Yesterday was a lucky day for me. My tomato plants survived the frost, snug in their little handmade hoodies. My flights were on time, my flights were (relatively) comfortable, and my luggage did not wander off on its own. AND I won a contest. I have never won a contest before in my whole life. And get this - I won ICE CREAM.

Coconut & Lime is my favorite food blog. (You really should check it out and try some of her recipes.) When I was inbetween flights at O'Hare Airport yesterday, I saw the announcement of a contest to win some of the new flavors of Haagen-Dazs ice cream. So I entered. I always enter contests; it's a case of blind optimisim overcoming decades of painful experience. But yesterday, I won! I don't know when the ice cream is coming, or what flavors will be in the box, but I'll let you know.

One of the nice things about jet lag is that it's really easy, as an East-coaster, to wake up wicked early for a sunrise stroll. San Jose is a very walkable and runnable city. I am staying on the campus of San Jose State University and went for a run last night through the surrounding neighborhoods. This morning I wandered through downtown, enjoying all the public art. While looking for an open coffee shop, I came across a cool memorial to Ernesto Galarza, called Man of Fire.

He was a brilliant author, activist, and organizer who fought for decent working conditions for farm laborers and educational opportunities for all.

The piece looks like a long dining room table, with objects that reflect Galarza's passions and accomplishments scattered on it.

See this memorial to his life and work, especially since we just celebrated International Labor Day yesterday and Cinco de Mayo on Monday, was a meaningful way to start the day.

I leave in a while to speak at Yerba Buena High School, then to Hicklebee's for a 4pm event and signing. You're coming, right? Please? Paleeeeezzzz?

Chapter 20, which has been giving me fits for days, is finally done. HA! I'm pretty sure it'll be heavily reworked in the next draft, but for now, it's good enough and I'm stoked to be moving on.

Is anyone else confused by this?

Along with the very exciting news that I get to move on to chapter 21, today is my long run day and you know what that means, right? OATMEAL! Long runs require extra carbs in the system. My carbohydrate-of-choice at the end of January in a massive bowl of oatmeal.

The fact that I am this excited about oatmeal is a little alarming, I know. But it's true.

(Stay tuned for some earth-shaking running news coming soon!)


2008 Resolution Tracker
Week 4 - Miles Run: 22, YTD: 84.75
Week 4 - Days Written: 7, YTD:28

Only 48 weeks to go!

I am in Burlington VT, taking a break from chapter 20, to say how exciting it is to be here at the Kindling Words retreat! There are old friends here, and people I've been looking forward to meet.

Oh, and there is food.

No, not your typical rubber chicken fare. This retreat is held at the Inn at Essex. Yeah, that's right. Home of the New England Culinary Institute.

Yes, that sound you hear is me gloating. And trying very, very hard not to be a glutton. For lunch I had Thai carrot soup and an omelet with portobello mushrooms and a little tiny bit of boursin cheese (I asked them to go easy on it) and it was so yummy I nearly wept.

Dinner included butternut squash ravioli. This photo does not do justice to the dish.

The dessert table looked killer, but I managed to satisfy myself by taking pictures.

I want to do some writing before bed. Tomorrow is my first presentation. I am so stoked! Jane Yolen is here, and Ellen Wittlinger, Sara Zarr, Vera B. Williams, Tanya Lee Stone, Kate Messner, Linda Sue Park, Gregory Maguire, Wendy Mass, and many, many more!! it is a rare treat to be in the same space as so many creative people.

More photos tomorrow.

Yesterday was a very, very intense day. Wonderful, every single minute of it, but wicked intense. I feel like an apple that was peeled with a dull knife and left on the counter overnight.

It's weird because I used to be a profoundly shy person, and then I learned how to be brave and extroverted, and now I actually love hanging out at conferences and meeting hundreds of people, but then I have moments like this when I feel shy again. Balance, I guess, is the key.

The highlight of yesterday was booksignings, an hour at Anderson's Bookstores booth, and then an hour at the PermaBound booth, where the line stretched forfreakingever.

I was thrilled when Ms. J. from Hawaii showed up! I met her on my MySpace page when she wrote asking some questions her students had about the symbolism in SPEAK. Her MySpace photo has her sticking her tongue out, so it seemed appropriate.

( Old friends, strikers, and desserts )

I was lucky enough last night to have dinner with a group of people from the Multnomah County Library system (the nice folks who brought me out here) at a lovely Italian restaurant a couple of blocks from my hotel. (I had a fra diablo spaghetti studded with shrimp, clams, and fish.)

