One More Time

I have been blogging for five years now.

In September of 2008, when I was a high school senior who fancied myself enough of a writer that I thought I should do it publicly (still not sure if that was a good idea), I started my first blog.  It was drama-laden and iffy at best in the adjectives department and still exists if you really want to go there.  But don’t think I’ll be providing the URL.

Actual picture of high school me in an actual marching band uniform (I’m on the left). I look like such a baby.  So naive about the ways of the world.  I wish I could go back in time and warn myself not to take Intro to Statistics in college.

In September of 2011, I began my second blog upon departing for a semester in Salzburg, Austria.  I only posted about a dozen times on that one, since I was, you know, living my grandest Sound of Music daydreams.

In December of 2011, back from my travels, I decided that I didn’t want to return to the high school Blogger blog, and anyway, I had a new goal in mind: I was resolved to blog once a day, every day for the entire new year.  Thus Eight Days a Week was born on WordPress.  When that year ended I stuck around for another year, blogging about whatever struck my fancy.

In September of 2013, I decided to start yet another blog.  My last, I fervently hope.  I have long wanted my blog to be its own website, to have a higher level of creative control, to have a chance to join blogging communities, and to interact with blog readers on a larger scale.  Additionally, while the name suited my original project well, Eight Days a Week no longer describes what I’m trying to do as a blogger and writer.

So, I’ve moved.  One more time.

Don’t think for a moment that this changes much.  Goodness knows I’ll be writing the same goofy sagas and literary rants as always.  Also, as I mentioned before, my posts from Eight Days a Week have transferred over to the new blog, so the gang’s truly all there.

Although it’s not really goodbye, I want to take what feels like a solemn moment to thank all of you for reading, for following, for liking, for commenting.  Thanks for not rolling your eyes when eye rolling was more than justified.  At least, thanks for not rolling your eyes where I could see you.  It has meant a great deal to have the support of fine folks such as yourselves.

I hope that you’ll follow the link below to the new blog**, where an introduction is waiting:

http://www.hollyinspec.com

**Please note that if you’d like to continue to receive my posts in your email, you’ll have to resubscribe at my new blog (link above).  I will no longer be posting on Eight Days a Week.  

The Host[ess] With the Mostess

After a four-hour saga involving more internet jargon than I ever cared to translate, mild to moderate profanity, one million “what do I do now” Google searches, three live chats with Bluehost techies, five Bluehost FAQ video viewings, one phone call to Bluehost, one unwanted run-in with an architectural firm, one irresponsible Tweet, and three pieces of homemade pizza, I have created a new blog hosted via Bluehost.

Not only that, but I have also installed WordPress so that I might continue to use it (but on an independent URL), and have transferred all of the existing Eight Days a Week posts over to the new blog.

Whew.  As I mentioned in the irresponsible Tweet: I think I need a hug.

(So far only Ruby has offered.  I showered today and everything.)

I would love to be able to share my newfound blog hosting wisdom with you fine people, but unfortunately, even now (a half hour after completion) I don’t think I could walk someone through what I did.

What I can tell you is that blog hosting was more difficult than I thought it would be. The pros claim hosting can be done in 20 minutes.  Ha.

Another thing I can tell you is that when I was in the thick of things–and by thick I mean nearly in tears because I didn’t understand what an FTP Account was—Bluehost really, really came through for me.  Their website contains dozens of step-by-step how-to videos and a live chat service which allows you to receive instant answers from knowledgable representatives. It’s obviously too soon to speak to Bluehost’s long-term reliability, but I would definitely recommend them as a host based on their solid tech support.**

They even responded to my despairing Tweet with genuine concern.

Here are three additional links I found helpful, especially during my preliminary research:

http://www.fannetasticfood.com/how-to-start-a-blog/

http://www.paulryburn.com/blog/how-to-start-your-own-blog-part-2-decide-where-to-host-your-blog/

http://www.theblogbuilders.com/blog-setup-video-tutorial/

As for the new blog: It will be a week or so before I make the official transition over.  It’s in need of some scrubbing up and tricking out before I show it to the world.

**Note that I am not being paid by Bluehost to promote their services.  Nor do they know about this post.  I am simply happy with their services and wish to share the joy.

Friday Favorites 6

This town:

There is a town in Maryland named Chevy Chase.

Not after this man, although that’s what I thought at first.

