Well! As it turns out, often in fact, there is sometimes more to a given situation than meets the eye. As you may or may not remember, a bit ago, I received my Secret Santa gift from the Book Blogger’s Holiday Swap. On my last post, I received a wise comment from Jo – she suggested that I open the book. (novel thought – perhaps might have crossed my mind if I hadn’t been leaving for the weekend an hour after opening the package. *silly face*) So I did!

And inside the book I found a handmade necklace and two pairs of earrings from my Secret Santa! And in blue – my favorite color!

Thanks Jo!

What is that, you ask? Well, it’s this award (although really if this were my game, maybe not the word I’d have used haha) that Danielle gave me.

Rules for the award:

1. Must thank the person who gave you the award and list their blog and link it.
2. Share “10 Honest things” about yourself.
3. Present this award to 7 others whose blogs you find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged you.
4. Tell those 7 people they’ve been awarded HONEST SCRAP and inform them of these guidelines in receiving the award.

Thank the person who gave you the award

Well Danielle, of all the things you’ve given me, I can’t say this is one that I am most thankful for, haha. I’m certainly one to aim more for funny than revealing with something like this, but I don’t think that’s what you were looking for, so I’ll respect that. When it comes to our 10+ year friendship, I think I am most thankful and amazed at how it has stood the test of time and differences – because for all our top-level similarities, we’re way different! I don’t have my notebooks and I didn’t pay enough attention to the terms to remember, but I love that even as our relationship goes through separating in a lot of different ways – literary taste, geography – it doesn’t mean that we drift apart. Sure the closeness varies from time to time, but we’re like those family members who sometimes can’t believe they’re related but wouldn’t have it any other way. <3

10 Honest Things About Moi (I suppose I’ll play along and make them more than the obvious)

1. I am a stalker. Yes, that means I am stalking you, IP address 66.172.120.## – but only insofar as I know that you’re stalking me and never commenting (lame!). It’s true, I have (though they be limited) ways of finding out how you arrived at my blog, and maybe even where in the world you hail from. Chillax – the information is quite limited, but all the same, person-from-my-hometown-who-visits-my-blog (by which I don’t mean subscribes via RSS or email)-weekly, I know you’re there, and since I’m being honest, yes, I am kind of creeped out that you (who probably know me in real life) never comment or leave any indication of who you are and that you’re following along with my life. (Granted, I post my blog on my facebook page. I can hardly claim surprise. But remember, I’m being honest today, not rational)

2. I think I’m lying to myself when I say I don’t regret things in my life but chalk them up to experience. I do regret. I regret the things that I didn’t do.

3. I don’t know what your impression of me is – but I am competitive. I do care about succeeding and yes, beating people.

4. It isn’t that I don’t like to be honest on my blog, but to outright state that you’re going to reveal something personal about yourself without ambiguity or a veil of anecdotes is more than I signed on for when I invited people I know in real life to follow my blog. Let’s be honest, this isn’t the first place I come when I need to vent or talk about my day. This is for my thoughts, which can be incredibly vague and un-grounded. This is so that I am forced to write in a (somewhat) cohesive manner and not let my skills atrophy.

5. Unless I’m being overloaded and or innundated with new information, I generally have a pretty good memory.

6. There was a time I would have said (and in looking back, would still come to this conclusion) that I had more friends online than I did in real life. Interpret that as you will, whether a sad commentary on the state of my real life at that time or an awesome example of online community.

7. I think my fingers are awkwardly short.

8. I categorically fall into the grouping of people who buy things with the intention of deciding later if they actually want them, fully expecting and planning to take advantage of the option to return.

9. There might be a tiny bit of me who blames some of the camera-shyness I have developed on the people who seriously/jokingly (I don’t even know) got “mad” at me for taking so many pictures. There are still some people of whom I will take photos unabashedly, but to candidly capture others, it now requires a certain boldness fueled by adrenaline or sugar or something else not naturally appearing in my blood.

10. I struggle with vulnerability (and that’s what this meme is all about). See #4 again.

Tag, You’re It!

Yes, I voyeuristically like finding out more about y’all, but I don’t think it very effective. Go for it if you want, don’t if it doesn’t strike your fancy. Chrissy, you can be tagged since I think you’ll do it.

As mentioned earlier, I received my holiday swap/book blogger Secret Santa gift!

