Wordle

I just wordled my thesis, and it felt really satisfying. Huh.

why I don't want to get published in 2010

I am a writer. I'm not writing at the moment. (How nonsensical is that? That is the very thing I am doing.) I want to have the presence of mind to sit down and write. I want to sit down and let streams of (in)dependent clauses loop away from me without hoping I'm making sense. I want to be inspired and to be given the time and the support that allows for the fostering of that inspiration into what may one day be a work of art. I want the time to work. I want to create art. I want to write without an audience. I don't want my train of thought to be interrupted by thoughts of "I wonder who is going to or would want to read this, and what their lives are like, and what they will think and why and when, and if they will pay me." If I have deadlines, I want them to be self-imposed, and I don't want to send out a story before it's ready just because I'm supposed to be sending out stories. I don't want to send a story to 10, 100, 1000 publications hoping someone likes it. I don't want to pay to enter contests because entering contests gives you a better chance at getting published. I don't to pay someone else to read my stories. I want to workshop without discussing publication, or rules ("How to Write a Ten-Minute Play," "Perfect-length Short Stories According to Publication Type"). I want there to be no rules. I want the most pressing question someone has about my piece to be, "What's with all the bird imagery?" (Thanks, Rick Moody.)

Letters to the Editor

The year 2009 has already been the deadliest year in Afghanistan for U.S troops. 867 Americans have died to date. And even more Afghan civilians have died as ‘collateral damage’ from US air bombardments as well from the sharp increase in suicide bombings. It’s no wonder that Afghan opposition to our presence is growing. Far from solving the problems, our aggressive military operations are part of the problem.

So what is the alternative? True security will not come through military means. It will come from a negotiation process involving all groups in Afghanistan, a regional diplomatic push, and a long term commitment by all to building up Afghan institutions.

We're now passing eight years of war in Afghanistan, one of our country's longest wars. War has had its day and failed. The war in Afghanistan is neither good nor necessary. Now give peace a chance.

*Thanks to the American Friends Service Committee for the above text.

Please rewatch Charlie Wilson's War.

And as Bill Van Auken recently wrote:

"The debacle confronting U.S. imperialism in Afghanistan is one of its own making. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are both the products of previous U.S. interventions in Afghanistan. Beginning in 1979, Washington funneled billions of dollars in arms and aid to Islamist guerrillas seeking to topple the country’s Soviet-backed government. It deliberately instigated a Soviet invasion and war that claimed over a million lives, turned another five million into refugees and wrecked the entire society."

Rebuilding can only happen when we put the guns down. We only have two hands.

writing about a photograph

A friend of mine is a photographer studying at FIT, and she recently told me she was inviting people she knew to write responses to her photographs. I looked at her portfolio online this evening, and I really like what she's doing, and there is one picture in particular that I think I could write about.

Oak Grove by Erin Kennedy

I think what it immediately speaks to me is some reminder of my childhood, growing up in rural southeastern Pennsylvania, rolling hills and farmland and new lower middle class housing developments, state parks and small towns, factories and outlets. Getting lost in the woods or wanting to, the dry autumn grass crunching beneath our feet, already tread by so many others, or laying down because of habit rather than footsteps. Small branches left where fallen. Owls and deer and country roads. All those trees older than I ever was. And ultimately, a feeling of tranquility that can be destroyed in an instant when adolescent girls reference legends and fear. I remember wanting to feel at ease and being absolutely unable to. Because of the wind, because of the bare tree limbs, the unobstructed view of the sky, the moon, the snow covered ground. The sound that might have been footsteps crunching leaves under.

But in terms of writing about a photograph, I feel as though I know very little. Funny that the more I read, the more I write, the more I research and absorb, the less qualified I feel to make a statement about anything at all. I mean, really, what do I know?

So, very quickly because I'm supposed to be working on a short story, here are a few things I've found about writing about photography:

http://uwp.duke.edu/wstudio/documents/photography.pdf
http://www.brown.edu/Students/Watershed/images/stories/pdfs/watershedissue5.pdf
http://interactive.usc.edu/members/akratky/W13_Camera_Lucida.pdf
On Photography by Susan Sontag

A Dozen Truths Every Writer Needs to Know About PhotographyBy ERNEST H. ROBL
"Though writing and photography are the two processes that fill up the majority of the editorial space in publications, few journalists manage to be successful at both because the two processes are not only fundamentally different, but also place different, often conflicting, demands on the practitioner."
- That seems as though it deserves more time than I have to give it at the moment.

