Italy and Hungarian Superstitions

Lizz,

Happy New Year!!!!

How’s the accordion shop? Are you missing the puppies? Have you sent out any new query letters? Figured out what to do with Don’t Forget the Hummingbirds, sans zombies? (I almost just capitalized zombies – what is the world coming to?!) Anything else new and exciting?

I learned some fun New Year facts a la Hungary. 1) The way you spend New Year’s day is the way you’ll spend the rest of the year. So I hope that your day was full of happiness and excitement! 2) Don’t do laundry on New Year or bad things will happen which I think is a kind of fantastic superstition because I need no excuse to not want to do the laundry! 3) Eating pork on New Year’s eve is lucky, but I don’t eat pork so I had chicken which means I’ll be poor this year, but this is not unexpected being a full time student perhaps though I’ll be more careful in the future :p

Italy was exquisite!

I flew into Rome late on the 17th made it to the hostel crashed and woke up to catch the train to Venice. I spent two days in Venice, got lost in the wondering streets, met a few American’s in my hostel and split a gondola ride still expensive, and no singing (the guide said we would have needed to give him a lot of wine before that would happen!), but beautiful nonetheless and I adored every single shop and every stand with a mask even sort of displayed and felt a very strong desire which I barely squelched to walk around singing Masquerade from Phantom.

Then I said farewell to Venice and made it to Verona safe and sound but without the benefit of wireless and at the cost of a late ethics paper… Still, totally worth it. In Verona I saw the House of Juliette and the archeology museum, as well as several spectacular churches, and an outdoor garden that transported me back to all of my favorite regency novels. I wish I knew how much I was going to love Verona I would have stayed another day, but I did not know so I basically ran to the station to catch my train to Florence.

And just as a side note the train system in Italy is lovely and cheap and easy to navigate and though I got lost a lot of times it was never at the train station and never resulted at ending up in a random city.  Also, there is almost always internet access and a place to plug in your computer ah, 21^st century travel!

In Florence the hostel was awfully cold, but the people were nice the linens clean and the shower hot and I don’t think you can ask much more of a 7 euro a night facility. The owner kept trying to get me to go out drinking with him and he was quite young and not totally unattractive, but I got a weird vibe off of him and so I insisted that I just wanted to sleep. Florence was my art city and I saw more exhibitions than I care to list off, but I did have a favorite location and that was the piazza Pitti. The gardens, even in winter, were mesmerizing and I spent all morning walking around admiring the statues and thinking that I should probably make enough money to afford a backyard. They also has the modern art museum which has some early impressionism and a wonderful costume gallery that left me itching to be back on stage. Ok so I fibbed I will tell you about one exhibition it was called Money and Beauty and it was about the rise of the florin as the first real currency and the changes this meant for the social hierarchy as well as the church and how they bent their own rules to prosper as well. It was incredibly interesting and I read every single plaque – they were in Italian and English - yay for tourism!!

(P.S. The David in the pictures is simply the replica sadly no pictures were allowed of the origional as was the cause with the Venus and several other pieces oh museums and they're silly rules :p)

Somehow while booking my hostels I missed a night and so instead of staying in Florence one more day and making an excursion I simply booked a hostel in Pisa. I got to the hostel early and decided that I’d pay the 5 euro to ride to Siena – it’s a good thing that the ride through Tuscany was enough to take my breath away because when I got to Siena I promptly got lost, dropped my map, and wandered aimlessly for three hours until I found my way back to the train station. Needless to say there wasn’t a lot of sightseeing, but it was an adventure and even wandering the streets was a day well spent.

I left my luggage with the hostel the next day so that I could explore Pisa which basically met I just wanted to see the tower, but I got turned around and ended up at this amazing little medieval church with the most beautiful stained glass window I’ve ever seen that wasn’t even on the tourist map. I’ll post a picture, but it doesn’t do it justice… I did make it to the tower about 20 minutes later and it wasn’t nearly as overrated as I has expected it to be – quite a beautiful area actually. Then I got on a train and was off to Rome, but we passed the sea and I’ve decided when its warm I will be returning to check out the coast of Italy and if the train ride was any indication of its majesty I may never leave!

