two years ago

A couple nights before Halloween 2007, my friends Jesse and Lloyd threw a party with the theme "Come as You Were in High School." I wore an Elvis Costello shirt, cutoff jeans, black tights, and Doc Martens. It was a blast. Near the beginning of the party, I met a very handsome gay man named Dan.


As it turns out, Dan was coming from a more generic Halloween party and was not, in fact, gay in high school. He couldn't get my number because his spandex shorts did not allow for a cell phone, but he gave me his. I texted something cute and never heard back and assumed that was that.

Luckily we ran into each other again on the actual night of Halloween, when I was Captain Fun and Dan was Brian.



Dan explained that he'd accidentally given me his brother's phone number, and then he told me all about his sensitive singer-songwriter music and his awesome job making ringtones and his brother's band that was about to be signed by an indie label. *SWOON*

Tonight we have no costumes but we're gonna go to Pat's and hand out candy and play Beatles Rock Band. Happy anniversary us. (And congrats to my cousin Sarah who's getting married today! Wish I could be there.)

this makes me feel smug and proud

"Easier graphed than done," captioned my friend Dave when he recently posted this image. But we did it! We really did! The "no" then "yes" path of this chart totally visualizes the basic structure of our thinking when we plotted this trip and we are now quite a great deal happier.

I can't believe it's almost over though. Must work harder. We can't let down the optimistic early-'09 versions of ourselves who actually managed to have such thoughts. I'm at 100 pages but my first chapter is all wobbly; Dan's latest song is so incredible it makes me want to do aerobics, but he's still uncertain about his singing. In other words: our momentum is strong, and that is good, because here comes the hard part.

less talk more photo

The front yard, falling. / My sneaky attempt to photograph Dan in his jeans.


We bought some sweet painted gourds and ornaments for the Masonic Christmas tree at Grandma's bazaar, which was a couple weekends ago. Several of her painting friends set up their goods throughout the house and Grandma made lunch for all the shoppers. I manned my aunt's jewelry station and judging from this photo I must've gained an instant twenty pounds that morning from candy-corn grazing.


Tim and Susan took us to see a play called The Heavens are Hung in Black, a really interesting psychological portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Abe spent a chunk of his childhood in Indiana so he's a bit of a hometown hero here (along with John Mellencamp, whose name we've heard more in the past two months than in our entire lives). Anyway, the play was excellent and the old downtown theatre was beautiful:


The "Soldiers and Sailors" monument downtown is supported by some hilariously relaxed bears.

status update / it's late

I hit 85 pages sometime last week, followed immediately by a brick wall of work. I have several paying gigs over the next while, then a break, then a serious descent back into marketresearchland for part of November and early December. I'm not stressed, though; that urgent need for vast amounts of writing time has faded. I know the characters, I know how they talk and how they behave, I can even see their town perfectly in my head (it no longer looks quite like Hope). I'm fairly confident that I can pick up my laptop at any point and jump back into that world, which honestly makes this trip already sooo worth it, just to have arrived at that place. A friend tweeted this Woody Allen quote yesterday: "It's a wonderful thing to be able to create your own world whenever you want." I'm pretty sure I've only ever felt like that, as a writer, exactly three times in my life: once during the summer between grade 9 and 10 when I started and completed a collection of (unintentionally hilarious) linked stories; once during grad school when I wrote my (unintentionally obnoxious) novel; and now, during a sabbatical. All times when the world wasn't asking much of me.

It makes me want to find a more appropriate outlet for all those times when the world *is* asking. Because obviously this can't last forever. I described my current creative state to my dad on the phone a couple nights ago and he was intrigued -- he knows well that home-free feeling when you're onto something good and the distractions don't bother you as much, but his art forms (haiku poetry and songwriting) are, well, shorter. They don't require world-creation, at least not in the same way. It's a bummer I've never been able to write poems, because I do think they would fit much better into the realities of daily life. Anyway, for now, I'm loving this feeling of having this world waiting patiently at the edge of my mind, ready for me to jump back into whenever I get the chance. So fun. Hopefully this one ends up seeming intentionally, um, something. (Hah).

