Rachael

Author Photos

April 9, 2009

Good morning! Hey, guess what? I got my author photos done! Whoohoo! It wasn't as painful as I thought, mostly because I had them shot by the phenomenal photographer Khalil Robinson.

But I can't decide. Let's talk it out, shall we, and there's a poll or two at the bottom for your convenience (if you're reading me in a blog-reader, click on in to vote! Please?).

COLOR POLL

Number 1:

DELETED: I was going to write my criticism of each photo. I even did a couple and it was fun, because it's always kind of fun to be self-deprecating. Instead, I'll just shut up and let you vote. I will ask, however, to consider if my shoulders look too high in this one. Moving on.

Number 2:

Number 3:

(Same as above, but cropped and shadows lessened.)

Number 4:

Number 5:

Number 6:

VOTE!
 &lt;a href="http://polls.blogflux.com/poll-32755.html"&gt;Take the poll&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://polls.blogflux.com/"&gt;Free Poll by Blog Flux&lt;/a&gt;

MORE FUN – BLACK AND WHITE!

Would you vote on one of these two, also? THANK YOU!

Number 1:

Number 2:

This and That

April 6, 2009

Documentation of nose-kiss

I have various small things on my mind, so I will list them here. It's easier than trying to string them together into something cohesive….

1. I had the most wonderful afternoon yesterday. I sat in Janine's living room, and ate delicious snacks and drank sparkling juice, and talked with Maia and Brooke, Nancy, Becca, Celia, Joy, and Therese (am I forgetting someone? I probably am….. Apologies in advance).

I would never have imagined, when all this knit-blogging stuff started seven or so years ago, that I would end up surrounded by such amazing women. I felt blessed and lucky to count them as friends. It was one of those afternoons during which the hours flew away on the wings of laughter. Annoyingly poetic, right? But it was honestly that lovely. I can't remember an afternoon with friends ever being so completely enjoyable and renewing.

2. Facebook. I'm really the last one to the party, and I never thought I'd like it, but I do. I love the Scrabble. I like being able to comment on my friend's doings without direct messaging them in Twitter (although I've set up my Twitter to post to Facebook, so I don't have to think about two different places). Friend me over there! (Rachael Herron – the only place I really go by my name instead of Yarnagogo.)

Also, I might be the only person in the world (no, wait, La's with me on this one) that likes the new Facebook. I find it way more intuitive. Thought the interface was kinda crappy before this one. I bet interface isn't how the computer people put it, but you know what I mean.

3. Yoga gets harder the more you do it. I both love and hate that about it. I've been going every week — the same studio, the same teacher. I even accept that I'm doing the same moves. But I'd forgotten that when you start yoga, you feel great, and you're good at it. The more you do, the more you realize how to drop into the pose, move into the opening (THERE I GO BEING ALL NEW AGE AGAIN, GAH), and then it's HARD. It's seriously kicking my sorry ass, week after week. But I love it. And my skinny jeans, the ones I hadn't worn in a year because of the dreaded muffin-top (oh, how I hate that very accurate turn-of-phrase), are a little baggy today. While not trapped by need to lose weight, I love the feeling of loose jeans. You know? (Lala says mournfully, "You're letting yourself go…" Heh.)

4. For the Digit fans in the house, he just kissed my eyelashes. It was very nice. It was better than punching me in the chest, which he was doing just a few minutes ago, trying to fit himself on my while I type.

A flashback photo, our man at his best:

I just found this photo and scanned it in the other day. I love it. That's our boy. He would like you to believe he's doing that at this moment, but don't believe the lie. He's trying to suck on my tee-shirt and purring as loud as a wooden roller-coaster.

Anniversary

April 1, 2009

1. Couldn't afford Vegas, so went to Bolinas and Pt. Reyes instead. WAY FEWER SLOT MACHINES. Dude. Who knew?

2. Pt. Reyes is closed on Tuesdays, we found. I am surprised the ocean dared wave, but it did, and we explored Tomales Bay and found oysters, oh, such oysters. I'm a fool for oysters, but Lala is a recent convert, finding that fresh ones really are the way to go.

3. Dinner at the Olema Inn was everything everyone says it is, and more. And the oysters there? Oh, my. One had caviar on top. I think I liked it even more than the one with pink grapefruit (who THINKS of that?) but it was a close call. Oh, such a happy brain explosion of flavor.

4. Bolinas on a Tuesday is not closed, and it's nice that the bartender knows you from the Whoreshoes days. The hotel room is quiet despite the loud Irishman next door, and the sheets are soft.

