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November 30, 2007
I am a winner!
With an hour to spare, I wrote my 50,000th word as part of National Novel Writing Month, a month dedicated to the creation of hurried novels just for the sake of creating, not for the sake of creating anything good.
The book started strong but got really garbled by the end, which inspired this final sentence: "And we lived happily ever after in a world where all of this stuff really happened, only it was written better and described more eloquently."
Now I need to go to bed so I can wake up bright and early tomorrow morning and begin dealing with all the obligations I've neglected in the name of novel writing over the last 30 days.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:59 PM | Comments (1)
November 29, 2007
Making the best of it
I thought tonight I'd be getting home late and posting guiltily about how little novel writing I had accomplished. But nobody showed up at the media dish and drink fest. Bummer. So I wasted half an hour, but I have the rest of the evening to make literary progress.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 07:07 PM | Comments (0)
November 28, 2007
Christmas plans
For a while earlier this year, I was dreaming of going back to Virginia to see friends and family for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Then I learned that my interpretation of frequent flyer rules was terribly awry, and that any ticket home would be horribly beyond my financial wherewithal. So I've applied myself to luring family to Portland instead.
I've won! It's now official! Austin, who is semi-living here already but returned to mom and dad for a while, will fly out with 17-year-old Chance a few days before Christmas. My parents get here Christmas day itself. We all have a fabulous, dark and rainy week together, and then the Sherwoods begin to disperse again.
The down side is that Darcy, who is just starting a new job with Hewlett-Packard, won't have enough vacation in the bank to join us. He's 23, he lives with a bunch of friends, and I'm sure he'll handle the family-less-ness stoically. Still, it would be better to have him with the rest of us.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:14 PM | Comments (1)
November 27, 2007
nanowrimo
With less than a week left in National Novel Writing Month, I've written about 30,000 words, out of 50,000 I aim to complete. I need to stop updating this web site, eat some potato leek stew and get typing if I want to meet my goal.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 08:05 PM | Comments (2)
November 26, 2007
How to cook eggs in the microwave
It's very easy to cook poached-style eggs in the microwave without any special equipment. Crack an egg into a microwave-safe coffee mug, poke the yoke with a fork, cook for 45 seconds or so. If it's too rubbery, subtract five seconds next time. If it's too runny, add five seconds next time.
Tonight I discovered that it's just as easy to cook a scrambled egg in the microwave. Just scramble it after you crack it into your microwave-safe mug, stir in a splash of milk if you like milk in your scrambled eggs, and give it about 50 seconds in the microwave. Adjust cooking time as above. My egg tonight was perfect, almost souffle like, and amusingly cylindrical in shape.
In other scrambled egg news, I have a new favorite way of cooking eggs on the stove, too. For traditional scrambled eggs, I have always scrambled with milk then added the mix to a buttered pan at medium heat. For my new more Asian style, I scramble without milk, then add the eggs to high-heat peanut oil. The texture of the eggs is completely different, like something you would find in pad thai or fried rice.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:43 PM | Comments (3)
November 25, 2007
Photos
I uploaded photos of our new furniture, as well as some other pics around the house, to my flickr page. Included is a picture of our cluttered bedroom, which is temporarily serving as a storage zone for old furniture.
Lindsey posted pictures of some really yummy food she, Mike, Dan, Ben and I cooked together recently. Those photos were also taken in our home. Now Ben and I are heading to Lindsey's place, to cook some tortilla soup.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 05:16 PM | Comments (1)
Saturday
Ben and I looked at flat-screen TVs today, but didn't find anything that really called to us at a reasonable price. Then we went to IKEA, and left with a lot of furniture. We have a new dining/kitchen table and chairs and new computer desks, and I feel like our home is finally coming together, furniture-wise.
Morgan came over and helped build furniture, and then we watched "Smokey and the Bandit." The cable company has created a temporary "Burt Reynolds" channel. Strange.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 12:12 AM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2007
Bellies
Ben and I took before and after pictures of our bellies last night, but I think I'm too embarrassed to post a picture of me in my bra. In any case, I certify that my belly was well fed last night.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2007
Joy
Last year at this time, I was a mess. Life seemed to be wearing me down. I sat at the computer and struggled to make a list of the things I was grateful for, and as I typed I started to cry.