This Chevy Chase’s real name is Cornelius.  According to Wikipedia (only the most reliable sources for you, dear reader),

“Chase was named for his adoptive grandfather Cornelius, while the nickname Chevy was bestowed by his grandmother, derived from the medieval English The Ballad of Chevy Chase. As a descendant of the Scottish Clan Douglas, the name “Chevy” seemed appropriate to her.”

And according to the town of Chevy Chase’s website,

“The name … can be traced to the larger tract of land called “Cheivy Chace” that was patented to Colonel Joseph Belt from Lord Baltimore on July 10, 1725. It has historic associations to a 1388 battle between Lord Percy of England and Earl Douglas of Scotland. At issue in this “chevauchee” (a Scottish word describing a border raid) were hunting grounds or a “chace” in the Cheviot Hills of Northumberland and Otterburn.”

Further research into The Ballad of Chevy Chase reveals that actually, it refers to the same battle (mentioned in the previous passage) between Lord Percy and Earl Douglas, a “chevauchee.”

So, both comedian and small Maryland town are named after the same 1388 border dispute in the Cheviot Hills of Scotland.

This is why I love history.

This TV ad:

Now, I’m not saying that I don’t think it’s a good idea to create a flu vaccine that can be sprayed instead of injected.  I’m just saying that I first saw this commercial while SNL was on, and until the very end, I was convinced that it was a skit.  I thought, something this odd can’t possibly be a real flu vaccine commercial.

Boy, was I wrong.  It’s real.

Second 22-25 is my favorite part, but the scene in which the whole family struts down the street wearing those nose superhero masks is pretty great as well.

These memes:

I’ve been a meme fiend this week.  I literally spent a good amount of time googling “Henry VII memes,” “Mad Men memes,” and “Teddy Roosevelt memes.”  Pathetic?  Yes.  Fruitful? Yes.

Here are some of the best I dug up:

And now, a series entitled “Mean Mad Men:” Scenes from Mad Men captioned with Mean Girls quotes.  I can’t believe it, either.

I should mention that I am currently working on a full post about Mad Men.  Because if any show deserves a full post (well, aside from Dawson’s Creek), it’s Mad Men.

This angry celebrity:

Given, he’s not very specific about the contents of his “revolution.”  But Russell Brand has some interesting things to say.  And he’s more eloquent than you might think.

This book:

After a summer-long hiatus following my Honors Capstone Project, I am once again reading Virginia Woolf.  This is my first time through The Years, and I have to say, it’s strange to read Woolf knowing I won’t be back in Woolf Lit on Monday to discuss the latest.  I’ve been doing all right muddling through on my own, although I worry that I’m missing some richness that could only be uncovered in an academic setting. Reading with a pen helps.  Here are some of the beauties I’ve underlined so far:

“Is this death? Delia asked herself.  For a moment there seemed to be something there.  A wall of water seemed to gape apart; the two walls held themselves apart” (44, Harcourt edition pictured above).

“One after another the bells of Oxford began pushing their slow chimes through the air.  They tolled ponderously, unequally, as if they had to roll the air out of their way and the air was heavy” (47).

“Well, since it was impossible to read and impossible to sleep, she would let herself be thought.  It was easier to act things out than to think them … She stretched herself out.  Where did thought begin” (125)?

“For it was October, the birth of the year” (86).

Happy weekend, friends.

First Snow

First snow today.  Or so I am told.  Facebook friends told me, either by way of whining post or exalting post.  The mobile Weather Channel told me, with a background like cotton balls falling behind a pane of glass.  It still looked like sleet to me, but we ran out just in case.

Ruby wasn’t sure why I had pulled her into the cold and wet; she turned in circles upon the grass before stopping to cock her head at me.

I looked to the arms of my jacket, now spotted with dark beads.  Each one shone and hung heavily for a moment before disappearing against the fabric, as if I were stuck all over with melting candy buttons.

The grass and the trees were merely dripping; no dusting of white betrayed snow.  Even the roof, surely cold enough to hold flakes, was merely a soggy brown.

We went inside, Ruby running ahead so that she could turn in the living room to look back at me wryly.  Is all the fuss over, then?  She asked, before moving to make sure her stuffed skunk was just where she had left it.