As does the topic in general, but it's a start.

bio

I wrote a little bio blurb for a friend of mine for an email announcement tonight, and it's got me thinking about - well, writing little bio blurbs. How does one condense (summarize) the sum of one's experience into a paragraph (summary) or even a few paragraphs?

It all depends on audience, of course, but taking that for granted for a moment, there are a few assumptions we can make about writing a blurb about a person. 1. We will not get everything in there. 2. Things will be left out. 3. There are ways of saying things that allow a phrase to tell the whole story, because 4. Assumptions will be made based on those few short sentences. Or long sentences. Long complicated sentences with lots of clauses, the structure of which the author probably attempts to vary in order not to sound boring and in turn making the person being bio'ed sound boring.

So now I might wonder how I would summarize myself (the little about me to the right of this post is super out of date - I'm not really on my way to a PhD, so why not amend it?), but in my current state of mind I'm wondering more who my audience would be. As I just alluded, I've decided not to apply to PhD programs again this year. Maybe next year, but there would be no point now - I haven't done anything new. I'm barely even writing, let alone publishing.

That is not to suggest that I haven't had a lot of experiences in the last year that have been beneficial, but they're not exactly cv-worthy. And that's fine.

But I'm at this point where I am writing cover letters, and I'm really bad at it. I've never liked my statements of purpose either. Is it because I don't like trying to summarize myself? I just wrote a paragraph about my friend in less than half an hour. Is it that I don't think I have the proper qualifications (I know I don't), and in trying to sound like I might be able to do the job anyway I sound a little bit like a fraud? Hm. The thing is, I could be beginning a PhD program right now, and I could definitely do that. (I've already gotten a master's degree, so I can't help but thinking getting a second one would be easier. I'm sure the third through sixth years would be immeasurably more difficult.) I also think I could totally be a bar manager. I don't know everything I would like to, but I know a lot and I learn super fast. When I want to do something.

It's because I think I sound defensive.

"I know stuff. Really. Honest. No, I do. It doesn't look like it, but I know stuff. I can do it. Promise."

Would I hire me? Probably not.

And yet...

The thing about my job right now is that the chefs/owners have made it easy for me: we have amazing food and amazing wine, and the two go together really well. And I've tasted almost everything on the menu (minus a few of the pricier reds). But it does require selling - it's not a cuisine a lot of people (myself included) are familiar with. And I'm pretty successful at selling this food and wine.

And sometimes people just want to hear that it tastes good.

It's a last resort. There are a million more specific ways of describing a dish (sweet, spicy, crispy, peppery, unique, interesting, traditional, rich, light, etc.) or a bottle (earthy, spicy, fruit-forward, fresh berries, jammy, tannic, creamy, acidic, etc.), but sometimes, no matter how good something sounds, people want to hear that you like it. Which is why I know closeted vegetarians and vegans working at restaurants - people believe you more if they know you've tasted it. And if they believe you like it.

So does the same thing go for selling myself to prospective employers and admissions committees? Of course. I'm not so naive as to not already know that. And I've nailed some interviews, I've charmed some of the more resistant-looking, but I've also thought I nailed interviews and never heard from my prospective employer again.

I'm just feeling self-conscious about my resume. I moved the master's degree to the bottom for my bartending resume. I added a list of restaurants without dates because I have the experience, just not long-term experience, and I think that's important too. But none of them scream high-volume, and I remember that job that looks like it's not high-volume, and it was in fact as demanding as any other bar I've been to (if for a shorter time period, perhaps), and we had to be nice to people, cultivate regulars, have conversations. And I feel weird because I hated it and I miss it.

Oh, existential crises. Maybe I'll just run away to somewhere sunny. Work in a bar for tourists. Lay on the beach. Yeah, maybe I'll just give it all up and settle for that.