Today, I would be in a good mood no matter what, I think. The air is crisp, the sun is bright, the fireplace is crackling, the cats are being silly, and friends and family are nearby. That it's such a lovely day is made even more fabulous because I'm mentally well and my brain is in balance. Happy Thanksgiving. More than anything, this year I give thanks for that, for the happiness.
Now it's time for me to go mash some potatoes.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2007
Getting ready for Thanksgiving
Austin came over tonight and helped me bake a pumpkin pie from scratch. Here's a picture of him stirring pumpkin goo on the stove. Austin did everything right, but unfortunately I did a couple of things wrong. So maybe the crust is only about half as big as it should be, and there are some weird ridges in the top of the pie. Still, I think it will taste pretty good tomorrow.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:09 PM | Comments (4)
November 20, 2007
Baby, won't you light my fire
Ben turned up the heat tonight for the first time. We have a gas-fueled fireplace that we haven't been able to figure out since we moved in, but it has finally gotten cold so Ben broke out the instruction manual, some tools and his big brain, and tinkered until warm heat started flooding our new home. Here's a picture of him, grinning in front of his accomplishment.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:41 PM | Comments (1)
November 19, 2007
Mellow evening
Tonight Ben and I are having mid-winter mushroom soup. The recipe is for one person, so I doubled it. It's pretty good, a nice brothy vegan dinner. For the second day in a row, I am not working on my novel-writing project. My aim it to achieve 50,000 words by the end of November, and I'm pretty far behind. I'm not worried.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:27 PM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2007
Yummy in my tummy
"You know, that saying 'Too many chefs spoil the broth' is not entirely accurate," Ben said tonight, after Dan, Lindsey and Michael joined us for an evening of communal measuring, chopping, simmering and eating. The five of us worked together to make chanterelle vegetarian messy rice, and it was incredible. For some reason they say that SNDC - which stands for Sunday Night Dinner Club - is not a dinner club. Whatever it is, I like it.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 08:56 PM | Comments (2)
November 17, 2007
Appointing, and dis.
Is "appointing" the opposite of "disappointing"? I don't think so. Tonight was a study in disappointment and its opposite.
Disappointing: the restaurant where Ben's band performed and I had dinner. It took 20 minutes to take my order. The prices on the menu were $2 to $3 more per dish than the prices on the web site. There were no vegetarian meals, despite claims to the contrary on the web site. One of the wait staff spilled beer all over Ben's jacket. And I waited an hour for my water glass to be refilled, but it never was. Sue and John ordered one drink and were brought another. John's toast was burnt.
"Appointing": Ben's entire band was top notch, and Ben was double top-notch. After dinner coffee and beer at another bar were nice, as was the band. Conversation sparkled. The hummus was fresh and abundant.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:45 PM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2007
The darkness falls
At 7 a.m. it was dark outside, and the sun rose as I drove to work around 7:30. It had set by the time I left work at 5 p.m. No weekday sunlight for me for the next two months, except when I'm lucky enough not to have rain on my lunch break and I can wander to the park near my office.
For the past couple of years, Portland's dark northern winters have really gotten to me. I'm trying to take precautions this year. We have special very bright light bulbs around the house. I'm taking a very small dose melatonin in the afternoon, which has been correlated with reduced seasonal depression in several studies. I need to keep exercising. I may also buy one of these, because I have such a hard time getting out of bed when it's pitch black out.
And speaking of bed, I should probably head there now.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:43 PM | Comments (1)
November 15, 2007
La vie en Rose City
Life in Portland:
* I am 19,000 words into the 50,000 word book I'm attempting to pull together by midnight, Nov. 30, for National Novel Writing Month.
* Austin and I hung out and had dinner tonight.
* I think I'm gonna see a movie with Casey on Friday night.
* Ben's band performs at LV's at 7 p.m. on Saturday.
* We're hosting the Sunday Night Dinner Club.
* It sounds like Thanksgiving is going to be fun.
I had thought I might go back to the east coast for Thanksgiving, but the money wasn't there. It's nice, therefore, to have Morgan and Austin here to make it a more Sherwood-y holiday.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:55 PM | Comments (2)
November 14, 2007
The Hunt for Red October is on AMC
Do all Scottish people lisp, or is it just Sean Connery? I can't tell how much of the way he talks is accent and how much is speech impediment.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 08:32 PM | Comments (3)
November 13, 2007
Muscle man
Ben's knee is damaged, apparently from overuse but it's not clear. He went to the doctor and was given heavy duty painkillers and a heavy duty knee brace that has him walking lopsidedly around.