I got to Rome late on Christmas Eve and checked into the hostel and slept quite soundly, but was up at 7:30 like I was home for Christmas and couldn’t wait to get downstairs. Of course I couldn’t get back to sleep so I read and then took a walk around the area I was staying in – nothing was open so I didn’t even try to take the metro into the city center – and I waited until six and skyped with the family. I spent my last two days exploring Rome. It wasn’t nearly as wonderful as I expected it to be but I did see a really awesome Socialist Realism exhibit and some great Russian photography. I did the Vatican and the Coliseum and the Fountain de Trevi – you know all the spots you here about and say one day... – but I was slightly disappointed. It was lovely, if I had an opportunity to go back I would, but it was a letdown compared to Verona or Florence. I think it was the overall atmosphere because it certainly wasn't for lack of (beautiful) things to see... 

My friend Christine from Elmira is hear for the week and were headed to Vienna and Bratislava for a few days so my next blog will be full of more pictures!

Let’s set up a writing day or send one another pictures and write an across the ocean flash, please (I’m still convinced we can make it into a book and sell it for our first million!) :)

Miss you lots!

Ashley    

Happy New Year!

Dear Ashley,

Happy New Year from this side of the world, and a giant peacock!

Ben and I spent the day watching the Mummers Parade, like we did last year. This time we thought to bring a flask. It was a smart decision, and made the screaming drunk college girls, the grown men dressed in baby costumes and the little kids with air horns much more bearable.

I can't wait to hear all about your Christmas in Italy!
Our Christmas was nice- we spent the morning with his family, and the afternoon with my mom. I got all kinds of yarny presents, which was exciting, since I'm addicted.

If I made resolutions, I'd make a bunch about how I'm going to cut back on my drinking, and step up the writing and the exercise, but I never keep resolutions anyway.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes.
Hope to see pictures from Italy soon :)

Happy New Year, from me and Ben...and the Loch Ness Monster.

'Tis the squeezin'

Dear Ashley,

Holy cow, it's December.
I've been terrible about writing back to you.

My NaNo stalled at 10 thousand words, and after that I gave up, which I think I told you. I've sent out several queries (not as many as I'd hoped to, but I've still got a list to get through. The problem is that everyone wants something different, and it's time consuming to keep adapting query letters and sample chapters.)

How did your NaNo go?

My time lately has been spent getting my holiday-crochet on.

That's the sunflower blanket for my friend Amanda's little girl who is due to make her appearance in the world towards the middle of January. That's really all I can post without running the risk of someone seeing something that they shouldn't. I also made myself a version of your gray hat, although mine is purple.

In other news, I am officially no longer a dog walker.
Yay! I'll now be working full time at the accordion shop. Ben and I talked about it, and then Mike (accordion shop owner) and I talked about it, and it just made sense.
I can be inside, and take the train to work, and not have to worry about biking in ice and snow.
I can work four days a week, Tuesday through Friday, 10-6 and make the same money (basically) that I was making working two jobs. Because my crappy clients canceled so much that the extra hours that I was working at the shop after the dog job was really just making up the difference so I was earning what I should have been earning walking dogs.
So I quit. Yesterday was my last day, and Tuesday I'll start at the shop full time. I was kind of sad to leave the dogs, but all the other things that I was glad about outweighed that, and I'm looking forward to not having to deal with it anymore.
I did take pictures to remember them all, though :)

That's Watson. He's the wire-haired dachshund who has a brother named Dietz. Like the deli meat company. :)

I'm not sure if I officially told you this, but I'm putting off grad school for another year. I'm hoping that in a year from now I'll have a better idea of what I want to be doing, and where I want to be. I was reading an article in the New York Times yesterday about a group of 20-somethings who all have Master's in English or CompLit from places like NYU and Columbia and they can't even get unpaid internships either.

This article served two purposes for me. It made me not feel like such a complete failure for a little while, and it also made me think that if I want to have a job that I enjoy, I might have to create it for myself.

I've been saying for awhile that I want to buy Purple Mountain Press from Wray when he retires, just to keep it running, because I think it's important. It's a weird little niche market, but it's all history of the Catskills stuff that he publishes, and just for the historical value, and the fact that it's an entirely independent and totally run by him and his wife little publishing company, I'd like to keep it open.

