Up too late

It's not yet 12, but it's still too late to be up on the internet pretending to work (it's amazing how long that lasts. It's as if by virtue of the fact that I'm sitting behind the computer, some part of me actually believes I'm working. That part is a dumbo).

So, I sort of had this mini blog identity crisis. Such a nice problem to have really, if you think of all the problems you could possibly have (better not).

Is it a vegan blog? Is it a writer's blog? Wannabe artist? Just a personal me n' my friends blog?

Should I try to diagnose myself with something from the DSMIV so that I can jump in the boat of some blog niche? HSP? Borderline, maybe?

For now I'm making peace with the fact that it's a personal/writer's/artist's blog. After all, writers can write about whatever they want, no? And if it's a personal blog, then it's still fair game. As for art, well, I did used to post a few sketches here once upon a blue moon.

To indulge this newly found laissez faire attitude, I wanted to link to some of the websites I have been spending too much time checking out of late. Most of them are vegan blogs.

I have discovered belatedly that it's VeganMoFo (vegan month of food), the vegan version of NaNoWriMo. Who knew? So decreed Isa of Post Punk Kitchen fame.

So I found:

Vegan Dad
Vegan Fat-Free
Pickled Treats

plus there's Yeah That Vegan Shit, which I already knew about. (Where I found this great recipe for chocolate peanut butter shells, which are as amazing as they sound).*

It's just nice to know that they're all out there.

And just so you know, it's not all blogs and no action. I recently tried out a pumpkin pie from Vegan Fat-Free blog, pumpkin bread (veganized by replacing eggs with flax seeds), pumpkin soup, and even roasted the pumpkin seeds, all from one pumpkin. I even made a pumpkin pudding from that pumpkin! It seems pumpkins will feed you for life, at least in autumn.

Today I found another cool blog, this time not vegan: will draw for cookies. It's an art/sketch blog.

Okay, it really is time to sleep now.

*Writing this I remembered once upon a time I intended to have a vegan links round-up, but apparently I never got round to it. But maybe I'll do a follow-up to this post with the other food/vegan links I like with the information I wanted to include.

Some Writing References

Writerly friends, colleagues, strangers:

I've recently come across a wealth of information on the (majestic/overrated?) internet about writing.


Sunday Scribblings- An online group writing project where every week a new prompt is put up.

Chuck Palahniuk (of Fight Club fame)'s writing tips.

About.com's fiction writing section. Check out some of the new year's resolutions for writers. Also reviews books on writing.

And for the boot in the pants to actually get you writing, you should check out the 37 days blog (especially "Why 37 days?")

Buddha and friends

Dear Blog,

I actually have work to do, so I'm not sure what the fact that all I really want to do is post this picture means.

quitting and making the leap

Wow, I really have been posting infrequently.

Part of the reason is that I'm thinking of changing the blog's URL to something more memorable, and yes, something without a spelling mistake.

So it's like every time I come to post, I'm thinking, it shouldn't be here, it should be on the other, better address.

I'm trying to write more, like I said before, although I quit NaNoWriMo '07 to try and work on Nano '06. Truth be told, I haven't quite just parked Nano '06 since completing it last year (by completing I mean the word count), but trying to edit it was just so overwhelming, the only thing I really managed to do was fix the typos and grammar (pressuring myself to reach the word count, I really didn't bother worrying about those little details).

In addition to that, I also just want to write. Anything. The other day I was reading an interview with Ariel Gore about her new book How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead (which I read and found really useful). Ariel is posed this really great question: "How do you know when to put up (and start working on an actual project), or shut up (keep doing this "practice")?"

Ariel's answer is "there is a point where enough is enough," and that we should really just take the leap and embark on a project. She continues with, "If you fail, you can call it practice. But you will not fail."

So I guess that is what I decided: enough is enough. Why start a new draft when I already have one? But also I think practice and working on your project go hand in hand, and like Ariel says, the project is the practice.

Writing is Better than Not Writing

Doing something, even badly, is much better than not doing it at all (as the wise Jim Munroe once wrote on his blog), because something is better than nothing.

Anyway, if like me you agree that (specifically) writing is better than not writing, go ahead and sign up for NaNoWriMo ([inter]National Novel Writing Month). It's starting tomorrow. Oh my. November somehow seemed further away than that.