My Secret Santa did not reveal his/her identity, but thanks for Katrina Carlson’s “Untucked” and Robert Ward’s The King of Cards, neither of which I was previously familiar with – so yay for branching out!

ETA: (see part two!)

As mentioned in the previous post. The novel is finished. Pretty crazy.

I haven’t gone back to actually read it yet. I started too but then decided it was too soon and I need more of a break from it. From the little that I have looked over in sending it to some people etc, I am very aware of it’s roughness (and already regretting that I let people read it lol). It is definitely fascinating as a look at where I was in the process though. As my roommate pointed out, the first paragraph is so obviously an attempt at ramping the word count haha. And at later points it becomes obvious that I’m trying to hurry things a long. Among things that are inconsistent, the characters, style, and pacing stand out. Part of that is only figuring things out as I went along instead of starting with a plan, but all the same, I almost feel bad for letting people read it.

It is very obviously influenced by the fact that I was reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf throughout the first half (can we say hello to stream-of-consciousness??).

I suppose I am my worst critic – and I feel this piece especially deserving of criticism, and I don’t shy away from it. But I think I also need to recognize the fact that it is a first draft. Whereas in college my pieces were usually short enough and I’d thought about them in advance, so I could pull off turning in my first draft. 103 page novel? Not so much. And that is okay. And I will resist the temptation to send a follow-up email to people who actually read this first draft, stating in nearly as many pages as the novel where I feel it is deficient. Or (more realistically) maybe I’ll send them a (shorter haha) piece that I am actually pleased with.

While I think I have found the happy medium that does not absolutely hate the entire thing and want to burn it, I still am not sure whether I’m going to try to salvage it and revise it to the point where yeah, maybe I’ll try to get it published. Something I’ve known about myself for a while is my desire for approval – and I don’t want to (at the risk of succeeding) publish something that I am not absolutely proud of. But maybe I could become proud of what the novel becomes down the road – who knows. At any rate, I am so thankful (and yes, somewhat proud of myself at the accomplishment) that I did this. The practice of writing every day (except one, I think) was so beneficial. Even if it was crap, at least I was writing. That’s a habit maybe I should hold on to.

Now, I am off to Spokane to spend the weekend with friends! When I return you can expect photos of my Holiday Swap gift which arrived today but I’m literally on the way out the door. And some honesty (not that I’m not always honest, haha), courtesy of Danielle Happy weekend!!

My novel is done. At least the first draft of it. Who knows if there will be a second to render the piece worth trying to publish, but regardless I’m rather proud of myself for finishing.

In other happy news,

I am sending out my Holiday Swap person’s stuff tomorrow.

I won the Tegan and Sara album from Kate at La Petite Choue They accompanied me to the finish line of my novel.
(I should find something to give away to y’all. Your chances of winning would probably be pretty good too, since out of however many of you read the blog about one of you comment )

I spent Thanksgiving at home;

the weather was beautiful

and I got to hang out with some of my fab and crazy friends (who take fab and crazy pics with my camera haha).

via  roboppy

One extremely negative part of not living in France is the tragic lack of boulangeries & patisseries.
Sure, there are some. There’s even one fairly accessible to me.
But it is entirely in the other direction than that which I will travel to go to work in an hour or so.
And I have been craving pain au chocolat since I went to bed. By which I don’t mean there was a respite while I slept. Oh no. I dreamt about it.
You can imagine my bowl of cereal was especially soggy and tasteless this morning.

There really is no solution to this dilemma. Google can find me no bakeries on my route to work that look promising – not even thinking of pain au chocolat, but simply a pastry that I would want. Not to say there aren’t any, but Google doesn’t have that knowledge.

Espresso would be nice too. By which I do mean of the Italian variety, swallowed at the bar.
Yes, I complained about it before, and I think that while Seattle is a breeding grounds (get it, grounds…haha) for coffee connoisseurs, that thirst (…) for perfection has yet to reach the east-side (don’t get confused…there are two “east-sides” in Washington…one is the east side of the state, and the other is the east side of the large area that just about anyone else includes in “Seattle” but isn’t actually Seattle…).
Digression aside, suffice it to say I don’t have enough confidence in what I will receive to be the weird person who asks the barista for a straight shot.
So I think I’ll opt for a random drive-up and see what happens when I’m given a double short latte.

And then I’ll drive away (because yes, I get to use my roommate’s car today) and imagine how amazing that would taste with a flaky pain au chocolat.