I'd really like to make it an imprint of my own small publishing company.
And I'd still kind of like to buy the school building in Hartwick and turn it into a writer's retreat.
So I think I need to look into grants.
And sell that mediocre YA book and become a gazillionaire so I have the money to do everything I want.

And that's pretty much my life right now. How are you? (PS- Amsterdam is GORGEOUS! You're so lucky!)
-Lizz

PPS- I hope I told you how much I loved your NaNo idea. Because I think it's brilliant.

Another NaNo Idea - Another Unfinished Book....

Lizz,

I just realized that I never replied to your last post! I’m sorry, but my reasoning is this - remember when you hoped that I wasn’t too overworked yet…

Anyway that would have been very cruel of Ben to gaslight us. First of all I would not be in Budapest and that would make me quite sad. Secondly he would have been denying us writing days and potential brilliance and that would have been intolerable – think of all the potential NaNo ideas we could have come up with instead of wallowing in half ideas and contemplating zombies :p

Your idea sounds very good though! I’m excited to read it :) I loved your Don’t Forget the Hummingbirds short, but the idea to make it a story of two people finding themselves by running away or else running home, but nonetheless running unless I am very much mistaken, is a brilliant idea and I can't wait to read a sample as soon as possible!

Mine is yet untitled, but focuses on a young women and her rapist. At the beginning she confronts him and tells him that he stole her life and so he decides to give it back to her and they partake in a trip around the world. I have so few words I’m going to need another month to catch up! But the characters have already endeared themselves to me and so I will tell their story the best way I can having never had the need to find that kind of forgiveness…

On a happier note – well you spent your Halloween recreating Les Mis (brilliant costume, by the way!!) I spent mine in Amsterdam! Well actually I spent the weekend in Amsterdam and Halloween recovering, but that’s totally beside the point.

It’s a very beautiful city. It’s quiet and full of cyclers and nobody seems to be in a hurry and there are art museums seemingly on every corner. My favorite was the Van Gough museum because, as you know, I’m such a sucker for impressionism, but really I just enjoyed walking around it was that picturesque :) I’ll leave you with some pictures of my excursions as a nice way to procrastinate from making your word count today!

Miss you!

Ashley

PS Don’t worry about Grad School. Do something crazy! Move to Italy with Ben, open your own dog walking business, walk from publishing house to publishing house until somebody realizes how lovely Smell of Rain is and publishes it! I’m in grad school now and I still don’t know what I want to do, but I guess that’s the thing with increased life expectancy we don’t really have to for a few more years :)           

NaNo Thoughts

Dear Ashley,

A blog post, as promised! I'm still behind on my word count, but I have hopes of catching up after work today.

This year for NaNo, I've decided to combine two pieces of flash fic to make one (hopefully long enough) novel. If not, there might be zombies, or the pillow-throwing chat room bot from last night's Philly online write in.

Anywho. I've combined the Hummingbirds flash, as you saw on facebook, with the one called Je Me Souviens (probably spelled that wrong) about the man who returns to his life after three years of being gone.

I wasn't totally sure that I wanted to mess with either of them, because I really like the way they stand alone as flash, especially Hummingbirds, but I'm starting to like the novel too.

As you saw, it's now called Don't Forget the Hummingbirds and the tagline that I put on the NaNo site is:

Three years ago, Jasper walked out of his own life and disappeared. He never intended to go back, but then he found Lola's letters. As he reads of her journey, Jasper learns about his own. Can a woman from the past help him find a future?

So that's it, in a nutshell. Actually, that's it, period. It just happens to fit in a nutshell, which is why there may be zombies or robots somewhere around 35k.

I also really need to get my shit together as far as grad school. I just don't know what to do. I haven't registered for the GRE or begun to put things together, because I still don't know what I want to do. And thinking about the future makes me a little panicky and stressed and makes my head hurt, so I've been avoiding it and crocheting instead.
Probably not a good idea, I know.

It also makes this novel a little difficult, as it's one of the more personal things I've written lately.

This post needs a picture, and to not end with depressing thoughts, so...here's what else I did yesterday besides write.

LATER... Never mind. Blogger won't let me upload the picture. Anyway, I managed to cook and freeze all my pumpkins so I can use them all winter to make delicious pumpkiny things.
I was moderately productive yesterday; I need an extra hour or two every day.

-Lizz