing this blog entry instead of being out doing something! I plan to start a running program during this eight weeks, and hopefully it will continue through next school year. I really want to be able to jog the Indy-Mini next May. I figure if I jog, and Bec walks, we will still finish together!

In other news, my little puppy is not so little anymore. Her next vet appointment is later today. She finishes her puppy shots. I am sure they will shocked, cause I think she weighs over 30 pounds now. She’s quite the cute little heifer. The other two dogs are more tolerant of her now. Although they aren’t really fond of her favorite game: jump up, grab on, and go for a ride! Especially Sydney will just knock her off. She is learning the submissive position quite rapidly!

My summer class is over. I learned some valuable things, but the last week of class was pure hell. It quickly digressed from a constructive workshop into “Let’s see how smart I am compared to you” or as I prefer to call it: “Here’s why you’re a dumb-ass!” Some people in the class didn’t really understand that the prime objective for workshopping is to encourage each other and help each other get better. You can just as easily answer the question, “Is this writer making the gesture?” by saying, “I think the writer could make a better gesture by doing X,” than by saying, “I just don’t think this writer is making any gesture” or “I can’t tell what this writer was trying to say.” By making shitty workshop comments, some of the people in the class just shut others down. Maybe one of the Friday (or whatever the fuck-day) Forums should address how to workshop professionally. How to frame comments to encourage each other, while also addressing shortcomings in a kind, constructive, grown-up way. I am so thankful for the Fat Cats Writing Group workshops. I always leave feeling better about myself, and like I know at least two or three things to improve on.

I guess I should get started on my stuff for Saturday.