recommended reading

I've been reading so promiscuously over the past couple of years that I really haven't been tracking new work by some of my favorite authors. But I've recently bumped up against a couple of new ones I want to mention.

I just finished reading Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe, which was a very enjoyable reminder of how much I enjoy reading pretty much anything he writes. This one is set in Miami and its themes are race relations, the art world, law enforcement, money and social climbing, and so on. Wolfe always seems to swirl big topics in with available characters and a lot of wit; somewhere along the way, you realize you've been reading social commentary, and it's gone down pretty easy. I would say it has a similar tone and scope to his '80s novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities.

There is also a new John Irving book, In One Person, which is next on my list after I gobble up the Kenneth Swalanski bio of J.D. Salinger. I don't think I've read Irving's last book, Last Night in Twisted River, so that's on my list, too.

I've also had a strong recommendation of Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, so that's in the queue as well.

My Kindle croaked for good about a week ago, so I'm using the Cool Reader app on my phone until I decide what to do next. I get paid on the 15th, and Amazon has offered a discount on a couple of refurbed Kindle Touch'es, though as always I am eying better models. My phone will do a lot of things that an e-reader will, and an e-reader will do a lot of things that a tablet will, so I have to figure this all out. All suggestions and advice will be appreciated.

stuff girls put on themselves

I recently discovered a makeup blog by the great cartoonist Natalie Dee. It's called Stuff I Put On Myself. As someone who grew up hippie-ish and makeup-less, I find myself still learning how to use the stuff right. And like Natalie, who was a lifelong nail-biter, I overcame my lifelong nail-picking to become a very serious consumer of nail polish. (Though Natalie has gone so far as to create her own line, Super Black; the winter line will be available shortly.

I'm a cheapskate about makeup but I have expensive tastes. I spend the money when I need to, and have been known to look for discontinued and out-of-season colors on Ebay. When I can, I buy from ELF, which has great/cheap powder eyeshadow kits and some nice lipsticks - although their online swatches bear only a faint resemblance to the actual colors. Their nail polishes used to be great, but then they changed the formula and became way too thick. Some nail polish thinner helps.

I'm still looking for the perfect day cream (something very moisturizing with a 15 SPF) and the right foundation (never wore the stuff until recently...I'm starting to see a little discoloration from times past spent in the sun) and the best-ever mascara (I'm sticking with Maybelline Great Lash for the time being).

I've been a fan of Urban Decay for a long time, although they keep discontinuing stuff I like. Their old nail polishes were awesome, as was a metallic (not glitter) liquid eyeliner and a gloss called Lip Gunk. Now they do some no-good polish in sets. And recently, they discontinued my all-time favorite eye shadow, Lounge, which is a reddish brown with a green sheen. I bought an extra before they vanished.

There is no doubt that I've become a girlier girl over the past few years...the makeup and clothes are catching up with the jewelry, it seems.

less and more often

I decided to see if I can write more frequent entries into this blog, posting a little more often and at less length.

I saw two very different movies this week.

One was the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie, The Master (2012). I have to say I was somewhat disappointed in this, although it's worth seeing for the great Phillip Seymour Hoffman. This story about a Scientology-like cult was marred by the casting of Joaquin Phoenix as a troubled man going in and out of the cult. There's been a odd aura about Phoenix since his dropping out of films and making that weird documentary about being a rapper; instead of seeing a troubled ex-soldier, I was seeing weird Joaquin Phoenix. And I'm not sure if this was an acting or writing deficit, but some of his comings and goings from the cult were not clear or understandable; the passage of time was also murky. Amy Adams, playing Hoffman's wife, was pregnant for a very long time early in the film (that is, way more time than it seemed phoenix's initial indoctrination took); later, she's no longer pregnant, but there's no sign or mention of a baby. The character of Hoffman's son (played by Jesse Plemons of the TV fave Saturday Night Lights) was sketchy: early in the film, he's dubious about what his father does, and later, he's clearly on the time, but has no story line other than that. Anderson usually does beautiful work with period settings, but they didn't jump out at me in this film (the way they did in, say, Boogie Nights). This wasn't the film I wanted to see.

On the other hand, I watched the Indian film God Tussi Great Ho (2007) the other night, expected little, and was surprisingly pleased. Yet another unauthorized Indian remake, this time of the Jim Carrey film Bruce Almighty, all of the silliness carries a very good comic performance by Salman Khan. And of course, there was only one person to stunt-cast as God: Amitabh Bachchan. The movie was corny and the special effects horrendous, but it was really, really entertaining. There was also one great song - I'll have to sniff it out on YouTube.

