Name Dropping

I survived my first residency at VCFA. If you want to read about what residency is like, head over to my classmate Lisa Papademetriou's blog or learn a little about my faculty adviser Kathi Appelt at Through the Toll Booth.

As some of you know, I also took a jaunt up to Montreal for a couple of days after residency and climbed Mont Royal, watched Shakespeare in the Park, ordered some food in French, visited a library and saw a lot of churches. Here are some pictures:

Now that you're all caught up on my life, I really need to get back to homework. I've still got a ton of reading and writing to get done before Monday (like ten pages of creative work, one more critical essay [which is almost finished] and four books for my annotated bibliography). But I'll leave you with a new list: a few books by my classmates. (Sorry if I missed any of you! Let me know and I'll update the list.)

Haiti Noir by Ibi Zoboi
Lantau Life by Jane Houng
The Moon Came Down on Milk Street by Jean Gralley
Sixth-Grade Glommers, Norks, and Me by Lisa Papademetriou
The Color of My Words by Lynn Joseph
Tina Cocolina: Queen of the Cupcakes by Pablo Cartaya
Little Lions, Bull Baiters & Hunting Hounds by Shelley Ann Jackson

Life Ever Changing

As I sit here, taking a break from packing for grad school, I can't help but think about all the different adventures I've had in my life. I left home when I was 17 for an internship in our governor's press office, and I feel as though I've been on the road ever since. In my eyes, that's not a bad thing. I've been lucky enough to put down roots in many different places across the United States, and no matter where I am, I'm never in want of a friend.

Getting my master's degree in creative writing for children and young adults wasn't exactly in my life plan, but now that I'm about to embark on this new chapter in my life, it feels so right. My roots will extend a little farther, and my experience will extend a little further.

I feel I need to make a little disclaimer about my grad program attendance. While I often post highlights from book talks, writing conference and literary events on this blog—and will continue to do so—the content of the lectures I attend, communications with my advisors, discussions with my fellow students, etc. will not be shared on this blog. That doesn't mean I won't post my personal, general impressions and pictures of outings with classmates, but the content of the program will not be featured.

Storm Update

Growing up in tornado country, you spend a lot of time cleaning up after storms. You spend at least one weekend every summer shoveling muck out of a basement, cleaning up downed branches or picking up debris. And then serving a mission for my church in hurricane alley... Well, let's just say I saw my fair share of floods, over-turned trailers, uprooted trees and water-logged garbage.

But I've always been the lucky one. My home has always felt like the calm in the storm. Knowing my mom and dad would take care of us, that the power would be turned on soon, and that friends and family would be there if things didn't turn out so well.

This weekend has been a strange mix of the two. While I was without power for only 25 hours and I had plenty of nonperishable food and emergency supplier on hand, many people in my community haven't been so lucky. None of the stores have reopened, a lot of the traffic lights are not yet working, many cars are still buried by branches and the garbage is piling up everywhere. Emergency services still haven't been fully restored, and there is a lot of uncertainty around here. Probably the worst part is that I didn't have my family right around the corner to help.

Then again, I had several friends come and check on me when our cellphones weren't working. Another friend invited me to spend the hottest part of day at her pool and then welcomed me into her home to charge my phone, check my email and get some homework done. Though she had family visiting, another friend made up a bed for me so I didn't have to spend the night alone in my overheated apartment, and yet another friend two states away was ready to have me as a last-minute houseguest if my power hadn't been restored.

I still don't know when everything is going to be back to normal. Heck, I don't even know if my office will have power in the morning. But what I do know is that even when the unexpected happens, there are always people willing to help.

My Internet-Free Saturday

I decided to go without the internet on Saturday to try to minimize distractions for a productive day. And while there were some annoying side-effects (I wasn't sure what time the library closed, the name of an actor in a movie I was watching escaped me, I couldn't check Facebook to see if my friend had her baby), I was more than pleased with the results.

• I finished a friend's book, D-day And Beyond: A True Story Of Escape And Pow Survival, which I've been trying to find the time to read for a month now.
• All the documents that have been piling up on my desk are now in my filing cabinet.
• I laughed aloud while reading the delightful Z Is for Moose by Kelly Bingham, ill. by Paul O. Zelinsky.
• I cooked, yes, as in used my kitchen to prepare meals.
• My sister would be proud: I made a pie.
• I went to the library, recycling drop off, grocery store, library, gas station...
• I taked to my mom and my sister and looked up flights to Chicago for my cousin's wedding.
• The manuscripts critiques for next month's workshops are nearly finished.

The list could go on forever. I don't know why I'm always surprised by how much I accomplish when I go internet free. We think technology has made us so much more productive, and while in some ways it has, it's also giving us more resources to waste our time.

So in July, I'm going to limit my internet time to one hour each night. I still have to be online for work and will check email throughout the day, but I seriously need to cut back on how much time I spend online. We'll see if I can exercise any self control.

Daddy's Girl

I haven't always been a daddy's girl. In fact, there were a few years there in my late teens/early twenties when I thought my dad and I would forever have a strained relationship. Maybe it's because we're both so stubborn and set in our ways that we never really tried to understand each other. Then one day—quite out of the blue—I realized I was what needed to change about my relationship with my father.

So here we are, ten years later and 700 miles apart, and I'm closer to my dad than ever. I thought about him often this week. Practically everything I did came as a direct result of something my father taught me to love. I work in Washington, DC, because my father knows the importance of being politically active; even the field I work in is directly related to my father's work. Every time I downloaded a new song on my mp3 player, I thought about sharing it with my dad because he's a musician and music lover. I watched old Star Trek (Deep Space Nine and Voyager) episodes because I grew to love the series when my dad watched The Next Generation with us. As I listened to baseball games (both Nationals and White Sox), I thought of the games my dad took us to and how we used to complain whenever he'd steal the remote on Saturday afternoons and turn on a game. Each time I opened up an assignment for grad school, I thought of how proud my dad is that I'm getting an advanced degree because he never had the chance to finish college.

Then last night, my thoughts turned sad when my dad posted on Facebook about how much he missed his own father. My grandfather passed away many years before I was born, when my father was still in high school. My father's gone about 40 years without his father there to ask career advice, to watch a baseball game, to chat about the day. It made me think about how lucky I am to be able to miss my dad and then pick up the phone and hear his voice. How blessed I am to have had 30 years, more than 11,000 days, to have my father there for me.

I know this is a really sappy, but it's Fathers' Day after all. So even though there were a few years in there I'm sure I didn't say it often enough and miles prevent me from saying it in person, I love you, Dad. I always have, and I always will.