...After realizing that the bartending job she worked at to support herself through a BA in English and an MA in Humanities and Social Thought was the job she wanted to do - if not in the right city - Christina decided to... to what? To make it happen.

someone after my own heart

This article makes me so so so so so so happy.

But what I'm chuckling about at the moment is the fact that when I read the title (The Coin Flip: A Fundamentally Unfair Proposition?), my initial reaction was that there was something some of us - the more successful, of course - knew that the rest of us didn't which kept a smaller number of people in the successful camp and the majority neatly excluded.

As if the world was full of business executives, entrepreneurs, celebrities, chefs, bosses, artists, movers and shakers, etc., who wouldn't be where they are today without knowing a thing or two about coin flipping.

deadlines

I've been thinking about imposing deadlines on myself lately, or I suppose it would be more accurate to write that I've been thinking about delving into what deadlines mean and whether to impose a few on myself in the near future. Sort of the same thing.

According to the various sources represented on Dictionary.com, a deadline is a kind of time limit. The origin of the word, however, is the line a prisoner could not cross without risk of being shot - the dead line - and the use of the term as synonymous with time limit can be traced to American newspaper jargon in the 1920s. Oh, those newspaper men and their words.

According to Wikipedia, a time limit is related to a milestone. Although it seems to me, simply glancing at the words that make up the compound words involved (deadline - time limit - milestone), a milestone is more of a marker on the way to somewhere else, and a deadline is more finite. Also, one doesn't impose milestones, one achieves milestones, where one imposes a deadline, however one may reach a deadline, in the same way one imposes a time limit or is restricted by a time limit and one may reach the limit. In other words, they're only sort of related. Silly Wikipedia.

But what are the advantages and disadvantages of imposing a few deadlines on oneself? On myself, to be specific. I've been out of grad school for almost a year and four months, and the last deadline I had and stuck to, really, was April 14, 2008: the day I turned in my thesis to my advisor. Three days later than she and I had originally agreed upon. (It was due to the department on the 16th, and I have a master's degree to prove that my advisor read my final draft the day I gave it to her.) Well, no, actually the last deadline I had was for my PhD applications. But the thesis was way bigger, I can say now that I'm on the other side of both of them. And I know there will be other non-self-imposed deadlines in my future, but I've been wondering if I'm sort of craving a date and a project to strive for in a manner that feels more important than "I need to submit something that doesn't suck to my writing group in six weeks."

This doesn't answer the question. Should I give myself a few deadlines? Should I monitor my progress based on an arbitrarily chosen future date of completion?

Interesting blog on the topic from Thomas at Go College. He doesn't go into what would happen if there were no deadlines. Would he still be working at those undergraduate term papers? I bet the profs in question would remember him in that case...

renewed committment

So I went to see Julie & Julia last night in Times Square after work (haven't been to the movies in ages, so glad my movie companion came up with the idea and chose the movie, had a great time), and without going into a review of it that would invariably respond to the review I read in the Times by A.O. Scott, I found it inspiring. This is not why I'm blogging about nothing this evening. It might be why I'm blogging this evening, but only in the sense that I have been thinking about blogging (that is, contributing to my own blog) lately and haven't because of various excuses.

Briefly responding to the movie and my experience of watching it:

1. I was starving by the end. I also hadn't eaten dinner yet. I was starving by the end, but I also knew that anything I ate at that point would be completely unsatisfying. I wanted a real meal. (It was almost 2 am.) But more than that, I wanted a real meal that I had cooked. I wanted my own kitchen, fully stocked with utensils and cookery and fresh produce.

2. I wanted to write. No, I wanted a big project, and the only thing that it makes sense for me to take on as a big project simply must involve writing. Sort of. I have other big project ideas, but the writing and the big project are overlapping desires. So then I started thinking maybe I wanted to document a big project of my own, but that would require starting another blog, about a topic which I have sort of already mentioned in the past. I was not thinking of documenting a project and then writing a memoir about the documentation process and then letting it be turned into a movie chronicling, not so much anything I had done, but the struggle for recognition of the person who had inspired me. (I have not been personally inspired is, I suppose, what I'm emphasizing here. Sorry, Julia and Julie.)

