Here are some of ours (the boys each have their own menorah).

Well, its been a long time since I’ve posted much. And since I’ve promised to post photos (just click on them to enlarge) of my trip, I figured I’d better do it before the season has passed.

About a week and a half ago, we took the boys to my hometown. But instead of staying locally, we headed an hour or so north to the Finger Lakes. Growing up in the region, I had no idea there were wineries. Not until I brought my future husband home years ago and my parents took us north on a wine trail….

Getting ready for NaNoWriMo, I decided to set my new novel in the Finger Lakes region. Well, what with a lot of school vacation days and the boys driving me nuts, I had a bright idea. My husband cashed in a vacation day, and we headed off on a ‘research’ trip (some things about writing are fun and my husband hoped on board this project willingly enough).

Its been a while since we’ve been back, but this past weekend had those perfect fall days that start off cold, but warm to a pleasant 70 degrees. The sun was out and a recent frost had caused the leaves to break out in brilliant color, but the rain and wind had yet to knock the leaves off their trees…

On a Saturday, we took the boys to Glenora Wine Cellars, mostly for the tour (but we did sample the wines and walk off with a few). They showed us the machinery that separates the grapes from their stems, extracts the juice, then filters out the sludge. Then it was off to the barrel room.

Here’s a photo of a barrel. Note the plaque? You can buy your own barrel, visit it (I kid you not, the guide says people do), and at last, collect the wine AND the empty barrel.

Here are the fermentation tanks.

The bottling/corking machinery.

By the end of the tour, the boys were getting a bit wild, so we took them to Watkins Glen. Nothing like about a thousand steps to wear them down. Unfortunately, it did us in too.

The next day, my parents kept the kids at home and we set off to sample the wines of those wineries between the lower halves of Lake Cayuga and Seneca. Our favorites? Lucas, Lamoreaux Landing, Wagner, and Standing Stone. The photos below are from Wagner.

On our way out, we passed a ‘limo’. You can sign up for tours that include a driver. No need to sip discreetly and dump the rest (or spit). Those individuals debussing had definitely not been dumping their tastings. They looked to be enjoying themselves thoroughly… Wiffer Wine Tour anyone?

“The list includes fine food, strange food, everyday food and even some pretty bad food – but a good omnivore should really try it all. Don’t worry if you haven’t, mind you; neither have I, though I’ll be sure to work on it. Don’t worry if you don’t recognize everything in the hundred, either; Wikipedia has the answers.

Here’s what [they] want [me and you] to do:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.”

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred: (comments are in parentheses)

1. Venison (grew up near hunters – school was out for buck and doe days)
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros (yum)
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (alligator really, it had a bit of a tang – not bad)
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava (yum)
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas (a big mistake)
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O (on Hey Day at UPenn)
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail (if ‘Rabe de Toro’ counts)
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (Of course. I lived in Savannah, GA)
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill (yes if survival depended upon it)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail (not again)
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict (gross)
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare (my mom was hoping we wouldn’t ask for the wing…)
87. Goulash
88. Flowers (not a repeater…)
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Sorry, deadly food and organ meats are out.  How about you?

Anyway, I was at the bookstore this past weekend when I broke down and bought Sam’s new book (that’s mine on the right). I took a photo of it sitting on the kiosk at the front of the store. It only took me two days to read (many interruptions) and is, in my opinion, her best book yet! The next day, Amazon.com shipped me the copy I’d pre-ordered (as soon as it gets here, I’ll have my first give-away).

Then, I had a brilliant idea.

Since I can’t possibly buy every book I want to read, I used to write down the title and author so I could remember to order it later (from either Amazon.com or the library). Then it occurred to me that it would be a lot easier to simply photograph each book I want to read…. It was much faster than writing and within moments I had a photo of every book I want to read. Look! One of my favorite authors has a new book out!

Apparently they’re very rare and the chicks will not hatch (they can’t acess the air pocket when there are two in the egg).  For way more info than you probably want, you can read Twin Yolks and Twin Chooks?

The kids thought it was pretty cool and the oldest had a lot of questions about twins… but no remorse about eating the fried egg.