Right now my "do something badly" thing is going to be blogging. And as The Artist's Way reminds people, it's normal that you're bad in the beginning. Later you could get good.

view from above

Every once in a while it occurs to me I might not always live where I do now. For some reason yesterday I was tempted to open the window and just look outside, and then I took this picture. In case someone comes across it later and says, so that's what it looked like (although admittedly this picture isn't a crystal clear view). Still, I like the color of the sky and the silhouette of the building and trees.

**

The blogging hiatus was due to an internet hiatus, which in turn was the fault of a phone line hiatus. None of which were my idea. But it wasn't a bad thing, all things considered.

I Made Gnocchi

And my sister said it "tasted like the real thing."

Gnocchi is kind of like ravioli, but with potatoes.

First you mash up potatoes, add flour until it becomes dough, then roll it until it's really thin (1 cm, if you can - I couldn't), divide these rolled ropes into 2 cm bits, then either freeze for later boiling or boil at once.

Pretty labor-intensive, or at least time consuming, not a bad thing in Ramadan.

Because we have so much food in the fridge, and I'm worried it'll all go bad, I've been trying to think of things to make with it, so the gnocchi was me dealing with the potatoes. Some the food is already cooked up, but there are lots of excess raw ingredients: courgettes, carrots, chickpeas, tomatoes, half a pumpkin, an open can of sprouts, eggplants, lettuce, red and yellow peppers, cauliflower, beans, and some mangoes and grapes that I think already went bad.

Today I made mint sauce and chickpea soup.

The mint sauce looks scary but I'm pretty sure the chickpea soup will be alright.

Little Lines

Day 20 of Ramadan, and I can hear the traffic raging from my window. Traffic is like the cold; you're happy to be indoors where you can avoid it at a distance. Especially in Ramadan in Cairo.

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The picture is of the cover of my journal. Drawing those little lines is really good for passing the time.

A. & S. at work.

Sketch from yesterday; Cousin A. & Sister S. working on a book together. Really. They're talented like that.

The Whiffenpoofs

In the drawing on top, I wanted to just draw anything interesting I could think of and kind of pretend it was a composition. Well it's something, I'm just not sure how well it all comes together. The dragon is from the emblem for the Yale a cappella (without instruments, I looked it up) singing group the Whiffenpoofs. I saw it in a magazine and then discovered I missed their performance in Cairo at Sawy. But the dragon still looks cool. And Whiffenpoofs is a great name.

Devoid Comics

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Check out this really cool link, a kind of art journal or scrapbook titled simply, "Melissa's Side Project."

Sketches from Last Night

Some sketches from my cousin's band's concert yesterday, Cairokee.
Check them out at cairokee.com.

French Pretzels

The first picture is something I did while suffering from insomnia one night while on vacation. I don't know why the pretzel chose to speak French; it just did.

The second were sketches of the typical tourist stuff you can see from the Thames; homage to Danny Gregory (he drew the same things in his book Everyday Matters).

Since I've Been Back

I'm back! Actually I've been back, but I've had no real idea about what to post. My camera is still at camera intensive care at the edge of civilization, although granted, I do have access to my sister's camera.

I am technically unemployed, or de facto unemployed, I'm not sure, but no day job to speak of at any rate, but still, I feel like I am on vacation, which I didn't feel before. A structureless, anything-goes-anytime feeling prevails. Which makes it sound like I am living it up hippy-style, which let me be the first to point out, I'm not. Just that no routine is really prevailing, my sleep patterns are off, etc.

It's okay. It's kind of fun, even. Since I've been back, I've baked a casserole (very successful), scones (turned out more like pancakes), and laid the foundation for vinegar mushrooms (very successful once more Laid the foundation in this case means I chopped mushrooms and garlic, opened to the recipe, and told my sister to finish it up since I had to leave the house). [I bought Vegan with a Vengeance, a rightly popular vegan cookbook, where I found all these recipes].

I've also played squash, which I haven't done in the past five years or even longer, and racket.

I taught my usual origami class, only to watch one of the most into-it kids leave to join the science group. And my other kids decide to join the painting group. See the problems with choice and freedom?

Oh, and last August is when I started this blog, so that's either a good thing, or time for you to tell me to stop wasting my time.