3. I wanted to go to the movies more often. The movie was very well done, we thought, and Meryl Streep was completely amazing. There was romance, there was laughter, there was at least one (but maybe only one) moment of real heartbreak. It was what going to the movies should be.

4. I wanted to go to Paris. And everywhere.

5. I wanted to keep doing research on the cold war. (I also happen to be reading The Magic Lantern by Timothy Garton Ash, which is wonderful.)

So. It's a start. :)

Thank you, Robin

For reminding me why I did it and why I shouldn't regret it for a second.

(I don't 99.99% of the time, but there are those three minutes a month when I'm hitting submit on student loans that are the same as my rent.)

I'm not even going to read the New York Times debate. It shouldn't be about the money, but the decision to go to grad school and some of the feelings after having gone are consumed by the money issue, and that really sucks, but it's the reality of living in this situation. But what is just as if not infinitely more important is that further education and the increased ability to think critically and write effective arguments and integrate research and analysis in a meaningful way that has nothing to do with memorization for a test is the only thing that leads to real change, as much as we try to convince ourselves that the Conversation, in an academic sense, has nothing to do with some sort of Real World that really has nothing to do with some sort of intelligentsia who are just engrossed in philosophical mental masturbation. No, no, no!

The conversation matters.

To repeat the example of headscarves in Parisian schools: there is an argument that the headscarves defy the separation of church and state in public schools, but there are so many other sides to this debate. It has to do with the fact that the headscarves are being worn by women, by Muslims, by Muslim women, by a religious minority, by the women of a religious minority, by the women of a religious minority in a Western European state that sees itself as highly enlightened in feminist matters because of a long tradition of feminisms and feminists, etc. And a master's degree produces the kinds of scholars who are trained to sort out all of these interconnections in a way that doesn't reduce an issue to a conclusion where only one voice - especially if that voice is purporting to be representative of some kind of majority and claiming authority based on that - is heard above all others.

So maybe a debate can be about "freedom of choice," but it also needs to be about what "freedom of choice" means, and because of my master's degree I can never take catchphrases like "freedom of choice" at face value because "freedom of choice" never has a set meaning.

Because nothing has a set meaning.

Such is the nature of language, and my knowing that and being able to analyze a text, an argument, a work of art, an idle conversation across the bar, etc., is more meaningful to me, more important to me, more valuable to me, than a business degree, which would probably make me a lot more money, and it's fine if that's what another person's choice for their life is, but it wouldn't work for me. So my really expensive humanities degree is exactly what I want to have accomplished, which means I am exactly where I want to be, and being reminded of that in such an unexpected way (how could I have known that I would read this article today?) is very fulfilling.

And now I'm going to enjoy some of this sunshine.

Did I mention I'm also reading Nietzsche this week? What's on your summer reading list?

Turning 30

I took a deep breath just before I started typing. Took it. I inhaled almost greedily and exhaled just as purposefully. It's a great feeling.

Birthdays, holidays, new years. They all make all of us take a moment to look at our lives, to measure ourselves against something, but not always in a real way, in a way beyond noticing that on certain days of the year we feel the need to take stock of ourselves. But what does this really mean? What are we measuring ourselves against?

It has always seemed to me that some people - maybe most people - have a sort of built-in checklist, imposed by society or not, that allows them to determine how successful they are. Common entries include but are not limited to: go to college, get married, buy a house, have babies, make shitloads of money, etc. And because I viewed these things as items on a checklist I was supposed to be using to keep track of my life, I think I've been trying to follow my own path, but the horrific checklist has always been in view, so maybe I've been just as bound by it as I was afraid to be, just in a different way than if I had been trying to check things off of a list...

On the other hand, even as I have avoided having a checklist, there are things that I have and haven't done that make me feel more or less successful - if I can still use that word - than I have wanted or expected to be. Perhaps one day I will be able to articulate these things without making them sound like items on a list.

(For example: I have a lot of really great friends, I have a good relationship with my parents and sisters, I have a beautiful nephew I never get to see, I have a master's degree, I am becoming a better writer even though I haven't published anything, I love being in the restaurant business, I want to open a bar, I have traveled a lot, I want to travel more, I want to write a novel I am proud of, I want to write respected essays, I have been in love, I have had my heart broken, I have had the mad passionate love affair I always wanted, and it is beautiful. I try to live responsibly, in terms of the planet and my fellow lifeforms, human or animal or vegetative or otherwise. I have 28 cents in my bank account, and I'm not sure where I'm going to live in five weeks, but I have had and am having some amazing experiences, and that is all that matters to me.)

