Still Alive for the Friday Five...

I've never done a Friday Five post, but I was in the mood today (ie. feeling very random). So, here we go...

1. Storm. I don't know if anyone caught my tweet yesterday, but I had a harrowing drive back from town yesterday. For serious. It was epic. I actually wasn't sure if I would make it.
   
   The storm came up fast. When I entered the grocery store, it was sixty degrees and sunny. It started to snow just as I stepped back outside. As soon as I turned the ignition, the wind gusts were so strong that they shook the car. By the time I got on the highway, it snowed and blew so hard that you could see only 200 meters or less.
   
   Basically, a white-knuckled drive.
   
   Luckily, though, I outran/drove the storm. It was warmer and only sprinkling in the mountains. I thought I was safe.
   
   Unfortunately, the storm caught back up with me when I turned up the mountain I live on. It actually got a little scarier, because for one thing, there's the drop on the side of the highway...which I actually couldn't see since it was so high up that I was driving IN the clouds. Visibility was down to 50 meters, and the traffic crawled at thirty mph. The snow melted on the windshield and froze again, which didn't help me see any better. Once the car started to skid, but I corrected it.
   
   
   Actual visibility through windshield right before I turned into my neighborhood.
   Q: Can you find the oncoming traffic?
   (And why don't they have their lights on??)
   
   
   So, I totally made it back alive. Then I sat down (shaking a little, actually) and freewrote all my feelings/sensations so that I could use it in my manuscript. I even had a scene in mind, where my main character fights off seven dragons and then gets chased by a Giant. :-P
   
   
2. How to Train Your Dragon. I loved this movie! LOVED it! It totally got me in the mood for a pet dragon of my own. (Sadly, that won't work for obvious reasons.) Then it got me in the mood to make sure my main character got to ride dragons. (Unfortunately, that won't work either - my main character has a pretty intense fear of heights, and she also engages in that aforementioned dragon-slaying.) Hmm. Will just have to settle for loving the movie, and possibly, purchasing it when it comes out.
   
   
3. Shopping. I actually went to town for supplies, ie. groceries and one book. I came back with seven books (gasp! I know, but the used bookstore I visited actually had a bunch of books I wanted.). And also, gigantic binder clips.
   
   
   I've been pining after them for a long, long time. When I was an editorial assistant, we literally had hundreds of them floating around the office. They're the only clip big enough to hold a whole manuscript together. I didn't think I would miss them, but recently, I've been swimming in so many loose papers (ie. manuscripts and drafts of said manuscripts) that I went and bought some of my very own. It is indicative of my nerdiness how happy they make me. Yay!
   
   
4. The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures, ie. one of the seven books I bought yesterday. I found it in the bargain section of B&N, and while flipping through, I found this entry:
   

   DOBIE/DOBBY
   
   A British house fairy, known mostly in the north of England, and as others of its kind, it likes to help human beings. They particularly like to join in with the kind of tasks undertaken by labourers, and are sometimes given the job of guarding treasure. However, the Dobie is not known for its wisdom, and often makes ridiculous mistakes or is easily confused. In parts of West Yorkshire, the name Dobby is applied to an evil fairy who leaps on the backs of unsuspecting travelers on horseback and garrottes them. Today, the Dobie is best known for its appearance in the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling, where it generally assumes the role of a helpful but not very bright companion to the young wizard. (136)

   I had no idea Dobby (the house-elf who first appeared in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) was based on legend. Obviously, I had to buy the book - to find out more awesome tidbits that prove how amazing J.K. Rowling is. And also, possibly, to expand my own knowledge of magical creatures. (I knew soooo many when I was in elementary school - from reading similar encyclopedias. I'm not sure what happened.)
   
   
5. Merlin (BBC). How have I not heard about this show until now? (Possibly, because I've been on a mountain cabin without cable for months now.) I just randomly discovered the whole first season on Hulu earlier this week.
   
   It's a BBC series where Merlin, Arthur, Morgana, Guinevere, and Lancelot are all about seventeen or so, and Arthur's dad, King Uther, has outlawed magic. So, while working as Arthur's servant, Merlin has to hide his magic, get Arthur out of scrapes, and basically save Arthur's life all the time while other people get the credit.
   
   And yes, it totally throws me off that the actor that plays Rupert Giles (ie. Buffy's Watcher) also plays King Uther.
   
   The banter (and friendship) between Merlin and Arthur is one of my favorite parts, but better than that, the show delves into destiny a lot, ie. knowing that you might be destined to be great someday - but meanwhile, you're still making a lot of mistakes right now. (Actually, it has a lot of similarities to my main character's dilemma.)

Hmmm. I wonder if Friday Fives are usually so long.... Oh, well.

Happy weekend!!

Percy, my dear character...

