Holiday Countdown

For some reason, the holiday season - no matter how much I look forward to it and want to be all cheery about it - brings me down. To me I suppose the holidays are much more about family and less about gifts (maybe because my family has never been affluent enough to really get me much on Christmas; or maybe it's because no one knows me well enough to know what $10 item I will go nuts for). This year though, I want to force myself into some Christmas cheer. I haven't decorated my own tree in at least 3 or 4 years, I don't have a single Christmas CD and it's been far too long since I've gone to see the Nutcracker ballet or any Christmas event for that matter.

So this year I am going to push myself to get into the Christmas spirit. It should be good for morale, since this has been a long year with many challenges and changes. So here are my holiday season goals:

1. Send out Christmas cards: I do this every year, but I want to be sure and do it again.
2. Buy a fresh-cut tree and decorate it with 100% new/color-coordinated decorations: This will be my first tree with my boyfriend (we didn't get one last year), so I want it to be OUR stuff that goes on it.
3. Listen to Christmas music: I like Trans-siberian Orchestra and some of the more classical Christmas music like Handel's Messiah. The Twelve Days of Christmas? Not so much...

I also have thrown myself into the volunteer ring to help with my work Christmas party. I am the talent coordinator and so I have to find an hours worth of acts, write a skit for the managers and likely MC the show. It ought to be fun since I like using my planning skills to put together events. My worst fear though is that people will be bored!

To finish out my holiday post, I'm going to do a short-list of my most coveted Christmas gifts (mostly so my boyfriend can get the hint-hint!).

• Kodak EasyShare Camera - $89.99 at Best Buy
• Apple® - iPod® nano 8GB MP3 Player - Black - $149.99 at Best Buy
• Lion King the Musical Tickets - $25-80 per ticket
• Gift cards for Borders, Barnes and Noble, Ikea, Target, or Macy's

Time to wash the election off and get back to my true love: NOVEL WRITING!

I'm actually right on target with my Nanowrimo novel. As of this very moment, I have 8,225/50,000 words, which means I technically only need to write another 20 or so words today to stay on the pace of 1,667 words per day.

Everything is actually coming along smoothly and plot is appearing in all sorts of places. And since I am a little bit ahead with my word count, I'll take a little bit of leisure time to introduce some fun elements I am using in my story.

Aurora - Idina Menzel has the exact look for what I want Aurora to look like. True, Idina is a bit old to be playing a teenager, but you get the idea. There is a certain exotic, unique beauty to her and both a feminine and strong side to her.

Aurora's castle - This photo of Torrechiara castle in Parma, Italy is similar to what I envision in my story.

Enrian's Ring - This is how I envision her father's ring that is used at the beginning of my story for the fortune teller to use as she reveals to Aurora the truth about how her father died.

Box of divination treasures - It's pretty much a cigar box filled with cool divination stuff!

Scrying mirror - Kinda like a crystal ball, only a lot more portable. This was in the box.

In a state where we favor our chickens over our gays

I am both woefully depressed and wildly ecstatic about the election results from last night. I hate those days when I'm so ambivalent that the very act of not being able to decide my mood is exhausting.

The call has been made and Proposition 8 has been passed. That means that once the election is certified, gay marriage will no longer be allowed in the State of California. Now, whether the gay marriages that were already performed will still be honored is a question yet to be answered (I hope yes). Ironically enough, Californians voted overwhelmingly in favor to give farm animals more room to roam around. More rights for chickens, less rights for homosexuals. The logic of it all is maddening!

I am deeply saddened that the choice of Californians was to ELIMINATE a civil right from a group of people. What troubles me further is that the majority of these backers are people from the Mormon church. I am ashamed that I once attended a church with such an ominous group of intolerant people. This, unfortunately, pushes me even further away from my family and friends who are still true believers in Mormonism. I guess I just can't believe that God would be in favor of oppressing those who are different from us or taking away someone's choice to make a decision for themselves.

At least there is a silver lining to this that should eclipse this woeful defeat of equal marriage...

THANK FUCKING GOD Barack Obama has won the presidency. He's going to be an amazing leader. Hope and change are on the way!

Must Focus on the Nanowrimo

There are so many political issues to talk about (Larry King Live's comedy panel, Sarah Palin continuing to be an idiot, right-wing conservatives still trying to take away civil rights! oh my...), but I must turn my mental focus on Nanowrimo just for a bit.

