More about Baseball

  When America's favorite past time is used as a parent-child bonding experience, its powers typically extend to fathers and sons. Maybe fathers and daughters as well, but mostly, I think (and I'm stereotyping here as well as using way too many commas for one sentence), it's a father-son thing. Not in my family. For me, watching baseball is strictly a mother-daughter activity.
  My mother's love of baseball goes way back. She used to be a die-hard Dodgers fan. In the early phase of my parents' courtship, my dad would suffer through hours of Dodger games, detesting the activity but enjoying the company. Then the Dodgers went on strike (something about demanding higher wages...I'm not really in the know on this one) and my mom became disenchanted with the sport. Thus, I grew up exposed to football fandom instead. That one never really stuck.
  I'm not sure how this happened, but my mom fell in love with baseball again right around the same time I was falling in love with it for the first time. [See my post on the Giants]. When I came home from school for the summer, we really got the fever (baseball, not Bieber. just to clarify). Whenever the Giants played, we were watching. Or listening. Or trying to find the scores online while on vacation.
  Mom taught me the rules, suffered my questions, corrected me when my "coaching" of the TV was a little off. Thus, some of my favorite memories from this summer are watching baseball with her. During night games, late in the 7th or 8th inning, after my dad and my sister have gone to bed, my mom and I can be found telling at the TV in unison, calling out, "you have got to be freaking kidding me!" with identical intonation and inflections.
  The boys of summer have given my mom and I one more thing that we share, one more common trait to add to the long list of reasons why I have earned and proudly wear the nickname "Laurie Junior."
  Is this post corny? Yeah, but honestly, which of my posts aren't? I love my mom and I love baseball. And I am very much okay with that.

On Writing

Source

I just finished reading Stephen King's On Writing. "Just," as in I put it down five minutes ago, got on the computer to write, then got distracted by Facebook (my eternal problem). But seriously, this book will likely be one of those that I carry with me always, both literally and figuratively. I read the majority of it over a two-day span while at work. The entire time I was itching to write, to test King's theories and ideas in my own way. So, here I go, off to try (once again) to take what I've learned about writing and make it part of my everyday life.
Wish me luck?

NEW YORK

I never thought I’d like New York City. I’ve always wanted to, but let’s look at the facts: I’m quiet, reserved, introverted. Both large crowds and thoughts of having to interact with huge volumes of people tend to stress me out. Traveling and being far away from home usually exhaust me. Am I sounding like a square yet? Possibly your grandmother? Yes, that’s me!

Despite my reservations, and to the great surprise of my mother, I fell in love. It’s strange that I can say that about so many vastly different people, places, and things, but for me it’s all the same. I fell in love with New York in the way that I do frequently with movies or books or ideas. I felt that yes feeling in my heart, the one on which I often rely in order to make decisions. That feeling helped me choose what college I wanted to go to. It helps me decide who I want to spend time with (or not). It decides when I actually like something and when I say I like it just to fit in with everyone else. It has helped me choose my path through life thus far, and I trust it to keep doing its job. Too corny? Yeah, probably, but I’m a cheesy person. Slightly irrelevant New York themed example: one of the main reasons I wanted to make it to the top of the Empire State Building is because two of my favorite movies happen to be An Affair to Remember and Sleepless in Seattle. Sappy music? Bring it on. Horribly unrealistic love story? I’m there, baby. I’m rambling now, and I apologize for that, but I needed to post something about my New York adventure before I forgot all that I wanted to say.

So here goes. The following is probably the best way to describe how I’m feeling right now: Five days ago I had never been further east than Reno, Nevada. Five days ago I hadn’t been on an airplane in years; hadn’t ever been in a taxi or taken the subway. Five days ago I had fewer blisters on my feet and fewer dreams in my head. I was scared of where my future was going, of how much I was allowing myself to limit my options before they even left my own head, of how I would ever be able to make my grandiose daydreams become reality. Five days ago there was one less thing on my long list of things with which I am, to borrow an infamous phrase from Twilight, irrevocably in love. I’m grateful for those five days, despite the fact that they left me so exhausted I was almost in tears.

I made a brand new start of it in ol’ New York, New York, and I’ve got nothing to do today but smile.  [Is it blasphemy to mash together lyrics from Sinatra and Simon and Garfunkel? Probably.] 

 Approximately 1/3 of my 600 pictures look like this....

 ...Or like this. View from Empire State Building

 View from the Empire State Building

 My favorite building, you already know why

My sister and I hamming it up with Lady Liberty

New York, Baby

I’m going to New York on Friday. I, a girl who has never been further East than Reno, Nevada, am getting on a plane with my family and heading to the Big Apple. Start spreading the news.

I’m at once incredibly excited and absolutely terrified. To me, New York is where the cool kids hang out. It’s the Mecca for artists and writers and creative types hiding behind varying degrees of reclusiveness. It’s the capitol of all art and writing, the hometown of my two first loves and best friends. I have always tried to hang with the cool kids. I have rarely fit in with them. I’m witty and beloved in my head; I’m awkward and shy in real life. You can see how trying to hang with those for whom “cool” comes effortlessly could be a major problem. Not that this matters much in real life, but it makes me think. I have dreams of maybe one day being an East Coast resident, an intern at one of those major publishing companies which reside in that big city full of dreamers like me. I’m afraid my visions, my delusions of grandeur, will get chewed up and spit back out by reality, the way most of my visions do. I’m afraid that these delusions will become crushed by a tidal wave of realization. I’m afraid I’ll run home with my tail between my legs and never want to try my hand at life outside of Northern California again anytime soon.