There will always be a place in my heart for the PERCY JACKSON series. It was one of the first series I really got into when I joined a middle grade team at a NY publishing house as an editorial assistant. Actually, I got so into it that I made one of my coworkers read it too, and later I caught her reading it in front of her computer one slow Friday afternoon. Then we ooooo'ed and awwww'ed and complained about having to waiting until The Last Olympian came out. Then it came out, and we ooooo'ed and awwww'ed again - and complained about how there weren't any more books in the PERCY JACKSON series and fretted over whether or not the Kane Chronicles and the new Camp Halfblood series could be as good.

Then I heard that the movie was happening.

(insert fan-girl squealing here)

Then my former coworkers went to the NYC premiere, and I was totally jealous.

Then my new agent invited me to go see it with her when I went to New York a few weeks later, and that made it lots better. :-D

The best part of the movie was watching it with Jo. Actually, I was very afraid that she would be one of those people who disliked talking during movies, or moviegoers being generally loud (once, I had a friend who wouldn't let me sit next to her during a Harry Potter movie opening night, because she said I laughed too loud - I was scarred. Obviously. Since I'm blogging about it now, five or six years later).

Luckily, Jo had no problem with us whispering back and forth about what was cut, who was funny, etc. After I ran to the bathroom, she even told me what I missed without me having to ask. (Is it wrong that this made me heart her forever?)

Other highlights include:

• Grover. This guy is funny! PERFECT comedic timing. I feel like he's been in something else, but I have no idea what. He's a few years older, and a lot more into girls than the Grover of the books, but when I left the theater, I was still giggling over things he said.
  
  
  
• Uma Thurman as Medusa. For some reason, I found this incredibly entertaining. It reminded me a lot of her work in My Super Ex-Girlfriend (which in my mind was a film with a great concept that was tragically executed). Uma does evil well, I must say.
  
  
  
• The special effects. In particular, the rooftop scene with lots of water spewing around (see above) got my wow rating. It made me want to have some sort of epic power on top of Manhattan (or at least to give my main character an epic power).
  

What I wanted from the movie that I didn't get:

• A more awesome Annabeth. LOVED Annabeth in the books. This one was snarky to the point of me thinking that she had PMS for the entire movie.
  
  
• More from the gods. They were big, they were bad, and I think they only got 10 minutes total of screen time. I wanted them to be funny (like Hermes in the books!) and hang out with their kids. I wanted COSTUMES.
  
  
• The Fates to get a shout-out. Who else thinks that Judi Dench would be an awesome Fate? She could have played all three, and I would have gone home singing the film's praises from Penn Station (NYC) to Big Sky (MT). Sigh.
  

All in all though, a very good film. It wasn't the books and didn't have the same level of characterization (or wit), but as my wise and illustrious agent said, "It's a completely different genre." I liked it immensely - much more than other films I've seen recently.

Too true.

Okay, in other news, soon I will alone again in a snowy cabin. My dad and sister are already gone. My mom leaves tomorrow, and my brother leaves on Sunday morning very early. I am sad to see them go, but the idea of being alone with my manuscripts and getting things knocked out is doing a good job of cheering me up/distracting me.

However, let me show you my younger brother, who is wonderfully funny, even when he doesn't mean to be:


Where is his left leg? Well, he stepped off his board into a bunch of fresh powder and thus sank hip deep in snow. Since this little brother happens to be 6'3" (or more), his leg is about three feet long. Which means the snow was really deep.

Obviously, I'm the sweetest big sister in the world - I laughed really hard, took a pic, and shared it on my blog. :-o

(Okay, okay - if my little sister (who reads this blog) thinks this is unkind, she will tell me and I will delete this part of the post. And no one will know except those lucky early readers...)

Sigh.

I know. I have not been blogging. I have been doing other things, such as:

(Note: none of these are essentially more important than blogging, but this is what going on.)

1. Watching New Moon for the second night in a row. Yesterday, my brother and sister really wanted to watch it, but during the ending, my mom had to answer a phone call and thus missed the last 20 minutes. So, we watched it again tonight. Somehow, she fell asleep in her chair. Actually, I'm the only one still awake. Possibly because I was inputing my revision changes into the digital version of my ms. I will say that watching it makes me want to read something with steamy paranormal romance, ie. probably not middle grade.
   
   
2. Hanging out with my family. My brother, my father, my mother, and my sister all came up for spring break. It was fantastic. Right now, we're two down and two to go. I will be sad to see them go, so I'm trying to get as much quality time in as possible. (Quality time = my nineteen-year-old stripping off his shirt and drawing a circular tattoo on his arm and quoting the most ridiculous of Jacob Black's lines from the aforementioned movie until my sister laughed so hard that she almost fell down the stairs. Oh, college-age siblings.)
   