And now I'm going to go have a drink at my job, and then meet friends for dinner, and then barhop around the east village, and that is exactly what I want to do on this, my thirtieth birthday, and Friday after work there will be partying until dawn, and next week I will write the story I've been cooking up while I've been celebrating this last week, and it will be brilliant. Cheers.

blogging

Once a month is unacceptable, isn't it? I blogged on my other blog last week, but seriously what's the point of having two blogs if you're not writing in them? Part of the point, I suppose, not to answer my own question in such a ridiculously defensive way that it makes me feel a little schizophrenic, is that each blog has it's own theme. This blog is for making (non)sense - clearly. This is where I get to explore and analyze and make connections and question assumptions and all that yummy stuff. And sometimes I talk about food or books or whatever I want because blogging is inherently self-centered and self-important, even as it is generous and generative, an inlet and an outlet. The other blog, the newer of the two, is focused on travel, on my travel experiences and on travel more generally. That doesn't mean, of course, that I can't talk about traveling in this space or that the other will not sometimes look like nonsense.

So all of this got me wondering about blogs about blogging, particularly how one would go about googling that, and it's surprisingly easy (Google is so smart). On a side note, there seem to be several definitions (or assumed definitions) of metablog, which should technically mean a blog about blogs, but that's not the entry at Wikipedia and it's certainly not how this guy is using it. But for pointing me here, where I just read this: "the nesting hormones are so strong right now that the adrenaline rush I got from organizing our toothbrushes was not unlike snorting an entire eight ball of cocaine," = fabulousness and he can toy with linguistics a little bit.

And apparently there is a list of the Top 25 Blogs about Blogging, which would seem a bit excessive if I didn't think it was absolutely fabulous that the blog about blogs lists blogs about blogs and is on its own list at #5. But it seems that most of these metablogs are really about marketing and what other blogs are posting (like a news feed) or about how to blog than what I was more interested in, which is of course theory... Wow, this is really bad poetry. This one is pretty interesting and informative. But what I was really looking for were more academically-minded blogs about blogging, but I'm suddenly wondering if that is too narrow of a topic. I don't think so, but I don't have time to keep doing research today. (How did my friend put it? We decided the internet was a great/terrible medium for my scatteredness. And that blogging about a single topic - travel - was good for my focus.) But an example would be this article here, which I will finish reading later because how productive is it to blog about blogs about blogging when there's more writing to do.

stories and romance

I don't know if it's the spring - the thaw, the sun, the rain - but I've felt very romantically-minded lately. Is love in the air? Who knows. Not any more than usual, I suppose, haha.

But staring out the window at work the other day, chatting with my friend, who is a very passionate, sensitive, romantically-minded woman as well, we got to talking about how much we both love the rain, and I was reminded of my first kiss in the rain, and how do we even speak of such things without sounding completely cliche and ridiculous? but it was probably still one of the best kisses of my life, even though I haven't seen that person in over ten years and he means nothing to me and he was a total jerk. The point is, it wasn't really him, even though it partly was. It was the rain. It was the night. It was the illicitness of the situation - we were young, he was my boss, my parents hated him - but more than anything else it was the rain. The rain is what keeps that kiss in my memory, the feel of wet staccato and skin sliding under fingertips, hair matted to cheeks.

And last night I heard two stories, one very similar to one I could tell but with so much more complication - and you think your life is complicated! - and the other so unlike anything I could know.

Imagine two kids, growing up in a small village in Peru. He says he wants to run away with her and one day she shows up at his place with a bag, ready. They're fourteen, but it's forever, so he packs a bag, throwing anything he can into a suitcase, and they head to Cuzco, no warning. Their families are freaking out, worried, they try to reassure them over telephone wire, it's forever. Things are tough, but eventually they are better, they're selling flowers in the plaza, and they live like this for ten years. And then she meets a Frenchman and he, heartbroken of course, moves first to LA and then to New York, the Peruvian in the funny hat. So romantic.

