Hi there, my little whippersnappers! I bet you’ve been wondering where I am…or, um, perhaps you have more important things in your lives than this here blog. Whatevs. This is going to sound pretty darn pathetic, but the truth of the matter is that I haven’t been posting because of my own ineptitude. Seriously. I haven’t been able to log in to the administrative part of this thing in weeks, and then, randomly, today, voila! I got in!

In case you are wondering, YES, one of my resolutions for 2009 is to figure out how to do more stuff in wordpress all by my lonesome, without having to call in a Fixer.

So, hey, we have lots of catching up to do! Here it is, January 6 of the new year, and I haven’t even assessed my success (or failure, whichever the case may be) with last year’s resolutions! More importantly, I haven’t even told y’all about my latest adventure here on the internet!

That’s right, folks - I have (a small part of) a new blog! I am thrilled to introduce you to Very Bookish. In case you can’t tell from the title, it’s an online book club of sorts. The site is the brainchild of the lovely and talented RA, and I am very happy to have been asked to participate. This month, we’re discussing three very different books (The Hunger Games, Confessions of a Shopaholic, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), with the discussions being led by NPW, OPH, and RA, respectively. In honor of Very Bookish’s debut, and because I am feeling generous and contest-y, I have decided to host a raffle! The prize will be my copy of The Hunger Games, which I thought rocked the hizouse. (That’s right. It didn’t just rock the house, it rocked the hizouse. That’s serious praise, yo.) If you’d like to enter the contest, let me know in the comments section.

Now that the necessary introductions have been made, it’s time to catch up on all my typical end-of-the-year stuff that I would have done if I were not a technical/computer moron. Let’s pretend like it’s December 29, okay?

I did this same meme last year, and possibly the year before, and I love it.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?
Became an aunt! Experienced baby puke up close and personal…without being grossed out! Read a lot of vampire books. Went to a couple concerts alone. Joined Facebook. Stopped taking birth control pills (how’s that for an announcement, huh?)(Sorry for the TMI). Saw my highest weight - a horrifying number - on the scale. Lost 15 pounds. Ate brussels sprouts. Fell in friend-love with my across-the-street neighbors. Wrote book reviews in exchange for free books.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Some, and yes. We’ll discuss this in more detail tomorrow.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yep! Debbie, Lisa, Angie, Megan, and Ashley (to Daniel and Gracie; Reagan and Noah; Finley; Ollie; and Walt, respectively). If you’re close to me and you gave birth and I forgot to include you in my list, I apologize.

4. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
Dammit, I still want the same things as last year: Job security. And a winter coat that fits nicely. In my defense, I did go buy a new coat, but it’s still not quite as warm as I was hoping it would be and it doesn’t fit as nicely as I’d like it to fit.

5. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Every day that I visited my niece and nephew. I had no idea I would love them as much as I do, and I had no idea how unbelievably cool it would be to watch them grow up. Election night was pretty damn memorable, too, for obvious reasons.

6. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Being able to run 2 miles without stopping or feeling like I was going to die. Losing 15 pounds was a pretty big one, too.

7. What was your biggest failure?
I lost one of my closest friends. It’s debatable as to whether this is my failure or hers or both of ours or whatever, just as it’s debatable as to whether I technically lost her in December of 2007 or later in the year. Still, it feels like a failure and the sadness over it lingered throughout the year.

8. What was the best thing you bought?
Mortgage payments. The Wii. And lots of yarn.

9. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Hmm. I can’t think of anything specific, so I’ll just say everyone’s.

10. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Well, last year I said “Everyone’s” - because we’re all human, we all do applling and depressing things sometimes. I still believe that, but this year I was probably most appalled by a certain vice presidential (ahemsarahpalinahem) candidate. But wait! Was I more appalled by her? Or by McCain for nominating her? Hmmmm…

11. Where did most of your money go?
To the mortgage.

12. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
My niece and nephew! Yarn! Knitting! (I really went overboard with the knitting this year). Facebook! Books! Twilight! The Twilight movies! Did I mention yarn? Yarn!

13. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
a) about the same. b) thinner - woot!. c) maybe slightly richer?

What about you? (Let me know if you did this meme or if you do it. And don’t forget to tell me if you want a chance to win The Hunger Games!)

It Didn’t Take Us Long to Figure This Out

You know what’s more fun
Than Wii Bowling? Strip Wii
Bowling. Heh heh heh.