This is a bummer for many reasons. The pain, the difficulty walking, the uncertainty about how well it will heal. I was worried, also, about how the injury would affect our gym routine.
Most days after work, Ben walks to the gym and I drive there, we work out together for an hour or two and then we drive home. But with a bum knee, Ben can't shoot hoops, run on the treadmill or cycle on the recumbent bike.
Well, it turns out there's this strange spinning hand device - Ben calls it a hand crank treadmill - that allows a person to get an upper body cardio workout without stressing the knees. Ben spent 45 minutes cranking the spinny thing.
He already has big arm muscles. I'm interested to see how they evolve in the coming weeks.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 08:05 PM | Comments (6)
November 12, 2007
My husband said:
"I'll never buy a diamond, as long as you don't want one."
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 07:17 PM | Comments (4)
November 11, 2007
Planning
When it comes to doing things in a hurry, I'm your woman. I can identify courses of action, avoid pitfalls and produce quick quality results. But when it comes to planning in-depth projects and making gradual progress over time, I am a total failure. It happens over and over again: a week out I realize a big project is nearly due, and rather than scramble to pull it together I freeze until 4 a.m. on deadline day, when I bolt out of bed to the office and do my best to pull something - anything - together.
Is this something that will get easier with age and maturity? It seems like most of those "will get easier with age and maturity" barriers have been surmounted.
Some people say that personal growth is part of what gives life meaning, but I think I'd be happier if I could just be perfect.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:38 PM | Comments (2)
November 10, 2007
Hunger
On Friday, I was supposed to meet up with Casey, who I never see. But I was dead tired, after volunteering at a literary event Thursday night. So I postponed our movie plans and instead stayed up late working on my novel. Today, I hoped to make more book-writing progress. Instead, I had breakfast out with Ben, went to a rare Hair of the Dog beer sampling event, spent a few hours on household chores like dishes and grocery shopping, and completed my economics homework. Tomorrow, I'm committed to another literary volunteer shift and to a cooking adventure with friends. I also hope to work on my novel, go to the gym, finish a work project, and get through another chapter of "The Satanic Verses." No way that all of that is going to happen.
It's like, I order everything on the menu because it all sounds so good, and then it gets here and I cry because I won't be able to eat it all.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:20 PM | Comments (2)
November 09, 2007
Addiction
I love coffee and I drink several cups pretty much every day, but for some reason I can't drink a large quantity at once. I can get about two thirds of the way through an 8 ounce cup, and then I just lose interest. Today I had two partial 8 ounce cups, which means I guess I consumed a bit under 11 ounces total. I'm definitely addicted to caffeine, but I appreciate the fact that my body seems to have a built in limit. I never drink more than I can handle. It wasn't always that way.
When I was in college, I didn't drink coffee, I drank Coke. I would easily drink six or eight 12-ounce cans of Coke in a day. The number of calories involved in that level of cola consumption makes me shudder. A couple of times when I had a lot of homework I took caffeine pills in order to stay up all night. Washed them down with Coke. Twice I went too far.
The first time, my roommate and a large football player cornered me in a computer lab and said, "Courtney, you haven't slept in days, you need to stop and go lie down." I went to bed and lay there, completely exhausted, jittery and unable to fall asleep.
The second time I consumed too much caffeine, I had an interview for a campus job working with computers. My heart was racing, my mind was going so fast I couldn't keep up, my palms were sweaty, and I felt a strange sense of elation tempered by nausea. "What are some of your weaknesses?" The interviewer asked. I thought long and hard before I answered: "I don't think I have any." Amazingly, they weren't hiring for interview skills, they were hiring for computer skills, and I passed that test.
I had that job for three years, and it's been another seven and a half since I left. I haven't been tempted to consume too much caffeine ever since.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 08:06 PM | Comments (0)
November 08, 2007
Word.
Tonight was my first of two volunteer efforts at Wordstock. I had a fantastic evening of free pinot noir and great literature with a recent English major grad and a hippie vegan retired cop. Then I got trapped in an elevator, only to be rescued by a janitorial squad. Lately I've felt under-slept and over-committed, but if that's the way my life is going to be I would definitely like literary events to be to blame for my drunken exhaustion.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:01 PM | Comments (2)
November 07, 2007
She put things in my eyes!