And me? I'm listening to Ely Guerra and pretending it's a rainy day so I can lounge around the house writing instead of enjoying one of the first lovely spring days in New York. Because I would rather be alone with my thoughts than alone in this beautiful weather. Hahaha, maybe. So dramatic.

Really it's because I'm working on a story about a woman who's just come back from a year abroad - a year of five-minute romances and books in cafes and bicycles on the Mediterranean coasts - and she comes back to all the things she left and is leaving, and she feels guilty about maybe feeling vaguely superior, and everything's the same and everything's different, old and new at the same time, and so is she, and it's so unfinished. It's so unfinished.

Writing Challenge

More lists...

Writer's Digest - two competitions, several categories. Win a trip to New York City! Wait...
deadlines 5/1/09 and 5/15/09.
FreelanceWriting.com's list of contests.
Manuscript Editing's list.

Warning to writers about contests from Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

Free to Enter!
Wergle Flomp Humour Writing Contest from Winning Writers.

I sit here looking at the lists of contests that come up when you simply enter "writing contest" into Google, and other than being supremely discouraged by the often astronomical entry fees (a quick glance yields anything from $10 to $65 - no, I'm not kidding), all I keep thinking is that doing all this research, compiling all these lists, means that I'm not actually writing. Enough of that.

starting a business

In the interest of research and compiling lists (which I love), I have decided to follow my curiosity concerning what it would take to start a business, for instance a bar. This is completely outside of my realm, of course, as I've never taken a single business or business-oriented class. However, not *completely* since I've been in the restaurant business for ten years and, let's face it, I can do anything.

http://www.ychange.com/ - Straight-forward in tone, the Business Articles section looks fairly useful, especially at the early stages of research, and contains several pdfs with lists (which I love). They also do startup consulting if their extensive website isn't enough. Interestingly, one of their points of advice is to have a site map on your business's website in order to facilitate customers finding what they're looking for, as well as getting your site to pop up on web searches, and I don't see a site map on the main ychange page. In fact, there seems to be no way of searching the site. Except, of course, Googling ychange and what you're looking for, but that might be more work than a potential customer wants to do. Just saying.

SCORE is "a nonprofit association dedicated to educating entrepreneurs and the formation, growth and success of small business nationwide." Not the best-written sentence I've ever seen, but what an incredible resource. There's a whole section on Starting Your Business with articles like a Six-Month Plan to Transitioning from Employee to Entrepreneur and a 60-Second Guide to Financing Your Startup Business. They also have a Template Gallery, which is especially useful to someone who isn't sure how to begin. And check out their women-specific site.

The U.S. Small Business Association is a good place to get started as well, with everything from Getting Ready, where you will find a useful FAQ section, to Getting Out, should the need or desire arise.

There is also an abundance of software designed to help you build a business plan, such as Bplans.com, where you can find 500+ sample business plans for businesses in places like Southern, Your State. Or Plan Magic. And don't forget about Wikipedia (as if that were possible).

Of course, anyone thinking of opening a bar had better be pretty familiar with their local liquor laws. So in New York I would check out the New York Liquor Authority, naturally, and there I would find, among other things, the instructions for applying for a liquor license. And say we're opening a bar that will serve food, we'll need an On-Premises Liquor license, which costs $4,352 for 2 years in New York County. Good to know.

Essential information from the NYC Health Dept (Food Service Establishment fee is $280 + $105 for the food protection certificate for whoever is in charge of food [possibly multiple people]). And from the New York State Taxation and Finance office regarding Starting or buying a business. And information on insurance. And the Business Certificate for Partners for New York. Check with the NYC Dept of Buildings.

Further reading:
--Entrepreneur.com has an article and ebook on opening a bar/club, and chapter 1 is available for download. Their books are available at the NYPL's SIBL branch on Madison and 34th.
--New York Mag's three-year-old article is pretty specific - just what we're looking for.
--According to this 2007 article in Forbes, a Micros system that does everything I would want it to ("three touch-screen workstations, printers, cash drawers and credit-card processing, as well as nifty software that can track inventory turnover rates, schedule employee shifts and process customer loyalty cards") would cost about $12k.