I Kind of Want to Barf When I Think of the Germs Involved in This

With certain SEPTA
Train tickets, the conductor
Punches holes in them

To keep people from
Re-using. This morn, I watched
A woman LICK HER

FINGERTIP and use
It to pick up all of the
Discarded holes. EW.

Sigh.

I am SO READY
To have a whole week off work!
Just three days away…

Stupid Anatomy

Is anyone else
Still watching that dumb show? It’s
Gone so far downhill!

Denny’s ghost? Really??
Oy. Still, I probably won’t
Quit watching it. Why?

Thoughts After Lunch

Turkey sandwich, you
Were so tasty. Tryptophan
Makes me need nap, though.

Fickle

Sometimes I adore
My co-worker. Other times,
I’m annoyed like hell.

As much as I hate to admit it, I can be insecure about certain things. I might question whether I am doing something “right” or whether I’m “good enough” or have any number of annoying, self-deprecating thoughts.

Other times? Not so much.

For instance, when I signed Chester the Wonder Dog up for his puppy obedience school, it took one introductory session for me to entertain visions of myself training him to do stuff like this and then entering him into agility competitions, which he would (of course) win.

It shouldn’t, therefore, be a surprise to know that as soon as I learned I would have the opportunity to interview Diana Spechler, the author of Who By Fire, about which I have raved a bit ad nauseum, I began imagining myself taking over Barbara Walters’s job and living the life of the World’s Most Extraordinarily Awesome Interviewer Ever, Yo.

It is perhaps notable that I am still slaving away at my desk as a recruiter, that Chester the Wonder Dog has yet to master “Stay” and “Stop Barking, Dammit”, and Barbara Walters is still, well, Barbara Walters. I still think I’m the World’s Most Extraordinarily Awesome Interviewer Ever, Yo, though. (And no, I am not sure why I added “Yo” to the end of my “title”. I just like it there.)

When I made my plans to go visit my friend Rosie in New York this past Friday night, I emailed Diana as well and asked if she would be interested in meeting up with us for a tipsy interview over my favorite beverage, wine. Lucky for me, it just so happens that wine is one of her favorite beverages, too, and so she agreed.

I had a bit of an adventure on my way to New York. I decided to be frugal and take SEPTA to West Trenton and pick up NJ Transit there, which saved at least $50 on my travel cost. This would have been fantastic, except that when I asked some (very nice and normal-looking) people where the NJ Transit ticket booths were, I learned that I was supposed to have gone to regular Trenton, not West Trenton. Hi, I am brilliant! Lucky for me, the very nice and normal-looking people offered to take me to the regular Trenton station, and in one of the more daring and less commonsensical moments of my life, I accepted the ride based on their appearance of normalcy and their promise not to murder me. In my defense, it would have taken hours to get back to Philly and onto an Amtrak train (screw frugality). I know, I know: Ted Bundy looked normal, too. But I am here and alive to tell the tale, so…hrmph! (No, I have not told my husband about this part of my adventure.)

ANYWAY.

I eventually arrived in NY safe and sound, and Rosie, Rosie’s friend Deepa, and I eventually settled ourselves in at a cozy table of the restaurant/bar to snack and drink and wait for Diana, who arrived, adorable as she is in her pictures, shortly thereafter.

I was as ready as I could be, with my prepared questions scrawled out on the back of some knitting instructions which were the only pieces of paper I had on hand since I was such a damn flake on Friday that I did things like walk out of my office without a notepad and then get on the wrong train.

Note to self: if you plan to take over Barbara Walters’s job, you should probably not be too cheap to purchase a $30 tape recorder to use at interviews. And maybe you shouldn’t drink wine while interviewing. And maybe you should take some notes.

Y’all, I am SO NOT IN BARBARA WALTERS’S LEAGUE. I can’t even quote Diana directly because I took one piddly little page of notes. And Deepa told me that I kept saying, “And another thing I loved about your book was…”. And I didn’t even ask her all the questions that I had written down!

Oy.

Still, my “interview” was memorable and fun, whether it counts as a real interview or not. My questions ranged in topic pretty dramatically. “Diana, one of the things I loved about your book was how colorfully and creatively you describe characters - like your description of Alena has having “paint-brush black hair”. Do you actually think like that ALL THE TIME?” (Pretty much. She’s always made comparisons of atypical things.) “Have you ever dated or would you ever date a non-Jew?” (She’s almost always dated non-Jews, with one exception). “Hey, in the reader’s guide at the back of the book, you compare yourself to the bad-luck tiki in that episode of the Brady Bunch when they all go to Hawaii. Who’s your favorite Brady?” (Marcia Marcia Marcia!) Hell, some of my questions weren’t even questions - they were more along the lines of “I read that you taught Fiction at Interlochen Arts Camp! Dude, I went there!” (OH, cool!) “Ooh, here’s one of my favorite lines: ‘I will find him and bring him home and we’ll laugh about this one day, about the time he moved to Israel to be an Orthodox Jew.’” (Thanks! You don’t have a tape recorder?)