I had my eyes dilated today, to see if some kind of eyeball failure might have been responsible for my recent migraines. Conclusion: it's not.
Then the eye doctor told me it's actually pretty normal for people to get bad headaches when they spent eight hours a day staring at a computer monitor. Switching to white text on a black background can help, as can ipubrofin, coffee, water and special screen-friendly glasses. I'm starting with everything except the glasses, since the glasses cost $300.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 03:03 PM | Comments (2)
Voted
Voting in Oregon is so weird. Normally you get a ballot in the mail a few weeks before election day, you fill it out on your own time, and then you mail it back when you feel like it. Just so it gets to election headquarters by the official voting Tuesday, you're good.
I have not yet voted weeks or even days out. What if a candidate dies? What if new facts emerge? I want my vote to be based on the most accurate information available as of close of polls on election day.
This year I cut it particularly close. Ballots are not forwarded, so if you move you need to tell the election office if you want a chance to vote. Only Ben and I never got around to doing that. I kept telling myself we needed to, and then suddenly it was 7 p.m. on voting day and the polls closed in an hour. So we headed over to election headquarters, filled out a change of address form, waited for a new ballot to print out, and submitted our inked choices. Everything went very smoothly, and we were in and out in 15 minutes.
I've still never missed an election, and I've still always voted on election day. Yay democracy.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 07:44 AM | Comments (1)
November 06, 2007
anniversary
I started my web journal seven years ago, today.
It's been through a couple of different Web addresses and I've lost some of my entries while migrating from one server to another, but I keep on posting. My ego still can't get enough adulation from my adoring online fans.
Seven years ago, I was six months out of college and living with my parents. Now I'm a married homeowner. In another seven years I'll be 36. I think my mom may have been 36 when she had her fifth child. I wonder if I'll still be posting here in another seven years.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 07:25 AM | Comments (1)
November 05, 2007
We do it to ourselves
According to my economics text book, the Federal Reserve moves interest rates up and down to spur investment and consumer spending in an effort to battle inflation and fight recessions. Starting in 2001, the Fed cut the federal funds rate repeatedly. "And the fall in mortgage rates helped start a housing boom, which had an expansionary effect on the economy. Housing starts-- the number of new homes on which construction has begun-- rose by one-third, from 1.2 million in 2000 to 1.6 million in 2004," write Krugman and Wells.
Later, the chapter says that all these efforts to control the short-run economy are essentially meaningless in the long-run. The economy does what it's going to do.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, housing starts through September were down 25.9 percent from a year earlier. Employment is holding steady or even growing, but still a lot of people are worried about the "r" word. (For example, these people.)
I don't know.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2007
New music?
I've signed up for a music swap. I'm supposed to make a mix CD that only contains songs released in 2007, and I need to have it in the mail by Dec. 1. The only hitch: I haven't bought a single album this year, my radio dial is permanently tuned to news. Any song suggestions from the peanut gallery?
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:46 PM | Comments (9)
November 03, 2007
The plot of my novel
It's about a guy in San Francisco in late 2001 when everything goes to hell - Enron, brownouts, layoffs, dotcom bust and 9-11. So he abandons his frivolous and well-to-do party lifestyle and embarks on a road trip. His car breaks down on I-80, and he decides to get a job right there at Fun Valley Happy Ski Area, Iowa. Then a truck transporting endangered bears crashes, and there's a bear rampage through the town just as massive flooding prevents everyone from leaving. The main character, Neil, falls in love and overcomes the bears, then loses his love but finds peace with the world. *The End.*
For National Novel Writing Month, of course. Now I really need to spend some time actually writing it.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:42 PM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2007
How do you know it's bed time?
Instead of brushing my teeth, I'm searching YouTube with terms like "silly kitten," "funny cat" and "psycho kitty." Mister gives me this "Qu'es-ce que c'est?" look and then ignores me, and Mouse goes on to high alert and starts hunting for the intruder feline.
This is a silly cat highlight reel. I don't want to think about how much sleep I could get if it weren't for my nightly silly kitty YouTube searches.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:18 PM | Comments (1)
November 01, 2007
Migraine.