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let's back up to the conversation before we ordered. They were all telling me what a wonderful place Portland is: artsy, eco-friendly, mellow, and affordable (compared to Los Angeles, not Mexico, NY). Just as they were listing the authors who live in the region, Ellen, the last person in our group to arrive, walked in with a friend. This friend was on her way to dinner at another restaurant, but wanted to drop in to say hello.

Who was the friend?

Virginia Euwer Wolff, amazing YA author of Make Lemonade, True Believer, Bat 6, The Mozart Season, and many others. I had met her before, but it is always a thrill. She said her hellos to everyone and left for her own dinner.

Happy Teen Read Week, indeed!

I sat between Jenn and Lindsey, who will be introducing me at my events tonight and tomorrow. We had a blast, especially when it came time for dessert.

I had tiramisu. (Loved the bottom layer. Top layer was a little rich.)

Jenn had the lemoncake with berry sauce

and Lindsey had this almond thingie.

I woke up a lot last night, confused about time zones and sunrises and whatnot, but I got enough sleep. It's finally light out, so I'm going for a run. I wish I could explore a little today, but I really need to work on my revision, so that's what I'll be doing until it's time to leave to give my speech.

I'm in Oregon now, free wifi at my hotel - wa-hoo!

I need to catch you up on my Michigan adventure. First the Detroit airport. Which I love

because they have one of those cool colorful tunnels that connects the consourses

and it changes color

a lot!

Connecting through Detroit always means a trip to Sora, in terminal A, near gate 36

for sushi and miso soup.

The Michigan SCBWI conference was wonderful; extremely friendly (God, I love Midwesterners) and upbeat. Big thanks to rj_anderson (aka She Who Helped With the Myspace Mess In August) for making the drive from Canada, and the conference organizers, and all of the attenders who made me feel right at home.

And there was a real-live reader there! Meet my new friend, Eliza Webb, whose mom was at the conference and who totally made my day by coming over to talk to me.

Along with giving speeches and critiquing manuscripts and meeting kindred spirits, I snuck in a run on a beautiful autumn day. But truly, the highlight of the visit for me was this: Jello salad with Mystery Bits in it. This is a staple at United Methodist dinners, which were a staple of my childhood. If you read CATALYST and wondered about the Jello salad, this is what I was talking about. It's green, it wiggles, and it might be an ingredient in embalming fluid. But damn, it tastes good.

So now I am in Oregon and I have been awake for a million hours. I am at the coolest hotel I have ever stayed at, and I had a great dinner with librarians, and a Famous Author wandered by, and I even worked for a couple hours on my revisions, but all those details will have to wait until after I get some sleep!

Zzzzzzzzzzzz

I have figured out why our computer system, cable, Internet and phone have been messed up for two weeks. My Muse has transformed herself into the Ghost in the Machine and is haunting all of the electronic communication devices in our house so I have more time to write. I love her. We have had guys with trucks from the cable company out nearly every day, with more coming on Monday.

::musecackles::

But email waits for no Muse, which is why I am typing this at the Oswego Tea Company in Oswego, NY. (They are working on the redesign of their page. Anybody from SUNY Oswego want to lend a hand? Maybe they could pay you in cookies or coffee.) Seriously, this is one of my favorite places around and they have free Wifi. Thank you, Lisa who own the Tea Company.

I have recently had many requests to speak at schools. I am still turning all of these down and will be doing so for the foreseeable future, though I do hope to get back to school visits eventually. Teachers, I have name for you, for professional development purposes you want to invite Dr. Joan Kaywell to speak to you. Trust me on this.

We went to the hometown homecoming football game last night: our Mexico Tigers vs. the Fulton Red Raiders. I swear EVERYBODY in our community was there, from new babies to great-grandparents. Mexico lost, but it was a hard fought game and lots of fun to watch. And we beat ESM at their homecoming last week, so the karma is balanced now.

This morning BH and I got up early and headed for the Syracuse Regional Market in search of the season's last tomatoes (yes, I am roasting them again), fresh cauliflower, enough garlic braids to get us through the winter, fresh bread, and other goodies. One of my favorite local blogs told us about Wake Robin Farm, so we bought heavenly yogurt from them. We also picked up pasture-fed, traditionally raised beef, pork, chicken, eggs and butter from Wendy at Sweet Grass Farm. I swear I will never eat corporate-farmed butter again.