I realized today, as I was browsing the Nanowrimo forums, that I have NO ONE in my supporting cast. So far all I know is that I have my characters (1) Aurora, a headstrong teen runaway who was heir to a grand empire, but decided to skip out when her incestual uncle who killed her father wanted to marry her and (2) Avery, a snarky but handsome captain of a pirate ship who is all about the money and the treasure (duh). My other characters will undoubtedly be the ship's crew and some inhabitants of the islands where the two main characters go searching for their treasure. But so far I don't have any ideas, so it may be off to the character generators for me.

Another thing I need to think about is the matter of when I will be able to find TIME to work on this project. This Friday night at midnight will probably not be when I start because A: it is Halloween and B: I will probably be too inebriated to remember to start the damn thing. But hey, we'll see. Anyway - my best chance for solid writing is going to be on Sundays since those are my "ME" days where I have the house to myself. I should also have sporadic time at work to work on it too - but I work in a cubicle with almost no privacy and for some reason I need privacy to write fiction. Tuesdays and Thursdays (except for Thanksgiving) should be good to me since my boyfriend has school those evenings, which means almost 2 hours of free time to work on the novel. Oh and I suppose November 10th and 11th will be good writing days as well since most everyone will be out of the office on the 10th and I have the 11th (Veteran's Day off). So, I think all those big chunks of time will help me immensely in getting this thing written!

I just hope when November 1st rolls around, I don't end up like teh kitteh seen here:

Mormons and Marriage: A little overzealous, no?

Seeing as how I grew up in the Mormon church, I still have contact with many of the people I knew there through Facebook and I'm seeing it pop up everywhere - people joining no on Prop 8 groups; plastering no on Prop 8 banners in place of their profile photos. Every house I pass by that has a Yes on Prop 8 banner in front of it is assumed to be under the influence of Mormon culture. These are the people I am writing this blog to: please - don't hate people because they aren't like you; don't vote on a discriminatory measure because you think you are doing something good for your church. It will hurt no one for same-sex marriage to be upheld in California (it's been legal for almost 6 months now - has the apocalypse come? NO!), but if this proposition is passed, then discrimination, hate, and oppression will prevail; and isn't that counter to what the Mormon church teaches about treating others kindly and God giving us all free agency to choose?

I went to my parents' house the other day and my mom had a stack of leaflets about why people should vote yes of Prop 8. When I inquired as to where they had picked up all this stuff (because I thought it was church policy to not tell people how they should vote on a political issue - especially on church property). My dad told me that they handed all the propoganda out on the street just outside of the church property. How dispicable of it was of whomever decided to hand these out to the ward members - pushing politics at church is just something that rubs me the wrong way. And so now, I think, the notion among Mormon people is that they are required to blindly vote yes on this proposition because it somehow will be detrimential to their own view on traditional family.I've browsed many of the websites, both for and against this proposition (especially the ones with LDS viewpoints) and I know without a doubt that even if I were still active in the church, I would still choose to vote against Proposition 8. This is not about protecting the institution of marriage - NOTHING about marriage will change if same-sex couples continue to marry in California. This proposition is only about excluding people to a civil right and I can't stand up for a cause like that. I believe, and always have believed, that all people should be afforded equal rights: first it was women, then it was blacks, and now it is time for the GLBT community.

I would encourage those who are planning to vote Yes on Prop 8 to read some of the reasons why others are voting no (including those LDS members of your own church). And then ask yourself if you want to be an oppressor of civil rights. I found these websites to be straight forward and respectful of the issues at hand:

http://mormonsformarriage.com/

http://www.lds4gaymarriage.org/

The Sticky Subject of Marriage (for all)

The upcoming election has been, decidedly, on the forefront of my mind these past couple weeks. And aside from this historical presidential election, we have a hotly contested initiative here in California that is garnering quite a bit of attention with both support and opposition. Proposition 8, if passed, would eliminate the right of same sex couples to marry (currently it IS legal for same-sex couples to marry in California). The supporters of this proposition say that gay marriage is an attack on the traditional family and that they don't want their elementary school children being taught that marriage between heterosexual couples is the same as marriage between homosexual couples. Opponents of the proposition see it as an attack on civil rights and a block in the struggle towards equality for all people - no matter what their orientation may be. It's a polarizing issue that affects people on a deeply emotional level and the outcome on November 4th will be painful for either side that loses.