**

I just added the title and I must say I dig how it sounds like an old soul song. I can hear it being crooned now, "since I've been back..." If only the events described fit the song's ambiance.

Ciao

I'm flying out tomorrow; should be back in two weeks.

This site then comes in handy, dedicated to getting you to pack light, and appropriately titled "One bag." I just skimmed the one-page packing checklist to refresh my memory.

Great for packing related stress, which I have.

Funny how packing for a trip really brings home what you need. Or think you need. I've long since discovered I don't need music on a trip, but a good book is appreciated. And that trick of only taking only one book that I feel I should read doesn't work. Given the option of dull (or heavy) reading versus no reading, I choose no reading. And then I'm just bored.

See you all in two weeks.

Writing Link; Paper Chinaman

I made this happy-looking Chinaman with my origami class yesterday.

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Good link for the writerly-inclined: How to Become a Famous Writer. An excerpt from a book of the same title at the No Media Kings website, where she advises to publish as much as you can, however you can. One suggestion: "Print poetry on stickers and post them around town and in train bathrooms." Ariel Gore, the author, also has a cool blog.

Educational Comics, Finding Your Life Purpose

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It's funny how a job confers life meaning. It shouldn't; shouldn't there be things I want to do naturally?

But there aren't. What I want to do is eat cookies and watch Sex and the City and check my email a hundred times a day.


I'm thinking about the dreaded life purpose.

There's the obvious "make the world a better place," which is all very nice and good, but incredibly vague. All kinds of tiny and humongous actions would fall under this broad umbrella of leaving the world better.

A most interesting website, Anxiety Culture (they have features about why phoning in sick is the best thing you can do for the economy and how to avoid responsibilities, all written in complete earnest), offers something more specific in an article entitled, "How to Find Your Own Purpose."

They offer a simple formula:

1.		Identify what you like about yourself.
2.		Identify how you most like spending your time.
3.		Imagine your idea of a perfect world.

Your purpose is what links these three things together. In other words, it is the way you can use your favourite characteristics, abilities and attributes in activities you like best, to manifest your vision of a perfect world.

====================================================================

I've never seen it explained so succinctly.

Here's another web page I liked with information on finding your purpose:

Finding Patterns to Find Your Purpose at the blog Success from the Nest.


I've already tried answering these questions quickly, (both from Anxiety Culture and the 'Finding Patterns' post), but have yet to tie them all together to discern my life purpose.

Feeling Unslept; Eating Locally

These days I feel like I sleep enough, but wake up feeling as though I spent the whole night tossing and turning. S. suggests my lack of exercise might be to blame, and I know she could easily be right. But feeling tired hardly inspires in me a desire to jump onto the stationary bike in a burst of fitness zeal.

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Here's a link to check out: The 100 Mile Diet, found off the No Impact Man blog. It's about eating locally (defined as anything within an 100 mile radius, about 16o km - so a little more than the distance from Cairo to Ein Sokhna) in order to reduce your ecological footprint (impact on the earth). A concrete way to put into practice the environmental maxim "Think globally, act locally." Check out as well their 13 reasons to eat locally.

As usual, the information on the site is specific to the US and Canada, and as usual, I'd be interested to know what the situation is like here in Egypt/ the region.

Guilty Liberal

Some cool links I've come across:

• Life Remix, a frequently updated collection of interesting blogs (I found it through the Happiness Project, one of the featured blogs).

• No Impact Man, another of the blogs in the Life Remix collection, is the blog of a man who is trying to live a zero (net) environmental impact existance for one year while living in New York City. He classifies himself as a "guilty liberal" who basically decides to put his money where his mouth is. So far, his posts are honest about what's involved (one of the first posts ends with, "God save me, please, from myself and this crazy project." I really admire his guts and the lack of nambsy-pambsy approach, it's not just about "two paper napkins a day less" but a hardcore thorough attempt. The existentialist ideal of having the courage of his convictions, in other words. 'O'balna.
  

Come back birds, please?

Forget Hitchcock's The Birds.

The Mice or The Rats is far creepier, and actually taking place in my own home as we speak.

They are threatening my way of life!

I feel I'm in some kind of "your mother told you so" hell.

This can only mean war... Peaceful cohabitation will not be possible.