why i haven't been blogging

1. this is my last semester
2. I'm worried about having enough for my thesis
3. I'm working on two (maybe a third?) story ...see previous post (word of the day) also, was working on a screenplay with another hilarious friend from school - although we haven't gotten together to write in a couple weeks
   
4. I've started reading for just good fun again (sounds contradictory - I'm a writer after all - oh for this one - see the post where i was overheard in Chicago) during school i tend to read for school not for fun ..right now i'm reading Amy & Isabelle
5. I am seeing the happy doctor twice a week ... while my mental health is looking up ... it's quite time consuming.
6. I feel like I'm busy all the time and yet, I don't know what I'm busy doing ...
   
7. I'm looking for a new job ...(my contract ended at the greatest-company-ever-to-work-for i had the option to go full time but need to focus on school and all that)

on Wednesday I'm headed to AWP.... maybe I'll blog about that crazy experience.

also, it's too cold and yucky out there. Where is Spring?!?!

and for no reason except that i love the pic ... this is sascha...

Word of the Day... idee fixe

This is what happens to me sometimes when I’m writing a story….

idee fixe \ee-day-FEEKS\, noun:

An idea that dominates the mind; a fixed idea; an obsession.

The reality of obsession -- its incessant return to the same few themes, scenarios and questions; its meticulous examination and re-examination of banal minutiae for hidden meanings that simply aren't there; the cancerous way an idee fixe usurps other, more interesting thoughts -- is that it is confining, not rebellious, and not fascinating but maddeningly dull.
-- Laura Miller, "The Streetwalkers of San Francisco", New York Times, August 20, 2000

It became an idee fixe that he stubbornly adhered to in spite of the plain evidence . . . that obviously contradicts it.
-- Edwin G. Pulleyblank, "Prosody or pharyngealization in old Chinese?", The Journal of the American Oriental Society, January 12, 1996

Getting back to the idee fixe, let me say that it's what produces strong men and madmen.
-- Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (translated by Gregory Rabassa)

Idee fixe is from the French idée, "idea" + fixe, "fixed."

On the Road Again

I'm in New York this weekend to say Happy travels and all that to a dear friend who is moving with her husband to Singapore. Since I am unemployed again and still a grad student ... I took the shuttle bus from LGA to the Port Authority. On the bus was a young girl from Sarasota with her friend and what I gather is her Uncle David, who lives in New York. The girl was here to audition for colleges, i think for musical theater.

They couldn't have been more excited about New York. The whole ride from Queens she kept saying, Is THIS Manhattan? and when we finally come out of the tunnel into Manhattan, she couldn't contain her glee. "Look at them, those New Yorkers, they LIVE here!" Every thing she passed she pointed it out (everthing from grand central to the Target Billboard in Times Square) she also mocked her excitement while enjoying it.

It was fun to hear. It reminded me of when I lived here, and even after being here for years and having days (usually in the morning fighting for a seat on the subway) when i would hate it, I'd still have those moments when I would think, "I live in New York" and every time it was a bit awesome (in the dictionary sense - not in the vally girl sense)

Still, I love this city