5. I'm one of those drivers who toodles along, ooh-ing and ahhh-ing at everything, and for that reason, I pull over at every turn-out to let the locals blast past me. It does not cross my mind that it looks suspicious when I pull into a turn-out to let the cop pass me. Then, when he waits and pulls in behind me, I also don't think it looks suspicious that I take the immediate first right turn into what is basically a field (but I wasn't even really paying attention to him! The sign said Historic Life-Saving Cemetery. Wouldn't you turn in? What the hell could that be? We must find out!). It is when I pull over that we realize Lala's brake light might still be wonky, and oh, the reg just expired. However, the nice cop, Ranger Craig, liked Lala's "I adhere to my chihuahua's radical agenda" bumpersticker, and after running my license, registration, and gun info, he whipped out his iPhone, and he and Lala compared chihuahua cuteness. His, however, are five months old and still wearing e-collars from getting fixed, so he won. And we got away without a ticket (to DMV tomorrow! Haste!). (BTW, the Coast Guard cemetery was awesome and weird and great, up on the hill overlooking the green hills, cows, and water.)

6. The lighthouse was closed. Tuesday, dontchaknow. But the wind was asTONishing, and we saw tule elk, little elk that are just so cute you want to put them in your pocket.

I love this picture, from South Beach below the lighthouse:

7. Driving home, we got the best sandwiches at Cowgirl Creamery with homemade bread-and-butter pickles and triple-cream Swiss.

8. Once home, we made it up to the dogs by taking them to the beach. O joy. Forgive the metric crapload of pictures to follow, but we do love us our dogs.

Keeping watch.

I am very small. This is serious.

You think this is sandy?

I IZ SANDMONSTUR!

Stackables.

Drying at home in the sun (that jasmine smells WONDERFUL).

Looks like one didn't make it.

Three years. No foolin'. xoxo

FAVORITE SWEATER EVER

March 28, 2009

Seriously. Love. This. Sweater.

Meet Colette. My new girlfriend.

SPECS:
Pattern: Joan McGowan Michael's Colette
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts BFL Sport, one and a half skeins, bought at Stitches
Needles: US6
Size: 44

Fits like a dream.

When I was making it, I pictured it as a goin'-to-yoga wrap, you know, wearing it over a tank top and yoga pants. I thought I'd like it more like this, closed.

But I really dig the way it hangs open. A LOT.

I love this sweater. Easy, FAST, highly recommended. Plus, you know Joan, she makes this sweater in your size, guaranteed.

LOVE.

A Novel Attempt

March 26, 2009

Today I found what I think might be my second attempt at writing a novel. The first is lost, but I wrote and illustrated it in first grade, and it was about a brownie (the fairy kind, not the chocolate kind, although I may have conflated the two: the protagonist had a suspiciously dessert-like shape).

What might be my second attempt is in a journal I found today when I was cleaning out my closet. I have an old rattan suitcase which houses all my old journals, and this was in it:

Yep. corduroy and flowers, acquired in 1981, when I was nine. The very first thing written in it is a poem that my sister Christy copied onto the first page (How do you like to go up in the air, up in the air so blue?). Then Dad added a poem, as did my best friend Evelyn Bailey, and Mrs. Ross (oh, how I loved my pretty teacher Mrs. Ross). Mom wrote, "Happiness was born a twin" (Byron, "All who joy would win must share it").

Then I wrote a poem about drought which I won't share here. You're welcome.

THEN: My novel.

PARALIZED [sic]: 3 Mile Marathon

There is an acknowledgment page and a table of contents. And then the story starts!

"Hurry up, we'll be late!" Sarah called to Tony. Tony was a well built young man who helped Sarah run.

Note how I'm already a sucker for the leading man in a romance novel?

Sarah ran for half-an-hour every day so she could be in the 3 mile marathon in one month. It would be what she had been going for since she was 7. She was 14 now.

WTF? I was writing about running? A freaking marathon? I was the most unathletic kid in my school, no lie. However, if one is going to write about running and knows nothing about it, I suppose three miles sounds like a good long way to go. Then I had to go and run a real marathon when I grew up.

Back to our story. They get to the beach. Tony is her timer. Heh. She has a timing-boy.

She jogged in place for 20 minutes and THEN she did 20 push-ups and only THEN could she start jogging down the beach.

The emphasis is all nine-year-old mine. And I love my method of working my character out. Running in place for twenty minutes on the beach? I'm dying here.

But moving on. Sarah runs. I think I imagined some Chariots of Fire action here. But when she goes home, she finds a note that her mother is in the hospital. She calls Tony (natch) and meets him there.

"Hello. What room is Laurie Redenbaum in?" Sarah asked.
"Little girl, I would tell you, but your mother — I think that's who she is — is not fit to be seen right now," said a nurse.
"Well then could you tell me what kind of accident she's been in?"
"Yes. She walked out in front of a car and was hit."
"Well, was she hurt?" Sarah demanded.

Dude! You're at the hospital! Your mom walked in front of a car! She's hurt!

"Yes. She has a fractured skull, a broken leg, and a broken arm."
"How much will it cost to get her back to normal?"

That's Sarah's first thought? Poor worried little thing.

"With all the expenses, I'd say about $20,000."