I had my second-ever migraine today. My head was hurting for most of the morning, and then around 11:30 a.m. the visual symptoms started kicking in. I tried to read a phone number off a piece of paper and I couldn't make it out. I could dial the phone by touch, but I couldn't read the digits. I decided to go home sick before it got too much worse.
About halfway home, I had to call Morgan and Robin for help. I was having a hard time seeing and I was feeling dizzy, and I didn't think I could finish the drive. They were really great, and ferried me home, and I spent about three hours lying in bed with my eyes shut.
I eventually started writing my nanowrimo novel, but I'm doing it on paper because staring at the screen for too long really makes my head and eyes hurt. My eyes feel bruised, my brain feels constrained by a tight mesh net. Thinking isn't hard, and neither is sitting here typing with my eyes closed, but looking at things and listening to things for too long brings back the badness.
I don't know if I'll call in sick tomorrow. I'll have to sleep on it and see if the veil has lifted.
This experience is really depressing and scary. Migraine seems to be one of those mysterious ailments that doesn't seem to be curable, just treatable, and only kind-of treatable, and not for everyone. Some people get them a lot, some people have a few over the course of a lifetime. Some people never have any. There is no way to know whether this will become a regular occurrence, whether it's because of my work environment, because I spend too much time staring at computer screens, because of stress, because I ate something, because of a hormonal change associated with aging, because of barometric pressure variations. I just don't know why this is happening to me.
I do know that my brain is just about my most valuable asset, and for reasons that are beyond my control and my understanding that brain seemed to shut down in blinding pain six and a half weeks ago, and again today. The blinding part is what's scariest. I think I could almost work through the pain if I could see straight. I am feeling depressed about the possibility that this could be a life sentence and that I'm totally powerless to do anything about it.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:29 PM | Comments (3)
How to sock away a lot of money
I have this crazy idea that it would be nice to retire by the time I'm in my early 50s. All the retirement calculators on the Internet tell me I'm nuts, I need to triple my income to dream of exiting the rat race in just 20 or so years. But I think I can do it, especially using today's loose definition of "retirement," which often means "working part time."
There are a many elements to my retirement dream, including paying off the house early. Ben's really awesome about tacking on some extra money to our principal payment every month, which puts us on track to own this place in 20 years, instead of the 30 years outlined in our loan. What I want to write about today, however, is an epiphany I recently had about my 401k contributions.
I can maintain my standard of living from one year to the next, and at the same time increase the amount of money I put toward my retirement by close to 30 percent, or possibly by much more. And so can anyone else. Here's how, using example figures that are somewhat close to my actual salary and 401k contribution levels:
Let's say that in year one, my salary is $35,000, and I am putting 10% of my salary into my retirement fund. That's $3,500 toward retirement, $31,500 in remaining pre-tax pay.
If in year two I get a 3% raise my salary will grow to $36,050. I can take home most of that extra money, but what if I decide to leave my pre-tax, post-retirement-contribution salary where it was in year one -- at $31,500? To do this, I will have to increase my retirement contribution to roughly 12.6% of my pay. I'll now be putting $4,542.30 toward retirement, and with my remaining pre-tax pay at $31,507.70.
To recap: I can increase my retirement contributions by 29.8%, without any cut to my take-home pay pay. And I can do it while only increasing the amount I put into retirement by 2.6 percentage points. Pretty neat.
One oversight in this plan: I'm not taking inflation into account. Like most people, I probably have enough wiggle room in my budget to absorb that extra inflationary bite for a year or two, but every third year it might be a good idea to just accept the full raise without adjusting your retirement income so I don't feel like I'm falling behind.
If I can significantly increase my retirement contributions, I think I should have a good sized nest egg by the time I'm 50 or a bit older. At the same time, my living expenses should drop dramatically with the final payment on our home. I don't want to start drawing down my 401k until I get closer to 60 years old, maybe a bit older even. But with the house paid off and lifestyle expectations kept in check it should be easy to significantly cut back on hours and my take-home pay without feeling like I'm making a major sacrifice.
Of course, a lot could happen to disrupt this dream in the next 20 years. By the time I hit 50, I'll probably be laughing at my idealistic optimism, or crying that I didn't enjoy my income when I had the chance. What can I say. I'm just going to keep trying to do the best I can with the information I have available to me.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 05:48 PM | Comments (2)