I'm still here

A few quiet hours on a Sunday morning in Yardley, PA, while other goes about their Sunday committments. Weekend with Jannah. Slept beautifully on Friday night but had screaming insomnia last night. It's my second weekend away in a month - I was in the Poconos visiting Joyce two weekends ago, and will get some of those pictures up as soon as I can. Some are in my phone, and on my home computer. I think I need cloud storage at some point.

All of this time away makes me feel hopelessly behind on everything at home, things like jewelry and catching up with my various online pursuits (like this one). Still, it's nice to get away. Very peaceful at Joyce's; Jannah's is the usual whirlwind of visits and activities.

At home, I'm mesmerized by the TV, which is now hooked up to play from my computer and to access Netflix by wi-fi. And loving my new phone, which is fast enough to play streaming videos ad music. I like all of the intake, sucking in information.

Work is getting busy again - classes start tomorrow, as does the first of my two new interns. I hope thay adapt and stick. My winter term intern quit after a day. I hope I didn't overwhelm her...although this is the first time it's happened. Lots going on at work: big plans to reclaim the money from candidates who don't see Treatment Service patients. Could turn the financials around in a big way. I'm definitely more involved in fundraising and in the economic health of the institute. Coming up on my second year there (it'll be two years in April), I feel very locked in and live and die for the institute.

Mostly I used feel overwhelmed by too many projects: jewelry repair and commissions, trying to get enough new jewelry made to start on Etsy, and the urge (again) to start (finally) writing a novel. I'd like to take an online course. A lot to juggle. Here in Yardley, I see Jannah also juggling a lot, but totally different things. Homeowner life is very different.

Even with the huge media input, I'm still reading as usual. I finally decided to read Ringworld and found it too confusing.

So now that I have time and a computer at hand, everything has gone out of my head. Isn't it always like that?

So now tht

still somewhat short on time

The TV is now 100% hooked up. We get the best possible quality from our Verizon box (and can watch 3D movies on demand), we're connected to the internet by wi-fi so we can watch Netflix, and we're wired into the computer so we can watch DVDs from the computer's player, movies from my hard drive, and pretty much anything else you can put on the computer. Saturday we watched "A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas" (pretty funny) and "Django Unchained" (excellent). Please don't ask me how I managed to watch "Django" at home. Suffice it to say that a lot of awards screeners are floating around the internet, and one floated onto my computer.

Other than that, I've been eating up back episodes of Nip/Tuck on Netflix. Such a great soap opera with nifty guest stars. Now I dream about handsome plastic surgeons instead of "Dexter."

As I walk around with my great new phone, I'm figuring out what's most useful to me and what I like best. I text with a few people, though I'm still one-fingering the keyboard. What I'm really loving right now, apart from being able to take and send pictures, is bringing the phone with me at bedtime and listening to Pandora. Pandora is a music-streaming service that will create a channel around an artist you suggest (in addition to having standard category channels like Delta Blues, 50's Blues, 50's Oldies, 80's Oldies, Bollywood Oldies, etc). So I have Roy Orbison Radio and Lyle Lovett Radio and Adnan Sami Radio. But my current favorite at bedtime is Django Reinhardt Radio. (It remains to be seen if Barry will tolerate that one, since he's a real jazz-hater.)

I'm going away this weekend to visit my aunt Joyce (my uncle Howard's first wife) in the Poconos. I haven't seen her since my wedding, 12 years ago. She's only about seven years older than I am, around Barry's age, so we've always been pals. (I also adore my uncle's second wife, who recently brought me a mess of Venetian glass beads from...well, from Venice.) I'm somehow not as anxious as I usually am when traveling, which seems like a good thing. I'm looking forward to getting caught up with her, to being out of the city, and to being in the Poconos - I was last there about 15 years ago, just a couple of months before I met Barry.