Where did I get that? I have no idea.

"Oh, no! The only place I can think of that gives that kind of money would be the marathon! Hmmm. The marathon…."

Yeah. Because mini-marathons give out forty grand (she is stoked about that, because if she wins the race, she'll have twenty grand left over). Again, whiskey tango foxtrot?

And then the accident happened. I know, another one? Chapter Four is titled, surprisingly, The Accident.

Sarah was riding her bike with Tony when a car going very fast came around the corner. It didn't look alarming but then they saw that the driver was unconscience [sic]! It was coming straight at Sarah. Tony yelled at her but she just sat there on her bike, staring at the oncoming car. Right when the car was about to hit her, she jumped, but it was too late.

OKAY, HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, PAL. YOU'RE FREAKING ME OUT. Insert what my thirty-six-year-old self wrote YESTERDAY:

   From behind her, a car approached, its motor revving. Lucy was in the bike lane already, but she moved in closer to the curb. Stupid tourist going too fast.
   She looked over her shoulder. The car was too close. Way too close. Jerking the bicycle to the right, Lucy rode off the asphalt.
   But the car kept coming, turning to follow her, its tires spitting dirt. With a shout, Lucy hurled herself off the bicycle. She landed hard in the sand of a low dune. She watched in horror as the vehicle smashed her bike, running over it without pausing, then kept going. Part of a handlebar dangled from the rear bumper of the car as it caroomed away.

So at age nine, I wrote about girls throwing themselves off bikes out of the paths of moving vehicles, and twenty-seven years later I ain't got nothing better than that?

I mock myself, but the find was rather delightful, I have to admit. Tragically, as soon as the doctor pronounces her paralyzed, the book ends with a ripped out page. What on earth was on that page? Why did I rip it out? Why didn't I finish it? I had goal, motivation, conflict. I was good to GO. (Also, maybe if I knew the ending, I could plagiarize myself some more.)

And another nice thing found in this journal is the page titled LOVE. Apparently, at age nine, I loved: Dad, Mom, Christy, Beth, Reading, Knitting, Romeo (my rat), Darby (our horse), Piano and Clarinet.

That's a nice LOVE page.

But the best part is the page titled HATE is blank.

Yep. But oh, god. Please don't ever make me read again through the journals kept during my teens and early twenties. I was a mess, yo. All jangled angst and bargain basement worn-out self-confidence. Looking back, I don't feel it was that bad. But my journals beg to differ. I hope it's just that I only really journal when I'm working shit out, because otherwise, I really was a mess back then.

Which makes the chair I'm sitting in right now a really lovely place to be.

o hai recession

March 24, 2009

We has it.

Lala got laid off yesterday. Bleah. Her company blamed it on the economy. I blame it on them not realizing what they had right in front of them. Of course, I’m the wife, and I’m ready to scrap and fight for her, but there’s not much to do now. At least she’ll get a good reference — her immediate boss knows how versatile and talented she is. The Corporate Weasels, well, they don’t and it’s a good thing they’re not in the same room with ME, that’s all I’m saying.

We will make do, of course, and I am lucky enough to work in an industry that usually has overtime to spare. I’ll be picking up OT and oncall pay, which will be good. Beans, rice, and cheap wine. We have all the yarn/books/instruments/video games anyone could ever want, and now that Lala can rip vinyl to her computer, we’re set for YEARS of music at a quarter an album.

But hey, if anyone in the Bay Area has a paying gig they’d like to talk to Lala about, she can be reached at lala at smartyboots dot net. Wait! You need her resume! Here it is:

Lala is good at doing everything on the computer. Specifically, she is what they call a Web Developer. She is also very good at web design and is not a crazy person, as I believe lots of web designers are.
She does other very computery-sounding computery things. I kid you not.
She makes any website look good.
She makes any CHAIR look good. If you have an ugly chair you need to cheer up, put Lala in it. That’s what I do.
She wears clothes exceedingly well, especially western gear, although now that she is into jazz (don’t tell her I told you!), she is going to have to start wearing more polyester.
She is a good knitter. Although she doesn’t do it anymore.
She would be probably be good at papier mache, although I have no real evidence to back this up.
She can make the BART train leave. It is her superpower and awesome to behold. Harness that whatever way you can.*
She can play any instrument set in front of her. Really.
She can drink the HELL out of a cup of a coffee.
She is the best.

Hey! She doesn’t need a job! She needs to stay home and be my house-boy! Hooray! I’ve always wanted one!(Or perhaps she would prefer that you read her real resume. It hasn’t been updated yet, so I suspect it’s out of date, but there you go. Not as much fun as mine.)

* My superpower, on the other hand, is to make BART arrive. So when we take BART together, we split the difference and usually end up waiting only a few minutes. (Have I told you this a million times already? I have? Sorry.)

EXTREMELY RELEVANT LINK. Lala just sent me THIS. She thought it was a joke. HA!