English Majors Unite

I finished The White Forest tonight, tried simultaneously to go slowly and savor the words and to speed through to the ending.  And then I sat for a few minutes and missed the concept of English classes.  Of walking daily into an hour and twenty minutes of literary discussion.  I want a professor to deliver some compact lecture on the Victorian obsession with the occult.  I want to “throw some themes on the board,” as we used to say.  There was a love triangle in novel, there was a question of humanness, of otherness.  There was sisterhood and the familiar notion of a terrible, beautiful female goddess. (here we’ll veer into feminist topics, boldly and on purpose)  There was nature, pristine and set in deliberate contrast to industrial London.

I would like to sit in a circle with some bona fide English majors and pare this novel into delicate shreds until we’re all laughing and no longer know when we crossed the wavering line that is over-analyzing.

I suppose what it means to graduate is not that you’ve learned all you’ll need to succeed in the world, but that you’ve learned how to learn on your own.

But honestly, where’s the fun in that?

The Oak Tree in my Foot

There was an oak tree in my foot.

It happened when I stepped out onto the deck to snatch dry clothes from the rail before the dark and damp set in.

I heard a crunch under my bare foot, but didn’t realize what had happened until the next morning when I saw the small acorn, splintered and crushed, and felt the bruise in my heel.

By then it was too late.

In the night the bits of acorn in my heel had sprouted thin white tendrils.

The tendrils wound through plains of muscle, delicate vein tunnels, nerves lit up like small cities.

The roots stretched toward the extremities of my left foot, only ceasing their growth when they reached the tip of my big toe.

Then the acorn shards in my heel began to thicken.

The next night while I slept, a tree trunk the circumference of a ChapStick tube poked softly through the bandage I had carefully applied.

It grew downward, splayed into parallel arcs.  Leaves fluttered out, already yellow and orange.

The tiny oak grew acorns of its own and dropped them until they littered the foot of my bed like a forest floor.

The oak tree lived an entire lifetime in one night, hurrying so that by the time I endeavored to put my feet on the floor the next morning, it would only be a stump, a splinter in my heel.

Oak trees aren’t unintelligent, you see.

When mom plucked out the splinter, it was only a splinter.

And when I found a tangled clump of bark and crumbling leaves at the foot of my bed, I blamed the dog.

Photo source: http://cocreatingourreality.com/profiles/blogs/before-the-mighty-oak-tree

Between Books

I apologize for the quiet week posting-wise.  I blame it on being between books; I began one, discarded it, began another, discarded it.  I knew I wanted to read something, but couldn’t figure out what.  I spent a great deal of time staring at my bookshelves, and the rest of the time watching mindless YouTube videos and scrolling through Pinterest.  I was generally listless and uninspired and only wanted lukewarm broth with noodles when lunchtime rolled around.  You know the feeling.

Last night I finally settled on one: The White Forest, by Adam McOmber.  It’s ethereal and mysterious and Victorian (three of my favorite qualities in a novel) and it’s just exactly what I’ve been craving.

Today, thank goodness, my productivity levels are up again.  I woke up at a respectable 10:00, put on some flannel, cleaned my room while listening to This American Life, and went out into the 53-degree world with blissful purpose.  I mailed a care package to Amy, who is homesick over there in cheesehead land.  Mom and I visited Ojiketa Regional Park to check out Art Blitz.  Then we went to Sunrise River Farm for apples and apple bread and apple butter.  And I tried to scratch a donkey’s nose.  He tossed his head away, disgruntled that I hadn’t brought a food offering for him.  I guess I see his point.

Weekend Scenes

Watching The Two Towers with Ruby. She doesn’t enjoy the battle at Helm’s Deep as much as I, apparently.

“Oh come on, we can take ’em.”

“It’s a long way.”

“Toss me.”

“What?”

“I cannot jump the distance, you’ll have to toss me…don’t tell the elf.”

Tree planting with mom and dad in the cold and drizzle.

Front step pansies, an Autumn portrait.

My best friend when cold times come and the skin on my face is reminiscent of sandpaper or tar paper or a porcupine with a five-o-clock shadow. Now travel-sized for your convenience.

My oh my, if a gentleman ever proposed to me with this ring, why, I’d just have to accept.

O, What a Luxury

We all know that I have a terrible inferiority complex when it comes to meeting celebrities (even local ones).  “Will they like me?” I think.  “Can I trust myself to say something witty and endearing?” I think, sweating profusely.  “What if I’m not dressed nicely enough to impress them?” I think, from a dead faint on the floor.

