Meme time. I’ve been tagged by Amy J., a fellow Central Texas blogger and mother to the uber-cute Logan. I can’t resist a tagging.

The rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog. Check.
2. Share seven random or weird facts about yourself.
3. Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Okay here goes:

Quirky fact #1: I have to take a deep breath and really think before I say the word “seminar,” otherwise it comes out “senimars.” This developed sometime during high school, when I would talk fast (and often without thinking) and would frequently switch the “m” and the “n” and never know the difference.

Quirky fact #2: I’m an organization junkie. I’m not very organized, but I love anything related to it. I could browse The Container Store for hours. (Ditto for office supply stores).

Quirky fact #3: I get attached to specific types of pens and go through phases were I will only buy that kind of pen. In college and grad school, it was the Papermate stick pens, but for the last few years I’ve ditched those and pledged my loyalty to the Uni-Ball Jetstream ball point pen. This obsession is so intense that when we wandered in to an Office Max in San Francisco during our two week trip and I discovered they had a sale on this particular brand, I bought four packs and hauled them all the way to Alaska and back.

Quirky fact #4: On a similar note, I will only use composition notebooks for writing notebooks and I’m obsessed with how flimsy the cover is. I hate flimsy covers. I will reject notebooks based on the flimsiness of the cover.

Quirky fact #5: Snakes don’t really scare me. Neither do spiders, roaches, or bugs. However, I am totally freaked out by uncurtained windows at night.

Quirky fact #6: Despite being terrified of public speaking, I taught public speaking to college students and culinary students for three years. I do great in the classroom, but I’m very self-conscious in conversation because I tend to mispronounce words and I’m afraid people will hear that and think that I’m stupid.

Quirky fact #7: I’ve had to write this post standing up as my back has been spasming all day. UGH. As a result, it took most of the day and I have yet to do any number of the things I was going to do. Including write.

Whew!

But as I have so much stuff to get done, I’m not going to tag anyone. Plus, I think I’m the last person in the blogosphere to do this meme. So I’m tagging anyone who hasn’t posted today, or who hasn’t ever posted their seven quirky facts yet.

Have a good weekend

Novels
American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Fiction Class by Susan Breen
The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen
The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline B. Cooney

Only novels this month. I am sadly behind in my New Yorker reading and my aversion to anything related to America’s Next Top President ‘08 means that my usual sources of nonfiction are somewhat limited. Raves this month include Bel Canto and Prep.

How about some answers to last week’s quiz?

1. 1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
   
2. Sybil Davidson has a genius I.Q. and has been laid by at least six different guys. Forever – Judy Blume
3. Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it “and what use is a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
   
4. She hurries from the house, wearing a coat too heavy for the weather. The Hours – Michael Cunningham
   
5. Noon. London: my flat. Ugh. Bridget Jones’ Diary – Helen Fielding
6. This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it. The Princess Bride – William Goldman
   
7. You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
   
8. The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. The Westing Game – Ellen Raskin
   
9. When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
   
10. Parsifal is dead. That is the end of the story. The Magician’s Assistant – Ann Patchett
    
11. (Bonus) When he says, “Skins or blankets?” it will take you a moment to realize that he’s asking which you want to sleep under. “How To Talk To a Hunter” by Pam Houston, from the collection Cowboys Are My Weakness
    

Nyac the sea otter passed away on Tuesday. Nyac and Milo were a YouTube sensation, but I got to experience them first hand when we visited Vancouver this weekend. My husband can vouch for the mesmerizing cuteness of these critters. We could not walk past their pool without stopping over and over and over again.

The Vancouver Aquarium has posted a tribute to Nyac here.

Welcome to my procrastination. I feel like I’ve seen this meme somewhere before, as I’m definitely not original enough to make it up. Below are the first lines of 10 of my favorite books. See if you can figure out who wrote them and where they came from. Leave your answers in the comments.