Originally, the argument against women in medicine was based on our menstrual cycles. It was first argued that we would be unable to function during the menstrual flow or that the hormonal fluctuations would damage the quality of our work. Later a man named Clark would argue in 1873 that, “The most dangerous threat… stemmed from the mistake of educating females as if they were males. Since the uterus was connected to the central nervous system, energy expended in one area was necessarily removed from another.”

Despite this bias, women continued to train as physicians.

In 1870, there were 544 female physicians.

1880: 2,432

1890: 4,557

1900: 7,387

1910: 9,015 (6% of all physicians)

As it turns out, the number of female physicians peaked in 1910 only to drop precipitously shortly thereafter. Why? In 1893, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine admitted the first ever co-educational class of medical students. Women declared the ‘battle’ for equal education won, and woman’s medical colleges began to close with the expectation that medical schools would be open on an equal basis to both sexes.  For a time, they were.

Then slowly, as women’s liberation movements focused on winning the vote, those numbers eroded. The men in control of the schools began to accept only a handful of women into their class, the bare number necessary to claim co-education. Then, women were denied access to nearly all internships and residencies after graduation, particularly the ones at prestigious institutions. Those women who continued in the face of blatant discrimination earned far less than their male colleagues and were denied positions of influence and power within the medical community (based on their ‘lesser’ internship/residency).

And so the enrollment of women in medical schools dropped precipitously.

Although women continued to apply to medical school in the face of nearly certain rejection, the number of women physicians wouldn’t begin to recover until during the second world war when medical schools recruited women out of sheer necessity. Not until the 1970s would women finally begin to be admitted on equal footing with men on the basis of academic merit alone.

Today, most medical schools admit an equal number of women and men.

As many of you know, I’ve recently moved. One ongoing debate about our new house is what we should do (or not do) about the fireplace in the kitchen. The last owners did some renovations and in the process the original kitchen became the family room and the family room became the kitchen. As such, I ended up with a gorgeous fireplace right across from an island. I love this fireplace. The rest of the house is great too – but the fireplace was a major selling point.

So what’s the problem?

During those renovations, the last owners converted it to gas. That’s right. With the flick of a remote control, you have an instant ‘fire’.

Still, you say, what’s the problem?

Well… I’d kinda sorta hoped that one day I’d be able to try open hearth cooking in my own home… and there’s something about the smell you get from burning real wood. “You have the fireplace in the formal living room for that,” says Pierce, my husband. My response is a weak, “Yes, but….”

If I push, the gas fireplace components can be yanked out and the fireplace restored to its woodburning state. My husband would prefer to leave the gas. I’ve agreed to give it a year (since it’s July, I’m not feeling the desire for a fire yet)…

So what is your experience with gas vs wood fireplaces? Does anyone have any sage advice?

I was in the middle of moving.

But now the boxes are unpacked, curtains are up, and most of the pictures are hung (don’t ask about the cellar, we’re pretending its not there). Its time to start writing again.

I bravely sent out queries via email just before moving. Mostly I’ve been rejected or simply ignored, but one agent requested the first five pages! I’ve claimed office space in the new house (it has a door I can shut) and today I shall at last get those five pages off to the agent.

As always, when I visit a blog and read that ‘About Me’ page, I often find myself full of questions. Caryn was gracious enough to answer a few of them:

1) Where were you born? Where did you grow up? Where else have you lived?
I was born in Ohio, and lived there all the way through procuring my Master’s degree. Even before I graduated, though, I had a job lined up in Colorado, and I moved west just days after graduating. I’ve never moved back. I’ve also lived in Moab, Utah (where I spent two summers as a white water rafting guide in college); Toledo, Spain (where I studied for six weeks); and Cuernavaca, Mexico (where I studied for three months during my first winter in college). After growing up in a city of over a million people, I’m definitely a small-town girl, and I love both the desert and the mountains, so the southwest is perfect for me. Plus, my husband loves it here, too.

2) You take beautiful photographs. Does it come naturally or have you had some kind of training?

Awww. Thanks, Ilana! Actually, I think my photography is mostly a combination of my living in and visiting many beautiful areas, the sheer number of photos I take, and lots of practice with Photoshop. That said, I did have some formal photography training in high school, and even won a few state and local contests with my photos. Beyond that, I’ve also spent a lot of time look at others’ photographs and trying to decide what does and doesn’t work for me — much like I do when I’m reading and watching movies, in order to improve my writing.