It’s silly, and it doesn’t make much sense.  We’re all people, after all.  We’re all plodding through this wonderful, cruel maze that is The Human Condition.  Celebrities just happen to have a marketable talent.  Or are lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.  Or are really, really ridiculously good-looking.  Or are hard workers.  Or some combination of all four.

The fact is, I can’t seem to remember any of this wisdom when faced with a real, live celebrity.  And thus I’m always surprised when they turn out to be nice, regular people.  (Of course, some celebrities are as appraising and arrogant as I fear, and those I choose to smirk about later: “It goes to their heads. It always, always goes to their heads. Heh heh heh.  I was right all along.”  But then again, plenty of people who don’t have their own TV shows are appraising and arrogant.)

So when Wednesday night found me sitting in the sixth row at a Garrison Keillor poetry reading, I knew I was in for it.  Here was a man whose voice I had literally been hearing through the radio for my entire life.  My parents own a boat on Lake Superior, and some of my earliest memories are of hurtling through the northern woods on Sunday afternoons, listening to Guy Noir or News From Lake Wobegon and laughing whenever my parents laughed.  Sometimes, uncomfortably full with the Happy Meals we had begged for for miles and miles (and which were somehow disappointing once actually opened and consumed), my sister and I would fall asleep in the backseat of the minivan to the sound of Mr. Keillor’s voice, and wake up at home.

Garrison Keillor is perhaps the most important public figure of all, in the Minnesotan mind.  He brought us–our church basement suppers, our bars and hot dishes, our passive aggression, our experience of being up at the lake or down on the farm or “in town,” our grandparents and parents and cousins–to the world.  And sure, we’re not always so neurotic as A Prairie Home Companion portrays us to be.  Nor always so poignant nor so musical.  But the spirit of the show is right.

All of the sudden the poetry reading was over.  The wide sheets of paper Mr. Keillor had read from were scattered on the floor.  And Mr. Keillor himself was strolling down the stage steps, down the aisle, and out into the lobby, where, as he said, he would be happy to sign copies of O, What a Luxury and to chat.  Mom and I joined the growing line, squashed in between an older woman who exclaimed that she was “just wild for E.E. Cummings” and a young couple tossing computer jargon–discs and codes and bytes–back and forth like a softball.

Then we were at the front, and I silently handed my book to Mr. Keillor, deciding in a split second that perhaps I should just be quietly friendly and not attempt any conversation.  He looked up, though, and jokingly commented on my mom’s hair, and then turned to me with an “what do you have to say for yourself, young lady?” expression.

So I told him that I’m a recent graduate from the University of Minnesota.

“And what did they do for you there?”

“They gave me an English degree, but I’m still figuring out how to use it.  I’m trying to get a job writing or editing.”

“Are you a good writer and editor?”

“Yes.”  (Then, because that seemed too vain) “I mean, I like to think I am.”

“Send your resume to Prairie Home Companion, then.”

I’m going to end the conversation here, but note that there was some additional stuttering on my part before the exchange was over.  Perhaps also some gushing to my patient mother during the drive home: “I can’t believe Garrison Keillor told me to send in my resume!  I mean, it wasn’t exactly a promise of a job, but still.  I’m going to have to write a cover letter right away.  I think I’ll say something about listening to APHC as a kid, but I don’t want to ramble, you know, so I’ll have to be concise…”  You get the idea.

To conclude this saga, I think there’s a lesson to be learned: if we ever happen to develop a marketable talent; or are in the right place at the right time; or become really, really ridiculously good-looking; or increase our work ethic…in other words, if we become celebrities, let’s remember to be kind to stuttering recent graduates who ask for our autographs.  Because it will mean a lot to them.

Blog Update

For those of you who are new round these parts, and for those of you who are still hanging around: please note that the “About the Blog (And Me)” page has been updated.

As in, I’m no longer pretending to still be in college.  I have officially stated my graduation.

As in, I have set up lots of links to some of my more…notorious…posts.

As in, there’s still no photo of me because my goodness I struggle to take a nice selfie.  We can’t all have that gift.

In other news, I am currently working on taking ownership of this blog.  Which means, essentially, that I’ll pay to host it separately from WordPress.  I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, this being to make Eight Days a Week into an independent blog.  One of the major perks of this change will be that I can look into applying to be part of BlogHer, which is where all the female blogging powerhouses make their home.

Don’t misunderstand me, I have little idea of what I’m getting myself into.  I’m doing plenty of research, though, so that when the switch is made, you (the reader) will hopefully not be inconvenienced.