7 Quick Takes volume 25

— 1 —

I’m feeling the love! When I published my lament this week that I don’t have anything catastrophic to write about, I did not expect everyone to tell me how great I am in response, but I’ll take it! I suppose the other option, when you want to write about yourself, is to have terrible things happen to you in order to keep it fresh. As grateful as I am to all of you for sticking with me while I came down with a chronic illness, I’d just as soon spare you that again, so I’ll continue to avoid terrible happenings as much as I can.

— 2 —

The reason I have story-writing on my mind is that I have been taking an online writing class with the lovely Andi Cumbo. I’ve been reading her blog for a while, and when she raffled off a spot in one of her classes just before the New Year, I threw my hat in the ring and fortune smiled on me. Now I’m in a memoir writing class, which is much less stressful than the last class I took which was an independent study on the sacrament of reconciliation and involved a gajillion pages of Rahner.

We’re barely a week in and I’m loving the discipline it encourages. It’s been a long time since I had incentive to write, revise, scratch out, edit, re-write, re-title, shuffle things around, and labor over a piece of writing. With all due respect to my blog, I don’t often agonize over my posts that much.

— 3 —

One of my nerdier habits is to always fill out the online surveys for retailers in order to be entered in a raffle for a gift card. I haven’t won yet, but I have been doing really well with blog promotions, and have decided to enter ALL THE RAFFLES! On Leigh‘s blog I won a book (which I later reviewed here), and I just won a CD from Sarah at Snoring Scholar. I LOVE WINNING THINGS.

— 4 —

Switching gears a little bit, I would like to highlight a quote this week from Rick Santorum:  people rise to different levels of success based on what they contribute to society and to the marketplace, and that’s as it should be.

Well, yes and no. Yes, that’s as it should be, but no, that’s not how it is, unless you believe that corporate executives who oversee people who shuffle around imaginary money in finance to be the ones who contribute the most to society. As a teacher and artist, some might say I contribute something to society. But my income is decidedly lower than the people who manage my 403 (b). I’m grateful to them, whoever they are, but maybe we could split the difference?

Hat tip to Charlie Pierce, who writes the way I would if I didn’t care what people thought of me, and who definitely doesn’t need a tip of my hat.

— 5 —

I have auditions in the big city for the next three weekends. I’m tired just thinking about it. Want to hear a few of the arias I’ll be singing? Listen here.

— 6 —

Speaking of websites, we spent some of the holidays putting one together for my honey, as well as getting his Facebook fan page up and running (yes he has fans, and no it’s not weird when they come up to us at Ikea. It’s actually quite delightful). And I’m mature enough now to know when I need to walk away from the computer in order to avoid the type of screaming and hollering which is wise to eschew when maintaining a relationship.

— 7 —

This is often where I tell you what I plan to cook this weekend, whether or not you’re interested. Truth be told, I’m uninspired this weekend. I’ve been considering some homemade red lentil burgers, since it should be warm enough to grill them this weekend. Who knows? We might be eating another batch of potato leek soup.

Have a great weekend and eat well!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

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