1. 1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.
2. Sybil Davidson has a genius I.Q. and has been laid by at least six different guys.
3. Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it “and what use is a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”
4. She hurries from the house, wearing a coat too heavy for the weather.
5. Noon. London: my flat. Ugh.
6. This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.
7. You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.
8. The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east.
9. When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
10. Parsifal is dead. That is the end of the story.
11. (Bonus) When he says, “Skins or blankets?” it will take you a moment to realize that he’s asking which you want to sleep under.

I’ll post the answers later this week. Enjoy!

She tried her hardest, but Curtis Sittenfeld did not dissuade me from writing this week. Not to say that I didn’t enjoy American Wife. I did, but I also finished it in just three days.

Writing: Going well. Of course, I’m now on project number three since this ‘fess up series began. That’s three novels started and I think I need to work on actually finishing one of them before starting something else. Focus is a bit of an issue. And I welcome all suggestions for how to focus on just one project at a time.

Submissions: Why hello, rejection letters. Got three back this week. Nary an ink stain on them, all carbon copy slips of paper, most of which were smaller than the envelope they came in. The lowest of the low. Two of them came back last Saturday and getting dual rejection letters kind of sucks. I may have been a little down and self-pitying, but that seems to have shifted.

As for today, I’d be much more productive if I didn’t feel like half of my face was about to explode. Stupid sinuses. . .

If I get nothing done this week, it’s all Curtis Sittenfeld’s fault. I started American Wife last night and I’m already 200 pages in. (It helped that I stayed up until 2 a.m. reading.) If you’re a fan of Prep and Man of My Dreams, then be assured that this one is great, too.

I’ve had a run of great luck with books lately. Yesterday I finished Bel Canto. I’ve loved Ann Patchett based on The Magician’s Assistant and The Patron Saint of Liars, but for some reason I skipped Bel Canto. I read it over the weekend for an upcoming book group fell and in love with Patchett’s writing all over again.

I have to say, though, that sometimes when I read a bunch of great books I think, why do I even bother? Why isn’t it enough for me just to read great books, why do I feel I have to try to write them?

Sigh…

Just in case the Large Hadron Collider does not manage to suck the Earth into a micro black hole in the next month and we still need to pay attention to the election, I encourage you all to bookmark Factcheck.org. With this election being as heated as it is and all the spin coming off the campaigns, I find sites like this very useful. Please go forth and check facts.

This concludes any political speak on this blog. Writing talk will resume shortly.

Writing/Revising: I’m officially combining these categories for the remainder of my current project. The novel I’m working on was born out of a story, so I’d doing equal parts writing and revising. It’s only going okay this week. I’ve been distracted and most of my concentration has gone right out the window. I’m taking drastic steps to fix that this week. For instance, I’m kissing LJ reading and Twittering good-bye. I’m even cutting back on a lot of blog reading. My internet activity will mostly be reduced to this blog and my email.

The reason for this forced isolation is because I’ve spent a lot of last week and this week angry, sad, and upset. The fact that this coincides with the DNC and the GOP conventions is no surprise. Simply put, I can no longer tolerate the mean-spirited snark and trash talk that both sides seem to spew forth daily. There’s a lot of “we’re right, you’re wrong” out there. It’s odd, I thought the reason we were all so disillusioned with the current administration was because of this kind of black and white thinking. Shouldn’t the answer to it be to try to be open-minded? Isn’t unity about reaching out to others instead of alienating them? I whole heartedly believe that this is the intent of both Obama and McCain, I’m just not seeing it from either of their supporters.

Ugh. Okay, so political rant through. Point being, I’m closing down part of my internet access until November 6. (Yes, I’m aware that the election is Nov. 4 and this should all be over on Nov. 5, but with things as divisive as they are now, I expect the day-after commentary to be worse.) I will not be talking politics on this blog. PERIOD. Exclamation point.

I will, however, be talking about how much I am loving YA right now and how reluctant I am to return to literary fiction (though I really do want to read Joshua Henkin’s Matrimony and Andrew Sean Greer’s Story of a Marriage). And how adding a shitzu (no matter how temporarily) to a two-cat household is nothing short of chaos. And how our house hunt continues, though with less force than before. Oh, and writing. Hopefully, lots and lots of writing.

Happy weekend!