Mmm...peanut butter. Anyway, I just realized that you can now comment. I hadn't had comments for a long time. Something about the code prevented me from having tables side by side, and it also cut out my comments. But now they're back! [laughs] I'll try to remember to check them.

Oh, work has been tiring, but I'm making good money. Yesterday, I think I had a shin splint. I'm not positive, but it was the muscle beside the bone in my right shin, and it was killing me for no good reason. I also hit my head on the corner of something hard enough to make it bleed, right on the top. I have a small scab (I discovered this morning), and it still hurts. [sighs]

My job hope with Senses magazine is a little dimmer. I was going in for an interview, so I thought, but after missing them tuesday because she didn't realize they were still on christmas break, and missing them wednesday because they had gone to the store, I have now been relegated to waiting for a call. [sighs] They're putting out their premiere issue sometime right about now, so they're a little busy to be interviewing. But a friend of a girl that my roommate dated, i.e. someone I know from work because she enjoys eating out, mentioned that she'd been doing copy-editing work as well as her normal writing work because they didn't have a copyeditor. She said this in response to my saying that I was looking for work as an editor. However, since then, we seem to have been on different pages.

Despite the magazine being new, and the office being very small, its goal is to promote art appreciated by all five senses. I'm a cook, a dancer, a singer, and a writer. I'm dating an artist. My goals in life are to learn to be a fabulous cook, to encourage and/or create a fabulous dance community wherever I live, and to continue singing in whatever ways I am able. This magazine would be so perfect for me because I would be able to devote my emotional energy to it, rather than just my time and physical energy, as I would be doing for so many other publications. So, say a prayer about it, or cross your fingers, whichever you believe in more.

It feels very satisfying for my hands to be covered in ink. I'm working right now on late Christmas cards, and working on my calligraphy at the same time. I've almost got my Chancery perfect, except for a couple difficulties (lower case s, b, k, and p, and the top tails on capital letters). I think I'm going to try gothic before attempting roman seriff. Gothic lower case are complex but easy; it's the upper case letters that are crazily difficult-looking. It'll be quite some time before I feel comfortable doing those ones from memory (except D, A, I and L, which I use in my name, Lara's name, and the capital I).

I've also gotten some good work on my story fleshing out the beginning. I need to work on it some more, but I'm going to go watch a movie while I'm writing a couple more cards, and then I'm going to the 10:30 service at church tomorrow morning. Fun fun! See you, blogger, friends and family, and Merry Christmas!

It has very much been a Christmas season, but Christmas Eve and Day are for me fun time more than celebration time. I'm celebrating getting to write and work on my projects. Yay! [laughs] Au revoir, until again.

I just won a trip for two to the Bahamas. 4 day, 3 night, cruise ship both ways. Anytime in the next 12 months with no blackout dates. Everything paid except port taxes (and alcohol and gambling). I'm shaking. But I have to make a sandwich. I have to be at work in half an hour.

"The key to success, as an artist, is to realize what vision you have of the world, perfect your ability to show it, and sell it."

I realized in a paper journal (I'm sorry, blogger, for my unfaithfulness) that my "vision" of the world is not "stylized" or "gritty", but merely all-encompassing and hopeful. My "vision" of the world is not ignoring what I see. Granted, I don't make much effort to pay attention to the distant parts of the world, but the little part around me is my entire subject. The boredom of a waiter. The single-mindedness of an ant. The preoccupation of a lover. The hunger of a homeless cat. The lust of a squirrel. The exasperation of a manager. The ease of a dancer. The practiced obliviousness of a cleaning lady. The curiosity of a writer.

I'm doing a terrible job of saying what I want to say. The main point is that I care about all the little details of a person's life and the little details of the world around me, details that other people don't want to consider or bother knowing or care about if they learn. I can't stop caring about those details, nor would I want to. And so, I have to move on to part two. I need to remember them. I need to learn to communicate them, and as a fiction writer, fabricate them. Sure, I love my stylized stories and poems. But that's not all I see, nor all I want to say.

And so, each day, I need to write a boring scene, I mean boring to you, about a person that you wouldn't care about, that you probably wouldn't be friends with, even though you might know them, work with them, go to class with them. And I need to teach myself to make them interesting without sacrificing those details and without stylizing them so that they seem digitalized or blurred at the edges. Arg, that's a difficult task! [laughs] Laters, blogger.

Cooking is fun. Fresh foods are also fun. My dinner this evening was fresh green beans, raw, which I shared with Lara. I had mine with flour tortillas and green tea. You see, Saturday mornings, there is a produce fair outside my workplace. Today, I walked the whole thirty steps it took to get to the vegetable stand, and I bought some organic produce. Green beans, roma tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes (bred for flavor rather than appearance, and so not genetically altered), avacadoes, a red and a yellow bell pepper, and an eggplant. The eggplant will be an experiment to see what I can do with it. The bell peppers for snacks. The avacados and tomatoes have become (as of ten minutes ago) a salsa. Unfortunately, when you puree red and yellow tomatoes with green avacado, you get a brown mixture. I have diced tomato and avacado in there as well, so it looks like salsa not brown paste, but it's still not the most attractive salsa in the world. But it Does taste really good! I can't wait to experiment with it. Perhaps over pasta...? I'd have to buy pasta. Maybe I'll make a rice dish and see what I can do with that... perhaps sautée some onion and bell pepper, then cook the rice with them, and put the salsa on top? [giggles] It will be fun. Wish me luck with the eggplant. I don't know what I'm going to attempt yet. I'm not really in the mood to think about it though. I laid my bike on the street this evening, because I was on the phone, and trying to shift gears on the other side of the handlebars, and I just went down. I managed to jump off and over my handlebars, but I still hit my leg and bruised the shin. I wasn't going fast. [grins] Also, it probably didn't help that I had a couple drinks with my coworkers. A round of jueger, and then a shot of 1800. I drank water, but I drink so infrequently nowadays that it buzzed my instantly. [laughs] Anyway, I need to sleep. The salsa is safely in the fridge, my purée wand worked well but not as well as I had hoped on the solid chunks of tomato, and I have a fat smile on my face. Good night, blogger. Oh, and wish Lara luck on her homework. She's stressed, since it's finals week for her, despite that she's having trouble thinking of it like finals week. Next friday night, we will be in Atlanta, hopefully dancing.