I’m too safe. I’m too afraid. I’m too easily frustrated by my own failures, my ultimately inconsequential shortcomings. I need to get off the computer. Away from the internet. I need to actually get out and do things. I need to stop sitting around feeling sorry for myself for never having done anything, for never having any proper adventures or doing anything that feels real. This changes now. Or, maybe, in the morning, as it is currently almost 10 PM and old habits die hard. Keep your eyes peeled, though, World. ‘Cause I’m a’coming. 

Updates, etc.

Evidently, I'm a blogging failure as of late. My life is at once too busy and too boring; you could say it's busy, but uneventful, as I once heard somewhere. The simple truth of that statement as it applies to my life struck me when i heard it and has stuck with me. I love it when that happens; someone else (or maybe something in the deep annexes of my brain) gives me the perfect words to describe something I never could before. Now that I'm done gushing about the English language and briefly complaining about summer doldrums, I'll get to the real point here. I promise you I'm still alive, and that I will be updating soon with previously promised posts about books I've read lately as well as newly-cooked-up and as-yet unmentioned posts about things such as my adventures in quilting (if that doesn't have y'all on the edges of your seats, I don't know what will!)

Sometimes...

Sometimes I read something someone else has written and it inspires within me something I cannot begin to describe. I don't cry often while reading books or watching movies. I'm not entirely sure why, yet, but I do know that when I do find something that makes me cry, that touches my emotional core in a way that the only way I can express what I'm feeling is to allow those feelings to escape from my eyes and roll down my cheeks, there's something special about it.
Like this: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/dont-date-a-girl-who-reads/. I don't even know what to call it. An essay? A blurb? As an English major I should be better at cataloging these sorts of things, but I am not. This thing, whatever it is, made me cry today. And I want everyone in the whole world to read it. Because that's what happens when I fall in love with something; part of me wants to save it, keep it all to myself so that no one else can tarnish its wonderfulness. But the other part of me is so ridiculously excited about whatever it may be that I want to spread it around everywhere, so that I can talk to other people about how great it is and revel in its amazing-ness with an audience rather than alone in my room at 1:30 AM.
Now that I've over-hyped this little guy, I'm going to stop rambling.


PS: please excuse the quality of the source, there...the link is semi-crappy but it gets the job done

Little Women

I promised you a separate post about Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, so here it is. It's somewhat belated and will likely be wildly inadequate, but here goes.

Little Women (the abridged version) was one of those books I would carry around with me everywhere. I loved the main characters Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March. I frequently lost myself in their world, and loved every minute of it. I bought several cheap spin-off books aimed at audiences my age and considered myself a connoisseur of all things Little Women. In fifth grade I attempted the real deal. No more "junior" abridged version that left out all of the important parts. I was a big kid now, I could certainly handle it. I hauled that 500-page paperback around with me for weeks. It took up too much space in my backpack, was unwieldy in my small hands, and moved far too slow for my usually quick and now impatient reading pace. I gave up on the book then, put it back on my teacher's shelf to be revisited another time. That time was this summer.

For some reason, the subject of Little Women came up everywhere in the weeks before school ended, from a movie suggestion in my Netflix queue to a random conversation with a friend. I found a cheap copy of the book on amazon.com and eagerly awaited its arrival in my mailbox. Finally (read: 2 days later) it came. When I tore open the cardboard packaging, however, I saw that I had actually received another copy of the children's version. The dreaded abridged version. I laughed at the mistake, but decided it was time for serious business. I was reading this book no matter what.

I picked up a copy from Barnes and Noble (still one of my favorite places in the world, by the way. Every time I pass the huge one in Oakland's Jack London Square on my way to or from school, I have to fight the tremendous urge to jump off the train and explore it for hours. anyway, sidenote over, back to the pointed rambling). Once I started reading, I couldn't believe I hadn't read the book in its entirety much earlier on in my life. It's simple, but quite lovely. I can see how it wouldn't be something that everyone would like, and I'm by no means suggesting that whoever has gotten this far in this inane rambling post should go out and read this book. However, reading Little Women reminded me so much of my childhood. I recognized the roots of many of my dreams, ambitions, mannerisms, and thoughts in the pages of this book. I remember doing (or trying to do) some of the things the characters do. I look back on my childish actions with a sense of irony, realizing that I was doing the things the March girls did with the same sense of naivete and tunnel-vision that young people often maintain. Reading Little Women was for me not meant to be a journey into a classic work of literature or a way to study the writing of other authors in an effort to improve my own. Rather, it was simply reading for the pleasure of reading, for the joy of re-visiting old friends and seeing them in an entirely new light.

If you read all of that, I thank you. I think you're either a little nuts or a lot bored, but I won't ask questions. Do you have a favorite book from your childhood that you'd like to re-visit? or have you already? These things always fascinate me.

I haven't watched any movie versions yet, but the best two (supposedly) are in my Netflix queue