OKAY OKAY WHAT ABOUT DAN, you're probably asking. He's ruling, suddenly! We've realized we have very different creative challenges, now that the challenges are becoming more nuanced than finding time and motivation. Dan's is finishing things. So starting last week, he set up a strict schedule for himself: every Wednesday, he has to show me 2 songs. (Lyrics can be "scrambled eggs" if absolutely necessary). He just showed me his first Wednesday 2 and they are, expectedly, ahhhhmaaaazing, and now he feels like finishing things isn't so hard after all, and he won't come to bed even though it's two a.m. because he's in his music room making more.

He also got a pair of jeans. I got so excited in the store I texted Giovanni.

What else. Fall is still raging and awesome. I have some pictures from Grandma's bazaar but I'll post them next time because my camera is downstairs and I'm upstairs and it's a big house.

fall and other surprises

There are many benefits to this trip that don't have anything to do with its stated purpose. Some of them have surprised us; others we expected, but had no idea how much daily joy they would bring us. So, creativity-related benefits aside, here's what we're loving...

First: FALL. Dudes. Fall is amazing. Indiana has still not apparently reached the peak of fall season, and it is already so gorgeous, we can hardly drive down the street without running straight into a tree. As Dan put it the other day, as we drove past a particularly amazing tri-colored tree leaning out from the edge of a yard to greet the street: "I've just never seen anything like that." This tree was green in parts, yellow in others, and then the leaves around the edges seemed to have been dipped in a can of red paint--and the red is not reddish, not that amber-brown dead-looking red, which is also beautiful but more familiar; this is a practically fluorescent shade of red that just doesn't exist in California. So yeah, we're loving the proper seasons. We've been pretty gay about it actually. Mulled cider, pumpkin pancakes, sitting around a fire made with wood that my uncle has been drying in the backyard for years. I'm telling you. These midwesterners are on to something.

Second, of course, is family. My grandma is the sweetest lady ever and it's pretty much impossible to eavesdrop on one of her five-minute conversations with the cat and not feel really good about the world. (That cat talks back, for real). My uncle Tim and his girlfriend Susan are like our personal tour guides, arranging road trips, showing us some tasty Thai and Indian restaurants, and on weekend nights, indulging in a game of Catan or two (yes, you heard me, two). Susan even made this insane necklace with a picture of Klaus Teuber on the pendant, to be worn by the victor. My uncle Pat has every good television series ever on DVD, not to mention two full bars in his house (yes, again, two!) plus a karaoke stage. We haven't used the karaoke stage yet but we have a dream of somehow incorporating it with Beatles Rock Band.

Third: feeling relaxed, like, all the time. It's not bad.

And now for some pictures! We drove down south a couple hours last weekend to a forgotten-by-time town called Story that had an amazing dive bar in the basement of its only hotel, the Story Inn. Several men and women were very rowdy and drunk in there, and then they left on horseback. Grandma was glad they weren't driving.

who's boring now

So it's come to our attention that our blog is kind of like insanely boring. OHH OKAY I guess we'll tell you about all the crazy parties and events we've been promoting and stuff. It's been pretty bonkerstown. I guess you could call us scenesters among a certain crowd here in Indiana. They're called the Indy Decorative Artists and they paint flowers and animals on wooden objects and clothing.


All right we just made the flyers. Dan's is clearly awesomer but it's a bit too edgy for the occasion so it looks like they're gonna go with mine YAY I WIN SEE WE HAVE TONS OF FUN!

Keywords: indianapolis toll painting craft bazaar holiday sale wreaths china pumpkins gourds santas

drove to chicago

We spent the weekend in Chicago. Dan's brother Matt is there all week on a business trip, and he flew out early so we could all hang out for the weekend. It was fun; we did touristy stuff all day and on Saturday night we had legitimate Mexican food (the Mexican food in Indianapolis is beyond terrible) and went to a blues bar. It felt strange to be, um, well, doing things. My brain was sort of stunned to have been removed from the world of the novel, while my body was exhausted from not sitting in a chair all day.

The Art Institute was free to Bank of America cardholders, randomly, so we went twice.


We took a boat tour of Chicago architecture.


Why doesn't San Francisco have better public art?


Before driving home on Sunday we stopped at the Chicago Diner, "Meat-free since Eighty-Three," and Dan was so happy I thought he might faint. Here he is with a vanilla-chai tofu milkshake, a vegan chocolate chip cheesecake, and a coconut lemon cake. Yes, we got three desserts. Dan's lost 25 pounds in five weeks; he took the weekend off.