January 2010 Archives

The following scene is 99.7% pure fiction. The rest is punctuation.

It was a dark, wet January morning. I was sitting at a booth in an empty diner in a small, unremarkable town somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, engrossed by the Vimeo video streaming on my laptop.

"Should I reheat that for you?"

I started at the sound of the waitress's voice, each word dripping from her mouth like syrup -- bored-out-of-its-mind syrup. I gave her a confused look.

She lifted her hand, as if to put it on her hip, but gave up halfway. She let her hand fall, rolled her eyes, and said, "Your untouched food. I gave it to you ages ago."

"You did?" I said, looking at the table, and doing a double-take at the plate of ham and eggs I swore hadn't been there before. I put my hand over it, but felt no heat.

I gazed up at the waitress, smiled sheepishly, and said, "Could you? Please?"

"Sure," she said. Her slumped shoulders slumped further. Another inch and they would have been even with her hips.

She sighed, reached slowly for the plate, caught a glimpse of the laptop screen, and said, "Anything interesting?"

"No, just a dumb video about Sasquatch," I said, pausing the video and pivoting the computer so she could see the telltale blurry image of a tall, hairy creature more commonly known as Bigfoot.

At the mention of the cryptid, I had expected her to roll her eyes again, take my plate, and begin the long, arduous journey back to the kitchen, hundreds of inches away.

So it came as a shock when she perked up and said, "Really?!"

It was as though I had sent a jolt of electricity through her. Her bored exterior exploded to reveal a woman underneath who looked similar to the original, only taller, younger, and with better posture.

"I love Sasquatch! Are you looking for him, too? I know where he is, I mean, I have a lead. From a very reliable source. My intuition. Only I don't have a car. This job barely pays enough to cover the rent."

She paused a second to glance out the window. My head finally stopped spinning and I was about to speak when she zipped on, her lips fluttering faster than a hummingbird's wings.

"The Prius is yours, isn't it? I love the Prius. I can't afford one, but, gee, they're pretty. Anyhoo, I was able to score some tickets. Don't ask me how. Luck, I guess, but not enough because they didn't come with a car, so I have no way to get there. So, let's make a deal. If you drive, I'll share my tickets with you and we can find Sasquatch together, finally proving to the rest of the world he exists! How about it?"

I shook my head and said, "Wait! How about what? Where? Tickets to what?"

She looked at me askance and her eyes widened. "Oh! I must have skipped something. I always do when I'm excited. I have tickets to the Winter Olympics. They're in a month. In Vancouver. Up in Canada." She pointed at the ceiling.

I gave her a look that said, "And?"

"And," she said. "It's a well-documented fact that Bigfoot loves curling, which is why he has been in Canada all these years. Anyhoo, I have a hunch, a huge hunch, he's going to sneak into the Olympic venue to watch the world's greatest curlers compete right in his own backyard. We can catch him in the act! And you should know my hunches are never wrong. Say yes!"

"Uh," I said decisively. I looked at the laptop, the blurred image of Bigfoot still frozen on the screen. I looked out the window, past my car, at the now grayish-purple sky above the white-topped mountains to the east.

The voice in my head was telling me to say no, drop twenty bucks on the table, and dash from the diner. I was just about to say it when the sun peeked out and blinded me with a brilliant ray of light. In that second, something inside me flipped on like a switch, and my mouth said, "Nyes!"

I blinked.

The waitress looked puzzled for a moment, then beamed bright enough to blind the sun. She gave me a sudden, violent hug, and said, "Thank you. Thank you! I'm so Lupe, I mean, happy, and my name is Lupe! Let me grab my coat and we can get out of here and find a place to talk, someplace where the ham and eggs are warm and waitstaff aren't so glum. I hate that!"

---

In roughly three weeks, M and I are going with my sister and her fiance to Vancouver for the Winter Olympics. We'll be primarily attending curling events, with a speed skating and Nordic combined event thrown in for variety.

The only downside to this once-in-a-lifetime trip is that we'll be gone during the first week of Cinequest. How I wish the two celebrations didn't conflict. I bemoaned the fact for several weeks, but now realize I must make most of both experiences, diving into both with equal enthusiasm.