3) What is your favorite cat story?
Wow. I don’t even know. How about a favorite cat picture? That would probably be this one of Rosemary and The Basil. Or favorite cat quirks? Echo the Cat bites when he wants attention, and he becomes angry easily, but when he’s in the right mood he’ll let me hug him just like a teddy bear. Sometimes we fall asleep that way. Rosie is our little strumpet. When she wants attention, she’ll trot coquettishly up to the person, meowing in a flirtatious manner, then throw herself to her back and begin scooting across the floor. I swear she flutters her eyelashes all the while. Someday I’ll have to catch it on video. The Basil is my breakfast buddy. Every morning he insists on sitting at the stool next to mine while I eat, and rubs against me for attention. He also loves to ride around on my shoulders, especially when I’m in the kitchen because I let him sniff whatever I’m working with at the time; he’s very nosy, so with that and the height that comes from his perch, he can indulge his curious nature.

4) What is your day job? Does any of it carry over into your writing?
I actually never blog about my day job except in the most general terms, because of privacy reasons and also because I don’t want anything to be misconstrued. That happened once before, with a different job, and it was awful, so I erased the post and have never done it again. That said, I’m only thirty-one, but I’ve been a veterinary assistant, white water rafting guide, paper-pusher, independent bookstore manager, typesetter/copyeditor, English teacher, bookkeeper, and an artist’s assistant — not necessarily in that order. Many of these were part-time jobs while I was in college, or to supplement my teaching income, or when I moved to my current town before I could get something full time; that’s why there are so many. (I live in a tourist town, so full-time work can be hard to come by.) I think that all of my jobs have carried over into my writing or will eventually, either because some situations inspire scenes or characters, or because I now have plenty of jobs to give to my characters without having to do too much research!

5) Do you remember the moment when you first decided to write a novel?
Wow. I remember the year when I decided to give it a try, though I don’t remember the exact moment when I switched from thinking, I could never get a novel published to I want to be an author, too!. I’ll tell you, though, my first book was AWFUL! I was learning about writing a book while doing so, and it turned out I had a lot to learn. It wasn’t a waste, however, despite the fact that I will never, ever try to publish it. I learned so much about writing — and about myself! — while writing it. In fact, sometimes I like to look at it just to see how much I improved over the course of writing it, and how much more I’ve improved since then. It amuses me, but not in the ways I had originally intended.

6) What kind of novels have you written?

Let’s see. My first three novels were categories for Harlequin. I’m wincing even as I write this, and category people, please don’t get mad, but I never really read much category; I just liked it because the books were shorter, which seemed more doable. That, of course, helps explain why the first two were unpublishable. Then I discovered Flipside, the romantic comedy line, which actually fit my voice. I read a few, then aimed my third book for that line. It got all the way up to a request for a full before the line was dissolved and the book was orphaned. I don’t know if they would have published it otherwise, but I’d like to think they would have, since it makes me feel better. Unfortunately, it can’t be worked to fit any of their current lines, and it’s definitely not a single title, so I’m pursuing alternative routes of publication for it. My fourth book was a chick lit, and by the time I pitched it I was told in no uncertain terms that chick lit was dead. I then switched careers in my day job, which meant that I needed to go back to school and didn’t get much writing done for a year and a half. Now I’m back at it, (slowly!) revising my chick lit into a romantic comedy and (much more quickly) writing a young adult romantic comedy with paranormal elements. I’m having so much fun with this fifth book, and I’m really hoping that it will finally be the one.

7) Can you give us a little summary about one of your novels? The future back cover copy, perhaps?

My current book is about a girl who loses her last friend and learns she has telekinetic powers on the same day — and it’s a tossup which event distresses her more.

Here’s what I have so far for my query letter summary, though I’ll add on to the blurb before I send it off: Tenth-grader Hannah Lindstrom would give anything to be ordinary. Ordinary girls have friends. They don’t have embarrassing little brothers, clueless fathers, or mothers who change their personalities as often as their shoes. Most of all, ordinary girls do not have psychic powers.