So anyway, I am voting against proposition 8 because I am all about giving equal rights to people. For those that support the ban on gay marriage - their lives and families will go on as normal if this proposition doesn't pass. They will still be able to choose to get married in churches and have traditional weddings - it changes nothing about the sanctity of marriage for them. On the other hand, for same-sex couples who want to get married, if this ban does pass, it will mean they will not have the privilege to "be married" to the person they love. Sure, domestic partnerships grant almost the same rights in California to heterosexual married couples - but it just isn't the same to say "I now pronounce you domestic partners" as it would be to pronounce them wife and wife or husband and husband.

Unrelated to the outcome of the proposition, the Federal government still would not recognize these same-sex marriages for purposes of immigration or tax-filing status - meaning that there is still quite a ways to go before same-sex marriage would be anywhere near the same as heterosexual marriage. So why not make this move forward? It's a small step and California is only the third state to grant this right to same-sex couples. Churches need not be afraid - ministers are not forced to marry those with same-sex marriage licenses. If this is separatation of church and state, then leave it up to the conservative churches to ban same-sex marriages within their walls and leave it up to the courts and the law to allow marriage for any loving couple who wants to live till death do us part.

November on the Horizon

Nanowrimo is quickly approaching, so I suppose it is time for my annual pep talk to myself via blog. This will be my third year of attempting Nanowrimo. Back in 2006 I won this thing with flying colors. I think I wrote something like 58,000 words in the first 21 days and finished my entire story early and then never really got around to editing it properly (like I wanted!). And then last year in 2007 I sputtered out after about 13,000 words and just plain gave up. For some reason killing off all the characters and then reincarnating them into a completely different universe didn't quite feel right to me.

So anyway, this year I am going back to my Nanowrimo roots. My character from my first nano novel is one that I just can't get out of my head and I most certainly have more of her story to tell, so I'm going to be doing a prequel of what happened to her leading up to the novel I wrote in 2006. She's kind of like a female version of Hamlet - except less of a weenie. Her uncle has murdered her father and she's decided to go AWOL on her country in favor of (no, not college), but a pirate/criminal lifestyle. She's the adrenaline rush kind of gal - not the sit and be a pampered princess type at all.

My novel should involve a good deal of piracy, sex, drugs, murder, conniving royals, soft hearted conmen, and bad mouthed women wearing too-tight corsets on ships in addition to all the fantasy and swashbuckling pirate elements I can conjure up in 30 days. I'm so excited to be going back to this world that I can barely stand to wait! I must control myself until November 1.

I don't have an outline yet, or any ideas for my opening scene. Heck, I don't even know the time frame in which I want to tell my story. I know so much about this character and her life but I just haven't put it all down on paper yet.

My Vote Goes to...

This will be the third presidential election that I'll be participating in. I was first able to vote at the ripe age of 18--I was a freshman in college and still under the heavy influence of my religious background. The year was 2000 and I don't remember why I felt voting for Bush would be a good idea, but that is, indeed-while completely embarassing to admit, who I ended up voting for.

Oh how my political views have changed. I used to think that my "Republican" political views were the correct way to go. I was a good (err, relatively) church-going Mormon gal who believed that abortion was bad and that gays should not get married. But did I believe those things because I really took the time to ponder them and make the decision myself, or was I just going with what my parents thought was the best way to vote? I didn't think about those things back then, but looking back on that era, I wasn't yet the loose shaking, free-thinker I am today.

It's not that I wanted to feel like a rebel. In the time between that first virgin voter ballot and where I stand today are the things I've learned on the road along the way. I went to college, I shunned my religion (and all organized religion for that matter), I met gay people - discovered many of whom were already my friends, I saw homelessness and mental illness on the streets when I traveled to work, I divorced my return missionary Mormon husband, I contemplated abortion (thank goodness it was a false alarm), and then I realized: all this is happening to just me, so what about everyone else? Who is going to help them? Who exactly will understand my--OUR--side?
It was a slow transition actually, because my family had always shown such disdain for "left wing liberals" but when the elections would come around, I found myself frantically searching for the alternative to voting Republican. And it wasn't about the party system - it was about lining up my views and making decisions based on what MY opinions are - not any one political ideology. Gay marriages? YES. A woman's right to choose? YES YES YES. Taking care of the environment and coming up with alternative energy sources? ABSOLUTELY, YES. I don't think these views make me a democrat; however, they do make me proud to say, yes, I am a liberal, albeit one who votes fairly independently and sometimes against what you might think I would (that's for another post, another day).

So with that little bit of background on my political evolution, I'm happy to say I will be voting for Barack Obama for President. We need someone in office who will continue to protect civil rights, improve the battered economy and find ways to move the country FORWARD into the future. It's not reform we need, it's innovation and that's where I feel Barack Obama will come into play.