I’m Queen of the world

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Suzanne Schultz Pick

NaBloPoMo prompt: If you were queen/king of the world, what would you change? Why? What would you keep the same? Why?

I know I’m not alone in uttering the statement, “if I were Queen of the World…” and I don’t have any Earth shattering ideas but I’ve come up with some so far.  First, all the restaurants will have to give their food to soup kitchens after closing hours.  No thrown away food.  I know the whole argument will be that no McD’s will give away perfectly good hamburgers but, please, no one in this world should go hungry.  That’s my main thing.  I go nuts if I don’t have a bowl of Ready Brekin the morning and I’ve seen hungry kids at schools who need that free breakfast and lunch that we give kids.  Throwing away food is just awful.

I’d fix this stupid economy so we can all go back to work but I’ve not figured out all the ends and means to get that sorted yet.  When I do, I’ll get back to you.

I was on the bus today and overheard a couple of 20 some year old guys talking about how they are working part time, minimum wage jobs instead of their planned teaching career.  I knew how they felt.  It was sad too because the one guy was saying how he loved being in the classroom and how he woke up every day, excited to go to work and change kids’ lives.  Now he’s a sous chef.  The other guy was a microbiology major and working at a tea shop.  Nothing fulfilling, nothing that equals the kind of education and training they’ve worked hard to achieve.

But it’s all going to have to get better soon.  Economic recession is so 2008.

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What makes me think

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Suzanne Schultz Pick

The NaBloPoMo forum prompt that I chose today was that simple: What makes me think.

Thinking about something productive and just thinking are two different things.  If I want to drift off and think about television that I watched last night (sadly for me today it was Snakes on a Plane) then I just listen to my iPod (Arcade Fire’s “Rococo” has to be played once each time I turn that on), or try to fall asleep.  But when there are creative thoughts that need to be thought up, it has to be while on a walk or in the shower or something that doesn’t require any kind of concentration.

I do not listen to music when trying to think productively.  I’ve always associated driving with music because driving is a mindless activity that needs some kind of mental stimulus.  Now, if I were trying to think of an idea for a story or a plot point, then I’d take my walk and let the ideas plop in without any other kind of distraction.

And with that abrupt, late post for today, I have to get some work done.  It’s been grey outside all day and I’ve been slacking off doing my daily duties.  I finished New Moon last night too, so I plan to have that book review done over the weekend.

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What do I remember?

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Suzanne Schultz Pick

NaBloPoMo daily prompt: What is your first memory?

Oh geez, who comes up with these prompts?  I had better ones for 7th and 8th graders when they did bell ringers each day.  (Granted I found them fun – they usually just ignored them or said “I don’t get it.”)

But I digress.  The first thing I clearly remember was being at Cedar Point or King’s Island or the zoo or some place like that.  I was walking with my mother but the sun was in my eyes and I reached out to a lady in front of me instead of to my mother who was beside me.  Odd thing is, consciously I knew the lady wasn’t my mother in front of me, but I reached for her anyway.  Weird, yes.  Poignant moment in my life?  Not really.

Anyway, so I’ve been looking at National Novel Writing Month after it was on BBC Breakfast.  I’ve seen this online for as long as I’ve had Twitter but never bothered.   Now that I have a project to work on, it may be a very good way to get some decent work in.  It’s the schedule I have a hard time with – if I go out for the day, do my thing, come home and start messing around off the computer, I won’t get anything done.  If I stay home and keep my booty at the desk, I get some things accomplished. 

I have to keep from turning the Xbox on and playing Sims 3 too.

NaNoWriMo is a contest that you enter and it says that we have to post excerpts of what we’ve written each day to keep an accurate word count (the aim is for 50,000 words by the end of November.)  But I’ve been told (thank you, Twitter) that no one reads those excerpts and they aren’t required if you write your word count in the form each day.  So, it’s not a bad opportunity.  People have done it for years.  Heck, even Water for Elephants was written for NaNoWriMo.

Wow, 200,000 people participated in this last year.  The recession sure has spawned a lot of indie writers.

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I am electro girl

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Suzanne Schultz Pick

The NaBloPoMo writing prompt for today was a bit dull for me so I decided to pick one from the prompt forum:  Time travel has been invented. You have to go back 15 years and explain the concept of social networking and blogging to yourself.

I distinctly remember using GeoCities after high school in 1994.  I remember updating a personal webpage and being relieved when the “weblog” finally came about (thought it was supposed to be for news only).  Everything was easier once we had a way of updating posts without going in and totally rejigging the front index page each and every time.

So explaining this to a twenty year old me would be all right, I guess.  Granted the whole “everyone is online” situation would be odd but really cool to 20 year old me.  I remember back then having AOL was the “in” thing (even though I tried it and never liked its restrictive browsing capabilities”).  If I explained Twitter to myself I would explain that it’s like one big, on-going, never-ending chat that includes celebrities that ignore your comments.  Yeah, it really doesn’t sound like that much fun in 1996 either, does it?  Especially when a lot of people use it for link sharing (which is cool to a point) and complaining about businesses (which is handy – to a point), people they don’t know in person (we called that gossiping 15 years ago) and television (okay, that’s fun.)

Facebook on the other hand would be cool to 20 year old me.  I mean, think of it, being in college, as Zuckerburg originated it, and being able to have everyone’s business in full view.  Well, we had this in the 2000s, as I’ve mentioned on here before – LiveJournal.  That got to be a pain. You let dramatic people have access to so much personal info that it just leads to chaos.  That’s why it was so hard for a lot of us to bother with Facebook – we were use to going online and being fairly anonymous.

Now we’re us. We can tell everyone where we worked, what our family looks like, where we went over the weekend and where we’re going on vacation.  Nothing’s a secret anymore.  So being 20 year old me who had to figure out Smashing Pumpkins lyrics by listening to the songs would have the whole wide world of music at the click of a link. 

Wait, don’t I have to explain links to 20 year old me first?

I’ll also have to explain why I am electro girl too.

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Ye old pastimes

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Suzanne Schultz Pick

We were talking about high school today.  You remember those days when we had a bunch of people around us all the time, we had the best music to listen to, we had high hopes, big dreams, and an angst that was undeniable?  Would anyone of us want go back to that?  No, thank you.

Steve was saying how in England they don’t have Homecoming dances but they do have things like Prom.  Neither of us went to prom or any kind of graduations for any of our degrees.  I went to one Homecoming dance, looked cute in my lacy dress and Doc’s and, yeah, that’s about all I remember.  It’s not a magical memory or anything.  It was just a night out – at school, nonetheless.  A bunch of us in my parents’ car, being the ones who didn’t like dances.  I never went to the Project Graduation things or the slumber party things at school that I heard about.  I just wasn’t into all that back then.  At least I still have my friends from high school who I talk to and visit when I can.  It’s funny to think about the stupidest things that happened back then but it’s way more interesting to know what’s going on in life now. 

Life today is still all about having fun.  It’s after 9PM and I’m listening to Crystal Castles on the Zune player and writing up this post.  Tomorrow will be another gym day and back to the desk to get working again at home.  It’s a nice feeling here; to be cozy indoors with the heat on while the air outside gets chillier.  I’ll have to find some really cool things to do in lieu of Halloween.  I think a ghost tour is in order.  There are plenty of old graveyards here that need visiting at night. Muhahaha!

Speaking of that, I still need a pumpkin to carve.

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