8. Pantser or plotter? And have you tried it the other way?
Uh, some of each? I also revise as I’m writing, too. (The horror of it!) I usually start off with an idea — often a bit of dialogue or a whole scene. I write that down, and think about it for a while. As the voices start talking more and I figure out the gist of the plot, I start outlining. Usually, though, entire scenes — or chunks of them — come at me, and I have to start writing or go crazy. By the time I’m a quarter to a third of the way through a book, I usually have a good idea of my turning points and most of what has to happen to lead up to them, but there are still tons of surprises, and I often have to go back and rework earlier scenes. If the idea speaks to me strongly enough that I know that it has to be written, then it simply can’t wait while I sit and plot the whole thing out first.

9) Please share a moment of ‘writer crazy’. Have you found people looking at you strangely or found your thoughts wandering down a pathway that some might find disturbing?
All the time! The good news is that I am now surrounded by family and friends who understand that. My brother, for example, has begun to expect me to kick off a phone call with, “I have a random question for you.” And my husband, friends, and family are great about hypothesizing with me when I’m trying to work something out. However, I haven’t always been surrounded by such tolerance. Once, for example, I worked with a guy who was a total jerk — for so many reasons, not just the following example! As you know, anything can spark a story idea — just see something unusual, put a few characters in the scene, and bam! Story. I used to think everyone did this. (How else do they entertain themselves? Honestly!) This is where the jerk comes in. We saw a car that had gone off into a ditch in the middle of the night. I heard that the people were fine, and had just gotten out and walked back to town. I mused aloud something like, “I wonder what they must have thought when the road suddenly disappeared and they were in a ditch.” A perfectly normal question, I thought, imagining their fear and surprise. He turned to me and said nastily, “God, you have such random, pointless thoughts sometimes. You’re like Jack Handy, that Deep Thoughts guy.” I was a little embarrassed at the time, but now I’m glad for my imagination. My life is richer for it, and he’s the one who’s missing out.

Caryn is another blogging Wiffer whose site I’ve been visiting regularly. Not only does she maintain an interesting blog, she also takes beautiful pictures which she’s recently been sharing through her new photo blog. I also won my very first ever random drawing for a prize (really truly random) by entering a contest she ran for an autographed copy of Jess Riley’s Driving Sideways. Pam, Robin and Caryn’s interviews have me looking forward to this read.

So, as always, I read the ‘About Me’ page on a blog and found myself wondering… So, Caryn has humored me by answering a few of my questions.

10) With nearly five completed novels, do you have any advice for all us other writers who are just getting started?

Oh, wow. I don’t know if I should be giving advice to anybody! If I were to do so, however, I’d say that no writing is a waste if you’re learning from it and having some fun. Chances are good that your first book won’t sell. That’s fine. Now that you have that out of the way, and you know that you can write an entire book, you can continue to work on your craft without feeling quite as intimidated by the idea writing an entire book. One thing that kept me going was learning that 90% of all those who start writing a book never finish it — and that doesn’t even include all those people out there who say wistfully, “I’d like to write a book someday…” and never do. I wanted to be part of that 10

My boys, however, think that a trip to grandma and grandpa’s house is a huge treat. This weekend, the weather was wonderful and we spent a lot of time outside exploring my hometown and the surrounding hillsides. We wandered along the train tracks, following them into town (and picking up old railroad spikes). Once in town, we passed the old firehouse that was built in 1901 and is still in use today. The boys were thrilled to find that the firemen there have (and use) a firepole. Then we ended up at the pond where they fed baby geese. My boys were so excited, we had to hold onto their shirts to keep them from falling in the pond.

Later, we drove out of the valley and up a hill to a friend’s property (where I took the first picture). There, we searched for fossils by visting an old quary and following a stream uphill.

Growing up in the hills of PA, I took fossils in the streams for granted. But my husband and boys were thrilled to find them lying all over. (I’d never thought to take them creek walking there before… and by the end of the weekend, our trunk was filled with rocks.)

Back at my parents’ home, the boys also spent a lot of time in The Cellar with grandpa. Briefly, my dad has filled the cellar with machinery (saws of all kinds, lathes, tools, hardwear, glue…). My dad builds and flies model airplanes and has been teaching the boys to drive a model monster truck with a remote control (I suspect he’s working up to airplanes).  Planes crash and are decomissioned… the monster truck was reduced to wheels last fall….  On this trip, grandpa and the boys disappeared into The Cellar, the usual strange noises floated up the stairwell, and this is what emerged:

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It drives just fine. But no matter how fast my seven-year-old drove, it refused to take off.