And don't worry, at every curling event, I'll keep an eye out for Sasquatch and let you know if I spot him. According to the Olympic website, he looks something like this:

Rough Sketch is an experimental short story series I'm starting. It has three rules:

1. Stories must be 800 words or less.
2. The story must be based on or inspired by real life (event, person, place, or thing).
3. The story must make me laugh, or, at the very least, make me smile.

For those keeping score at home, this is my first blog post of 2010. To celebrate, I'm sparing no expense. This post is going to be packed with italics, links, footnotes, and bullet points. There may even be a few words in a different color. I know, exciting, right?

You may have noticed I didn't mention anything about including photos in this post. If you did, I compliment you on your sharp eyes. If you didn't, oh my god, did you just see Taylor Lautner walk by?

Seriously, though, this post won't contain any photos because, well, these are difficult times and one must stay within one's budget¹.

Over the past few weeks, I've been thinking about my goals for this year. Usually, I avoid writing them down out of fear of jinxing myself by giving them a place in the "real world". I now realize this superstitious thinking was simply a way of avoiding accountability. If my goals weren't written anywhere, there wouldn't be anything for Future Me to refer to when Present Me's annual review as a fully certified adult came up.

Since one of my perennially unwritten goals is to "be a more responsible and accountable human being", I've decided to give this neglected blog a good once over with a Swiffer and use it to list some of my goals for 2010.

• Write 750 words every day. This goal was inspired by Buster Benson's 750 Words project. His site was inspired by the concept of morning pages, which was introduced in Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" (a project I'm also attempting this year). I hope the daily exercise of writing privately will strengthen my creative muscles so then can break free from the prison my inner editor built last year.
• Write two blog posts a week. It seems counter-intuitive to set a schedule or quota for a creative process like writing, but now that I've seen how successful spontaneity and leaving things to chance and inspiration has been, I think a routine and deadlines might help concentrate my creative energies, which have been diluted by distractions. Maybe I'll set a publishing deadline as well. One post (or article) on Monday; one on Friday.
• Write one short story a month. I don't know if this goal is too ambitious and I suppose I won't know until I give it a try. My initial thought is to write stories that are set in the same world with the same cast of characters. I want to write something in the same spirit as Terry Pratchett, P.G. Wodehouse, and Steve Hockensmith. That is to say, I want my stories to be nimble, playful, and funny. Of course, the only way to get them there is to practice, which means reading, writing, rewriting, and rewriting some more.
• Publish one short story. I'm not sure if this means in an online publication or simply on my own site. I only know it means I want to have a full-fledged story out in the world where other eyes can read it before 2011 arrives.
• Learn to cook one new dish a week. This may also be too ambitious, but I believe it will force me to be more active in the kitchen. It's probably best to start simple. I'm thinking along the lines of thirty-minute meals or five-ingredient recipes.
• Watch only two hours of television a day.² In order to achieve my other goals, I need to be diligent about this one. When I think about the shows on my must-see list (Chuck, Castle, White Collar, Psych, Glee, Bones, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson) and add everything in my Netflix queue, this goal seems impossible. But if I think about weekends and the sheer number of days in the year when nothing worthwhile is on, the goal seems easily attainable.

Obviously, this isn't a complete list, but it's a start. Notably omitted are my outdoor goals. I intend to tackle them in a separate post. Also missing are what I consider "background goals" -- simple daily goals that will help me reach my bigger goals. They include things like "be more focused" and "drink more tea".

Alright, enough writing about goals. It's time to pursue them!

Hmm, upon closer inspection, it seems most of my goals are related to writing. So I suppose what I meant to say was, "Alright, enough writing. It's time to get writing!"

Also, Happy New Year!

¹ Okay, technically, this blog doesn't have a budget. And, technically, it costs just as much to insert a photo as it does to type the word "coconut". I was just feeling too lazy to take a photo. But now that I've admitted the truth, I'm feeling guilty, so here's a photo of the poster I hung on the wall next to my desk on Sunday. It's "Red Riding Hood" by John Allison.

² For the sake of sanity, I'm excluding The PBS Newshour from the two-hour limit. The daily quota is meant to limit my intake of entertainment, not news.