   
3. Driving back and forth from the airport. It takes over an hour and a half to go each way, and to get back to work/school at a reasonable hour, my father and sister's flights took off at 7-something on Tuesday and 8-something today respectively. This means early wake-up times. (Technically, I didn't have to go with them to the airport, but I wanted to see them off.) This means that you go into that weird sleep-deprived daze. For example, I was asleep when we got pulled over for going 14 miles of the speed limit this morning at 7:15AM, and the lights confused me like whoa. It still seems like something that happened in a dream rather than reality. Especially since he let us off with a warning. (I was NOT driving, btw. The most responsible driver in the house was, and I will leave you to guess who that was.)
   
   
4. Revising. Technically, I'm revising the revisions right now. It's epic. It's not going badly. Just slowly. The slow part bothers me, but it would be more bothersome if it wasn't going at all. Of course, I'm still on the top half of the novel, which is more problematic, because I'm adding more to it - and shuffling the new scenes around a lot. (Reminds me of shuffling a deck of cards - have I mentioned this yet?)
   
   
5. Figured out how to reply to comments on Blogger. You start a whole new comment. I kept thinking that I could reply to each comment individually, but no, that's a livejournal thing.
   
   
6. Making a huge mess of the kitchen table. I swear all those papers aren't mine. No, for serious. That's not even my laptop. (Okay, that is my printer.)
   
   
   
7. Spending epic amounts of time on iTunes. Actually, this just happened today, but it was such an epic amount of time that it gets its own spot on the list. I mean, I was on it for hours, organizing my playlists (ie. deleting the ancient ones that I haven't listened to since August) and creating new ones. Specifically, creating new ones for the manuscript I'm working on. I mean, I had a few rough ones before, but they just got me through the first (and second) drafts. Now, I actually have thirteen separate ones for different sections, and a ton of Regina Spektor for some odd reason.
   
   
   
   
8. Feeling guilty about not blogging. Sadly, I will have to break my 15-blogs-a-month New Year's resolution. :'-( I mean, I guess I could pull out all the stops and blog twice a day for the next few days and totally make it, but I feel my revisions need me more than my blog. And so I'm amending my New Year's resolution again: 15 posts on a normal month, but 10+ if I do lots of traveling that month. But hey! it took me all the way until late March for me to break this resolution which is much better than what happens with most of my resolutions. Hmm.

Whew. I am sooooo sleepy (have been awake since 5:30AM). I think I shall go crawl in bed...

<3!

What Generation Do I Belong To Again?

(Disclaimer: This post enters rant territory.)

I re-watched this recently.

The first time I saw it was between middle school and high school. I remember wondering if my life was going to be like that when I graduated from college. (College graduation seemed very far off when I was thirteen.)

I also thought that Ethan Hawke was dreamy. ^-^

This time around, I thought mainly that he needed to wash his hair. :-o

It's a very fun movie (fun especially to see a very young Ben Stiller and a Winona of the Jo March days, before shoplifting became part of her identity), but I realized that at this point in my life, I couldn't really relate.

I'm not like this. My friends aren't like this.

Most of my friends had a plan after college. Some (like me) funneled into the publishing industry. A few of us worked for family or for family's business relations. A couple signed up for Teach for America or Teaching Fellows programs. A bunch applied immediately to grad school, or followed a significant other to grad school. Even my friend who is most like the Ethan Hawke character - ie. openly hostile to authority - got a scholarship to study graffiti in China.

Even though I know it happens, it's unfair to say that we are lazy. We do stuff. We try. We get our hands dirty.

And if we feel that it isn't right for us, we leave.

So far, half of my friends have left their jobs to pursue other opportunities. I can see how most employers don't know what to do with us. Especially if we are competent and hard-working, which many of us are. We are a hire-able, hard-to-keep generation.

We ask for more than our parents did. We are willing to put our noses to the grindstone, but when we're miserable, we can't trick ourselves into believing that it'll get better if we only work harder. We want our jobs to be fulfilling, not just good for monetary compensation, not just good for prestige.

We demand work-life balance. My friends don't have families of their own yet, but most of them are already planning for them. Many of our parents were workaholics, because they were taught that you must provide for your children in a financial way. We want to provide for our children emotionally and financially. That includes organizing our careers in a way that will let us be home by 6 to help them with their math homework, if needed. And not being so exhausted on the weekends that we are too tired to play with our kids.

We're also long-range planners. We talk about what our lives will be like when we are our parents' age. We discuss the trajectory of our lives, where it has taken us thus far, what we have learned, where we might possibly be going. Among close friends, and people we're sure won't make fun of us, we talk about fate and destiny and "what we're meant to be doing" in non-ironic terms. We may get bored after five minutes of inactivity, but we also daydream about our lives decades from now.

We also plan to make a difference. We don't like the world the way it is. We want to change it. We are opinionated about what we don't like, and we are experimenting with our own lives to see if we can improve the world.

We also believe we can do it. We're arrogant that way, and I won't apologize. We grew up with much change and much fear. Technology advanced the pace of life rapidly when we were toddlers, and 911 occurred while we were adolescents. Change doesn't bother us, and fear won't stop us.

Though young, we have lived long enough to realize that change is inevitable. Why can't it be for the better?