I have been wrestling Chapter Eight of my revision of the historical novel for two and a half days. The dang thing almost had me in a choke-hold, but I finally figure out how to take it down. Kevin, if you are reading this, Chapter Eight just split into two chapters. So yeah, the book is a little longer. Sorry about that.

My alma mater is the coolest.

Great quote heard on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me today: "Blackwater is Enron, but with sub-machine guns." If you don't know what that means, please do some investigating into the affairs of Blackwater.

That's enough now. Back to work.

I want a magazine that refuses advertisements that use these deceptive dollbaby images.
I want models who don't look like lollipops.
I want Hannah Montana to stop grinding her hips when she dances in front of an audience of 9-year-olds.

What do you want from the worlds of fashion and entertainment?

To balance out my anger, I went in search of goodness and found it: read about today's hero, Karen Gaffney, who swam across Lake Tahoe yesterday. Read the article. I guarantee you'll feel better. Then check out Karen's website.

Our Internet has been taken over by poltergeists, so I have limited email and web time this week. I am deep, deep in my rough draft, walking around in a fog. It's a good thing that BH is a patient man. Daughter Meredith sent me a giant vat of popcorn to feed the muse. If this keeps up, I might even meet my deadline!

This is going to be a quick entry to start the week. I feel like I have one hundred bazillion things to do and not enough hours in which to do them. That's the bad news. The good news is I had a fantastic, energizing weekend and I am chomping at the bit.

The Mexico Cider Run 5K was a blast; perfect weather and BH and I had a great time. And, drum roll please, I won my age group. Yes! That's right! Me - the one who has never won anything sports-related. I was so happy with my time (which was a personal best) it never occurred to me that I might have won. And they gave me a little plaque which is now sitting on the mantel. Suddenly all those soccer trophies my kids lugged home made sense.

Here we are, the happy, sweaty runners. (BH is wearing the shirt we had made up for last Thanksgiving, when all of our kids ran in a 5K with us.)

When I started getting back in shape 15 months ago, I could barely shuffle two miles on the treadmill. In running, as in writing, persistence is everything.

Yesterday was a writing and canning day. I used a bushel and half of Roma tomatoes to make chili base. Thanks to a well-timed email from my friend Hope Vestergaard (who is a great writer and a lover of all things Danish, like me, and who I will get to see at the SCBWI Michigan conference next month) I roasted half a bushel and froze them. Thank you, Hope - they turned out great!

It was a packed day, so I woke up at 4am and hopped right to it. My reward was a gorgeous sunrise. The photos I took don't come close to capturing the glory, but I thought I'd share a couple with you.

The colors peeked out just after the hoot owls went to sleep (they sang to me when I first got up).

See why I live out here?

I have insane writing goals this week. I would like to add 40 pages to the rough draft by Friday afternoon, if possible. That's a lot, but I figure you never accomplish much if you don't aim high. Plus I have speeches to write and piles of mail to get through. Wish me luck and focus... I am going to need it!

How was your weekend?

I am finally beginning to feel the burn-out that dogged me all summer begin to fade away. This is officially a Good Thing. That balanced life of awareness, intention, hard work, and fun is on the horizon!

I am almost through the brainstorming draft of my new YA. This is the fast and dirty draft: very fast, very dirty. It's about 35 pages long, with another 40 pages of notes in a different file. The actual writing of the first draft begins tomorrow morning. And that's all I want to say about that.

I have now tagged all of my 2007 entries in my LiveJournal. I hope to get to 2006 and 2005 very soon. This will be useful for people who are looking for specific information (writing process, Twisted, Speak) or who just want to see all my pictures of Poland or snow. Do you use tags when looking for info?

BH and I ran in the Salmon River 5K last Saturday, despite the heat and humidity. Much to our surprise, we ran a decently fast race. (He could have run much faster, but he was a gentleman and ran with me the whole way.) Even more to our surprise, we each placed third in our age-groups and won a medal. That was very cool. Our knee trouble over the summer has prevented us from entering the half-marathon in Philly later this month, but we'll be running in our hometown Mexico 5K Cider Run this Saturday. Come join us! You'll support our local library and have a blast.

I had an Animal, Vegetable, Miracle moment (you must read that book) in the grocery store yesterday. I had this fancy-pants fish recipe I wanted to make that called for a salsa made for fresh oranges. The problem? Not only were the oranges four for three dollars, they had been imported from Peru. We have been making a real effort to reduce our carbon footprint and support local farmers. Oranges from Peru do not meet those goals. So I drove past an orchard on the way home, bought near ten pounds of peaches for nine dollars, and made peach salsa. And yes, I am feeling rather smug about this, thank you.