My mother always said I should have something to fall back on. To be continued...

Mega Millions

With the jackpot currently estimated at $212 million and the next drawing tonight - and the economy being what it is - talk at work this afternoon once again touched on the lottery, and most importantly what would you do if you won? Would you go to work tomorrow?

One of my colleagues said he would run for president. I'll leave that alone.

He asked me what I would do, and it took me a second to think of anything because I haven't thought about it in a while. I haven't even played a scratch-off in almost three years, and other than a summer of manic Powerball playing, I had only bought a ticket a handful or two of times. Receiving a large sum of money changes everything, but hundreds of millions of dollars? It doesn't even make sense. I can barely imagine. Except the thing is that I can of course imagine. It is not unthinkable for a person to have that much money. In fact, according to a quick Wikipedia search, there are about 95,000 people with more than $30 million, and more than 1,000 with over a billion.

On the flip side, roughly a billion people live on less than $1/day...

So for a $212 million jackpot, the annual payout is somewhere around $7 million each year for 26 years or $137 million all at once. In other words, if I were to win the lottery (the odds of which are 1:175,711, 536), several million dollars would almost immediately be at my disposal. My first answer to my colleague's question was, "oh, I'd do a million things..." How vague is that? I would though. Then I started listing things, and the first thing I thought of was paying off my student loans and credit cards. How practical am I? How preoccupied with my current financial state am I?, is the more accurate question.

I would buy a really nice but not over the top apartment, maybe in Manhattan but more likely in Brooklyn, somewhere near the train and convenient to the city, Park Slope probably. I would most certainly quit my job, not because I don't like it but because I know my shifts would easily be covered. I would buy the perfect venue and open the perfect bar. But I would go somewhere sunny first - Oaxaca maybe, where it is currently 82 and clear. I would go shopping but not too much (the Gap has really cute spring sweaters and I discovered yesterday in the snow that my boots are no longer entirely waterproof). I would set up college funds for my nephew and every other child I know or who may come into existence in the near future. I would take dance lessons and pilates, I would finally learn to play my beautiful candy apple red Fender Squier Strat. I would relax a little, which means I would write more. I would travel. I would buy my parents a boat. I would donate to charities.

The point is that I would still work my ass of, I would still do the things I am planning on doing now, but it would make those things a lot easier. Okay, I'm not really planning on buying my parents a boat. So maybe I would do things a little more extravagantly, but I live well. It would be nice, but I don't need it. Unfortunately, a vast majority of the people that spend their hard-earned cash on lotto tickets really do need the money. And maybe one of them will get it tonight.

having been read

I walked into work yesterday afternoon, and my boss said, "So, I read your blog..." Eek. My initial reaction was somewhere between embarrassment and mortification. (His response was that it was "nice.") This afternoon I kept wondering why I inwardly panicked at the prospect of having been read. That's the whole point, isn't it? The point of blogging, the point of being a writer, the point of writing. This is not my journal, there's nothing even superficially private about it, and there's not supposed to be. I have the url listed as my website on facebook, I've told people I have a blog, it's not a secret, not anonymous. So why the conflict?

I could write something like, 'I just don't think I have anything interesting to say or worth reading,' or similar, but that's clearly not true if I'm sitting here typing words onto the screen and planning to click the publish button. It's not true if I intend, as I do, to continue writing, not just today, but every day possible until the day I no longer have the mental capacity for it.

Is it fear of criticism? Probably a little. I don't want to be thought of as cute ("oh, that's cute, you have a blog."), but I don't want to be thought of as taking myself too seriously either. That's not meant to be as self-deprecatory as it sounds to me having just written it. I have been in the restaurant business for a long time, and I plan on staying in it for a long time, getting even more involved, in fact, but I know I don't have the necessary expertise to write a real review. What I can do, what I am good at, is analyzing someone else's review, of comparing several pieces of evidence at once, which is what I was attempting (casually) with my last post.

I'm tempted to mention the restaurant by name just so it shows up on my boss's google alerts again, but I think I'll refrain.