Lucky for me, Diana dealt with my lingering flakiness, slight tipsiness, tendency to talk about myself, and overenthusiasm with charm and grace. She was candid and cooperative and friendly, which allowed me to come away from our “interview” feeling not only as though I had gained a new friend out of the experience but also as though I had gained insight into a writer’s life and fleshed out some questions I had about her book.

I’m sure you’d all love for me to quit rambling and share some of the things that I learned, so here you go:
- Diana has been writing for as long as she can remember. She wrote her first story in second grade and has basically always known that this was what she wanted to do.

-Although a lot of writers begin each story with an outline of the plot, that’s not how the process works for Diana. In fact, Who By Fire really began as a series of conversations between two of the characters (Bits and Ash), and the actual plot came much later. Apparently, this method is referred to as “character-driven writing”, with the idea being that you can’t develop a plot without having and knowing your characters. Personally, this makes sense to me - and is encouraging to me as an aspiring writer, since the main thing holding me back from taking a stab at writing is the fact that I never can come up with an interesting enough plot. I like the idea of getting to know my characters first and letting the plot come later - seems much more true to life!

- I’ve been so curious about who the girl on the cover of the book is supposed to be, and it turns out Diana doesn’t know either. The folks at Harper worked up five possible covers for her and she got to choose one. We agreed that the girl is beautiful, though, and the cover works. (I still kind of think she’s supposed to be Bits).

- There wasn’t really any one thing that pushed her over the edge into being a writer, because she’s always wanted to be one; similarly, there wasn’t really any big moment where she just DECIDED to write a novel. She’s written several short stories, so a novel was kind of the natural progression of things.

-Yes, writers do have time to read. Diana reads a lot and loves to. In fact, our chat about J.D. Salinger led to her suggesting a book written by one of his former girlfriends. Sadly, she has not read some of my favorite childhood books, the All-of-a-Kind-Family books.

-The characters Bits & Ash do indeed have unusual names, but there is not meant to be any additional significance to them. Bits is short for Beatrice. One of Diana’s friends pointed out that the names could be seen as synonyms for destruction (or, really, the remains after destruction).

-There are different levels of Orthodox Judaism. There are modern Orthodox Jews, like one of my favorite bloggers ever, the lovely Metalia. Modern Orthodox is very different from the kind of Orthodox that Ash is trying to be. There are ultra-Orthodox Jews who really are like the ones in Ash’s yeshiva - there really are men who won’t touch (innocently! like, not even shake hands!) any female other than one related to them.

-The book often refers to “the sin of the calf” and “the golden calf”. I asked Diana what that was all about because, hi, I am not particularly religious, and she explained as follows (paraphrased): when Moses went up to Mt. Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, the Israelites stayed behind and waited. The Israelites became worried that Moses was not going to return, and so someone (or, as Wikipedia explains, Aaron) collected all of their golden jewelry and melted down into the form of a calf, which the Israelites then started worshiping. Of course, all of this was a pretty big no-no, especially with that one Commandment about Thou shalt not worship false idols and whatnot - and it can be said that the sin of the golden calf is the origin of Jewish guilt.

-Diana loves good wine. She’s super-nice, too. And she seems like the kind of person with whom I could sit down and chat all day. And, frankly, she’s pretty inspiring. After all, how many 29-year-olds do you know who have written and published their very own book? (Me? ONE. Diana.) Overall, she pretty much rocks the house.

Sadly, due to my horrible note-taking skills, slight intoxication at the time of interviewing, lack of tape recorder, and promise not to print certain other things we discussed, that is about all I have for you. I hope you got as much enjoyment out of this as I did! If you haven’t read her book yet, you really should.

Man, I wish I had something more exciting to write about, but I simply don’t. Why? Because I got this crazy idea in my noggin that I was going to surprise Rob (who is at his office Christmas party as I type this) by cleaning out his closet - which is full (and I mean FULL) of laundry, both his and mine.

I have done four loads so far. In our high-capacity washer & dryer, no less.

If you ask me, I fully deserve this nice cold Blue Moon I’m drinking right now.

Peace out.

[Lamest. Post. Ever.]