I'm into bracelets lately, knotted on silk. The top one is white keshi pearls, which I'm keeping for myself and wearing right now. The 4th, 5th and 6th down from the top were given away as holiday gifts (they are grey "dot" pearls, tan pearls with vintage Swarovski crystal, and Peruvian pink opal). The amber (bottom) is going to be remade as a double strand, to order. I'm still hoping to start on Etsy around the end of the month.

too much to do, not nearly enough time

My crafts fair success, plus the fact that a first-rate photographer has offered to photograph my work, means I'm going to open an Etsy store. I was going to set up my own website, but started poking around online to find out about web hosting and web hosting software, and felt like I was drowning. Etsy is much easier, to start. Eventually, I want to sell OAK (one of a kind) items at Etsy, and have a website with my basic designs which people can custom-order in different stones and lengths.

But I have to make quite a bit of new jewelry, since I sold a lot of my best pieces at the crafts fair and after. Also have to make holiday gifts for Judy and Lucie.

Also - someone planted the idea of reselling beads in my head. My idea here is to do it on Ebay, to specialize in fancy cuts and hard-to-find stones. I've been checking Indian bead websites, and there's some pretty eye-popping stuff that can be broken down into smaller lots and sold at a profit. I think I'll start my selling some of my own overstock - I have a bunch of big rhodochrosite tabs and have never figured out what to do with them. And since I got a very generous bonus from work, I have some seed money for starting to buy from overseas.

And I'm also getting closer to knuckling down and writing the novel that's been floating in my head for a few years. My problem with writing a novel is to come up with a plot which is not too embarassingly close to my own life. I've been floating an idea with a couple of characters based on people I've known (and one kind of like me), but a plot very dissimilar to my actual connections with those people I've known.

One of the people I plan to borrow from is W., and I don't think I've ever discussed him here, and that will take another chunk of time, when I get around to it.

I'm madly excited about getting service on my new phone on Saturday, I've already started to enter some contacts. I'm just happy every time I turn it on, and look forward to being a textin' fool, getting a cool ringtone, taking pictures, and so on. (I'm going to try to do the bead photography on my own.)

I recently read an amazing book, Swimming Home by Deborah Levy, and recommend it wholeheartedly. I wish I still had that Amazon widget or could figure out how to get it back. I'm definitely confused with all aspects of "monetizing" my blog, although I guess I do have some ads on here. I doubt I've made a dime, but that's not what I'm here for.

when I can sleep, I dream...

Something rather peculiar has been happening for a few weeks now. On Sunday nights, I am generally glued to the TV, since almost all of my favorite shows are on Sunday nights: Boardwalk Empire, Homeland, Dexter, Treme, Shameless, Girls, Mad Men, Hell on Wheels, Breaking Bad...luckily they don't all have the same seasons. Treme and Boardwalk Empire just ended, and Homeland and Dexter are still on. These are all quality shows, and all on cable or premium cable. (The only shows I watch regularly on network TV are CBS Sunday Morning, 60 Minutes, and Fringe - Fringe being the only one that isn't on a Sunday.)

Dexter is a totally unique program, and both the character and the lead actor (Michael C. Hall) are amazing. And although I don't have ay sort of crush on either the actor or the character (and in fact, I think most of what he wears on the show is pretty unflattering), I find that I dream about him frequently on Sunday nights. The man in my dreams doesn't seem to be either Dexter or Michael C. Hall, but it's that guy, that face and that body. I don't remember much about the dreams except for the one last night - he was my lover, and dead sexy. Last night we were involved in some sort of caper, working in a team on some sort of scam. Part of it was in a casino. I actually have quite a few dreams where I'm in some sort of casino or an old-school yet pristine arcade (the sort with pinball and skee-ball, not video games).

I also have a lot of dreams where I'm either in a caper or hiding and escaping from someone or something. In these dreams, I'm sometimes in the story, and sometimes watching it as if it's a movie or show.It's always kind of vague and yet very emotionally charged.

And tonight, I couldn't fall asleep. I see my therapist on Tuesdays, and she's requested that I not take Atavan nor the "herbal relaxant" the night before. I generally take an Atavan before bedtime, which quiets down the racing thoughts that often prevent me from falling asleep; the herbal makes me sleepier.

I guess I'm a little jazzed up because the goods from my online shopping spree are starting to arrive. The TV came some days ago, but we have to get rid of the 100-lb. tube TV before we can set the new one up, which involves getting someone to take it down two flights of stairs. Barry's going to get a couple of local guys to do it this weekend, since it's way beyond our abilities. But the big prize came today: my new phone.