My point about the review in Time Out was primarily that it was wishy-washy. He writes that Alex has "tightened her focus," and that the food is "among the most solid Iberian fare in New York," but that the restaurant is "far less inspiring than the sleepers from which it sprang." Perhaps I am unclear about what he means by "sleepers." If her prior two restaurants were/are unexpected successes, saying that the new one is far less inspiring seems nonsensical to me in this context. I understand if one thing is less inspiring than a prior thing, and I understand the prior thing being an unexpected success, but how can something new be less inspiring than something unexpectedly successful? Does the word choice here highlight that the new thing has the potential to be successful but we may not immediately expect it to be so? Is he giving the restaurant the equivalent of crossed fingers? I am questioning his critique on the basis that it is not direct enough.

Anyway, enough about that. I have the urge to write down every word that comes into my head, but this is not the outlet for that. This is the outlet for making (non)sense. Clearly.

it's been a while

Which means I could sit here rambling for a while, but instead I'm going to sum up. In the past two months, I completed PhD applications, decided to take the LSAT (moral support / what the hell), went to Argentina for two weeks with friends, decided at the last minute not to take the LSAT, and got a new job. That's not all, but it's enough.

So, I'm working at a fairly new restaurant, Txikito, cocina vasca, at 240 Ninth Ave b/t 24th and 25th in Chelsea. I have to say: I love it. It's small - way smaller than I'm used to, especially after Dos Caminos Third, which seats 600. The dining room seats 24 give or take, with an additional 10 or so at the bar, which is reserved for full dining when we're busy, which is just about every night from 7:30 to 9 or so. (No reservations necessary, however.) The sides and ceiling are planks from an old barn in New England, with light fixtures that resemble marshmallows and thumbtacks, and a cool bright blue rear wall that really opens up the space. Limestone bar with shiny red barstools. A recent reviewer in Time Out New York called the decor "spartan" and lacking in "snug warmth," but, though it could be regarded as minimalist, when the restaurant is full of people, wine or zurra, and some of "the most solid Iberian fare in New York," the weathered wood and slate gray of the tables and bar serve to highlight the colors that matter -- the focus is on the food, and the decor serves that very well.

Additionally, I wonder what the reviewer meant when he wrote that "The few stools at the bar are the most lively and sociable seats in the house." As communal seating areas, bars do tend to have a more intimate feel than adjacent tables do, but he seems to imply that guests in the dining room are missing out on something by enjoying the company they brought with them. This is not to suggest that those of us behind the bar are not fostering a fun atmosphere -- on the contrary: the whole restaurant is made to feel lively.

Most of the dishes are small plates, minitures of traditionally larger dishes, so that even a table of two can enjoy food the way the Basques intended: a little bit of everything on the table and lots of it. The menu is structured so that a table can and should order two or three things per person, including one or two of the larger options, like the lamb chops (Chuletillas), should they care to. What else he got wrong: the Pintxos ("pinch-os"), or canapes, are much larger than "one bite." The Itsas Mendi is, in fact, a txakoli, but it is not one of the effervescent ones on the menu (which are the Txomin and Ametzoi, the latter of which is served by the glass as well as the bottle). And the Copa de Chocolate is not a "dense bittersweet-chocolate pudding," but a whipped chocolate flan topped with sherry whipped cream. Which is completely amazing and wonderful and goes very nicely with a glass of Vina Salceda, by the way.

To sum up, I must agree with one of the review's commenters, who wrote: "What I don't get, is if you like the food so much, as we all seem to, why so grudging a review. Why not simply celebrate a terrific new restaurant, and a brilliant young chef and her equally brilliant husband/partner, going out on their own."

A few other reviews:
New York Magazine 6 Nov 08, 13 Nov 08, 14 Nov 08, 23 Nov 08, 29 Jan 09 (lunch menu!), and 8 Feb 09 (Valentine's specials).
Serious Eats New York ("The space is just as inviting as the food.").
And Gourmet on 11 Nov 09.

It's just such a pleasure to work in a restaurant where nearly every table audibly loves the food. Mms and Oh-my-god-this-is-amazing, have-you-tasted-this-yet?-you-have-to-try-this's are not rare, do not need to be asked for. "How is everything?" is more often than not answered before it is asked. I know where I'm going on my night off.