I have speeches to work on this afternoon, and thirty pounds of fresh green beans to blanche and freeze. And you don't even want to know how many tomatoes are waiting in my kitchen. They snicker as I walk by. We'll see who has the last laugh....

Happy Birthday, Penni! Happy Birthday, Alex!!!

Note to Danielle I'll be emailing you within the next couple of days. Thank you so much for what you sent!

I can't believe this is my last day here. The week flew by. On Thursday I talked to all kinds of kids; elementary, middle and high school. I was going to take a picture of the high school students, but then I got to talking with them and I forgot. Duh.

( Fear not, however. I took plenty of other photos. )

I am already at the half-way point of this trip. I hate how time speeds up when you're having fun.

Trust me, friends. I am having a blast. This is me frolicing in front of the Summer Palace. (Your mission, if you choose to accept it: use the word "frolic" in a sentance today.)

( Polish cafeteria food and more! )

I can't believe I got up when the alarm went off, but I did. I do not remember the shuttle ride to the airport, but once I got through the security ritual, I found a Starbucks and stood at the gate until the barristas took pity on me and opened up a few minutes early. Another morning, another Powerbar.

On the plane I did that thing where you fall asleep and your head drops forward and you jolt awake because you think you are falling 30,000 feet and then you fall asleep again and your head drops forward and you jolt awake because you think you are falling 30,000 feet and then you fall asleep again .... I did that about 10,000 times before we landed in Houston.

Best sign I saw all day.

( First stop of the day: Alief Hastings High School. )

I will admit it. I am in a bit of a fog. Yesterday - Houston day - was long and fun. But before I get into that, let me give some details about St. Louis.

If I can remember them.

::checks itinerary to jolt memory::
::slams down coffee::

Right. St. Louis.

Now I remember. I signed books. ( Lots and lots and lots of books. )

It is 10:15 pm and I am eating my dinner in my hotel room, preparing to go to bed. Why? Because I have to be up at 3:30am to catch the 4am shuttle for an obscenely early flight that is completely necessary if I am going to make all of my events in Houston tomorrow.

I will provide more photos and details later but here is the short version:

My flight this morning was an early one, too, so I ate the Road Warrior's Breakfast of Champions: a Powerbar and fruit.

It was so pretty, it inspired a haiku.

Fuel
Sublime breakfast food
Oatmeal Raisin Powerbar
Carbo-hydrate me.

Yum.

The plane was a couple hours late, but Derry Wilkens, The Amazing Publicist, is psychic and she just knew that would happen so she arranged for it to occur on a day when I had some free time to kill.

I met a lot of very nice people and signed more than 650 books. Seriously. My author schlepper counted for me. I really want to tell you everything, but I have GOT to get to bed, so it all has to wait until tomorrow. Or maybe Friday, because tomorrow is freaking insane.

Thank you, St. Louis.

TOMORROW'S SCHEDULE

Disgustingly early flight to Houston, TX. Much drooling on self on plane.
Arrive at airport. Change to dry shirt.

10:30 AM Signing at Alief Hastings High School (not open to public)

Sponsored by Blue Willow Bookshop
14532 Memorial Dr.
Houston, TX 77079
281-497-8675

Grab lunch on the road.

1:30 PM Signing at St. John’s School (not open to public, either)

4:00 PM Signing at Brazos Bookstore (OPEN TO PUBLIC!!!!!)
2421 Bissonnet
Houston, TX 77005
713-523-0701

Dinner with librarians and teachers. Guaranteed to be more refined than what I am eating right now.

After dinner, drive to Austin. Check into hotel. Sleep like death.

Bravo!

Thank you lost_child2 for taking the time yesterday to explain how the Literature Map works. You can read both of his explanations if you scroll down through yesterday's comments.

My food quirk of the moment? Straight wasabi paste on baby carrots.

Do you know about Library Thing? (Thank you mikigarrison for pointing it out. Do any of you post to it? What do you think (here's the SPEAK entry)?

Other deep thoughts: it possible to eat too much wasabi? Does anyone have a wasabi muffin recipe? What about wasabi/lemon/poppy seed?

Oh, man. I just realized I am also craving lox. It's a good thing we live out in the middle of nowhere.