My new phone is a Samsung Galaxy S Lightray 4G, which I bought very slightly used on eBay for about half of the retail price. Although I may not be able to pay for service until the middle of the month, I turned it on, fiddled with it a little, changed the wallpaper. It is so beautiful. I expect it to be a life-changer, one of those extremely useful tools like the internet or my beloved Kindle. I'm far from being a techie, but I learn very fast when something can be useful or make me more productive. (All of the shopping I did with my crafts fair money was online.) I don't use my current "feature phone" much, since it's a bottom of the barrel phone that I got free when I was on public assistance. You have to use the phone-button keys to text, which is a huge pain in the ass. The only use I really get out of it is to call Barry when I'm in transit ("do you need me to pick anything up on the way home?"); the only advantage to it is that it's entirely free, and I use it for long-distance calls (due to an old debt of Barry's, we can't get long-distance service on our landline, and have to use a phone card).

My feeling is that I'll be doing a lot of texting with the new phone; also, it has a very good camera with flash. (It even has a second camera to make video calls.) Plus I expect it will replace my mp3 player. I really wanted to get something that wouldn't be outdated in a hurry, and although I really wanted a Galaxy iii, I ended up with a Galaxy ii, which I'm pretty sure is only one notch down from top-of-the-line. I'm not a fan of Apple, and don't use any of their products (my mp3 player is a Sansa Fuze, which is excellent and has served me well).

The TV also has all of the bells and whistles I could get for under $400; it has wireless internet connectivity, which I believe means that I can put anything on the TV that's on my computer - I know I'll be able to use Netflix streaming, and I hope I can use the DVD player on my computer, since we haven't had a DVD player for a while. I hit a bit of a wall when I was researching the TV; some of the tech was a little over my head.

When I bought this computer, a desktop, I did my homework - though rather than deep internet research, I consulted Tamsir. But I did make sure to get a fairly gigantic hard drive; even with 200+ movies and thousands of music files, it's only about 2/3 full after three years.

Only the Kindle is fairly basic, and only about three years old. I don't have much interest in a laptop or tablet, but I would like to upgrade to a Kindle Fire at some point.

But for now, I think I'm pretty content with my tech. It's kind of mind-bending, the things that have been created in my lifetime. I was born about a year before Alan Shepard became the first American in space, and watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, on a fuzzy black-and-white TV. My aunt worked for IBM for many years, and when I was a child, I visited her at work and got to see the "electronic brain," a computer that filled an entire room; in the 80s, I used CPM computer at work, with a tiny monochrome display, and then and IBM PC. I used the internet when it was only text with no pictures, and then finally had a color monitor and a mouse and a Mozilla browser. I briefly used a big clunky cell phone around 1998. I remember how thrilling it was to have a wireless home phone, after all those years of dragging wires around. I remember going from a manual to an electric typewriter. I remember my first VCR. It's all been so exciting. Such an amazing time to live through and in.

Also - my workplace had its holiday party on Saturday night, which was pretty fantastic. It was in Lucie's unspeakably beautiful home, a classic brownstone in Park Slope, tasteful and comfortable and just right. Barry actually came with me, enjoyed himself, and made a good impression. The pickled salmon I brought for the potluck went over big. We also had a silent auction, and Judy decided we'd bring our traveling crafts fair, and I sold over $100. (I've sold about $500 since the actual crafts fair.) About 50 people came to the party, and it was a big success. (The silent auction, which had a couple of high-ticket items, brought in a pile of money.)

Since the fundraising chairperson resigned, Judy's been the acting chair, and she pretty much indicated the other night that she and I and the wonderful Board member who coordinated the silent auction are pretty much going to be the fundraising team. I've been pointing myself at fundraising, and doing some good and hard work, and so have moved up. It's surprisingly pleasant and fulfilling to work diligently at this job - even more than when I was in book publicity. Some parts of book publicity were wonderful, but there were elements I didn't care for and wanted to avoid; there were days when I didn't want to go to work, especially after Ken left and was replaced with that witch. But nothing is dreadful at this job; nothing scares me or puts me off.

Interestingly, it seems that Barry is having a similar experience at his job. In fact, some of the people at the party were very impressed by what he does. (Even though it doesn't require much in the way of skills and experience to be hired, it's difficult to perform well; I think the job title, Client Care Counselor, sounds very impressive and both boosts Barry and also sounded very good to the people he spoke to on Saturday - our faculty and students are probably 85% from a social work background, and many of the students work in that field.)

Now, to attempt sleep once more.