11.29.06
Posted in Virgin book, art, good things, health, making book, publishing at 11:11 am by Hanne Blank
It would seem that I am well overdue for a State of the Hanne Address. I’ve alluded several times here to having been under the weather a lot lately, and a handful of folks, concerned, have written to ask me if I’m okay.
Short answer? Yes.
Slightly longer answer? Yes, for certain values of “okay,” and am getting okayer.
Longer still, but more informative answer: The best I can figure it, my system waited until I had finally gotten done with the last stages of getting Virgin into production, until the page proofs were out the door, and promptly collapsed like a souffle in the front row of a road production of Riverdance. Almost four years of mostly solitary work on very difficult, often emotionally and conceptually toxic, intellectually tricky material that mired me in the misogyny mines pretty much from Day 1 took their toll… along with various other things, familial and professional, that’ve gone on in my life during that time that I didn’t really have a chance to deal with, grieve, recuperate from, etc. because I was already over deadline with the book.
So in the time-honored manner of college students finishing finals only to catch the most revolting flu available, I crashed. Hard. Not “post-book depression” particularly. I know from depression and this wasn’t the same thing. Exhaustion. Awful flareups of all the repetitive stress injuries I’ve ever dealt with, plus some new ones just for fun. Exciting new stress-related health issues I’d never experienced before in my life, like temporomandibular joint pain, frequent nausea and other GI misbehavior, cluster headaches… huh? Who, me? I’d never had these things happen to me. And then the array of symptoms that came along for the ride with the exhaustion, like the inability to focus, the shakes, the muscle and joint aches, the incapacity to think well. Writing was laborious and unpleasant, which it generally is nowhere near. Reading anything too complex was right out, because I couldn’t follow what was going on. I could just make it through Terry Pratchett’s new YA, Wintersmith, but I think that was mostly because I already knew the characters.
I’m not about to get into some tedious recital of all the ways in which this was a gargantuan pain in the ass, let alone how un-fun it was to endure. I’m sure you can do the math. Point is, I had never before understood those bits, typically in Victorian novels, where someone undertakes some massive task and does it and it “ruins [his/her] health.” I never imagined that was literal. I always figured that was code for “after doing such-and-so, s/he was feeling a bit run down and tired and in need of a vacation.” It wasn’t. At least not necessarily.
Fortunately, having something ruin your health can be a temporary condition. For the past six weeks or so, my day job has been getting better. Figuring out what I can and can’t do. Figuring out how to get the stuff I can’t do done anyway. Lots and lots of acupuncture, which has been helping me enormously… truly amazing, and my acupuncturist is worth her weight in something really really good. (Like maybe Michael Recchiuti fleur de sel caramels, or something equally outrageous.) Sleeping a lot. Eating plenty of fruits and veggies. Trying to get a judicious quantity of gentle exercise. Trying not to beat myself up too much about all the stuff I couldn’t do, or the stuff I still can’t. Waiting. Praying. Trying to be patient, because this kind of incapacity is tooth-grindingly frustrating.
The good news is that I’m doing a lot better. It’s a perplexing thing, this recovery process. There are some things I still can’t really do a whole lot of — driving the car remains inordinately taxing for some reason, for instance, so there’s a really firm limit as to how much of it I can do in a day — and other things that are getting more or less back to normal. But the ability to get through a whole day without needing to sleep for a couple of hours was a milestone. Getting to the point where I could go swimming was another, but first I had to get to the point where I wasn’t likely go shaky and dizzy and disoriented in the pool, or at least if I did, that I was well enough that I could depend on a few minutes’ rest being able to set me back to rights.
That was two days ago. And after two days where I was well enough to trust myself to be able to go swimming for a little while, I’m now having a day where I can tell it wouldn’t be such a hot idea. I’ll probably feel up to it again tomorrow, but today I’m apparently running on fumes. So, ya know, still a work in progress.
I’m hopeful that I’ll be back to normal by my birthday, which is at the end of February. Virgin comes out in March, so it’d be awfully nice not to feel like I had to husband my energies quite so carefully by the time that happens.
And speaking of Virgin, I’m happy to say that the Japanese rights have just sold, to Sakuhinsha. Other foreign sales are in the works, but nothing to announce yet. This will be my second book to be released in Japanese, which is very exciting for me. Not that I can read them. I always have a secret fear that they’ve taken my name and put it on the cover of a book about, oh, I don’t know, growing enokitake or something.
Also, blurbs have been coming in from various people, and I’m truly thrilled by some of them — validation is paradise, as a certain very wise and wily friend of mine notes, but validation from people whom you admire personally as well as professionally is a special sort of joy.
Oh, and y’all do know that the Virgin book has its own blog, right? I update it pretty frequently with discussions of virginity-related news items, and will be adding book events/book tour information, speaking gigs, and so on when the information becomes available.
Anyhow, that’s all the news from the little purple house in Baltimore. Over ‘n’ out.
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11.23.06
Posted in Belovedary, domesticity, good things, relationships at 10:39 pm by Hanne Blank
My Belovedary and I had a wonderful Goofy Hats Thanksgiving. Hope that yours was similarly grand, whether it involved Goofy Hats or not. And if it was merely another Thursday where you live, let it simply be noted that Goofy Hats can brighten pretty much any day you like.
Love,
Hanne
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11.21.06
Posted in cooking, domesticity, good things at 9:28 pm by Hanne Blank
This would make a fine supper for the night before the big Thanksgiving feast, if indeed you will be having a big Thanksgiving feast on Thursday. I had it tonight, but if I can find another good ripe-looking grapefruit tomorrow, perhaps I will have it again tomorrow night, even though I am refraining from the gigantic turkey fiesta meal plan on Thursday (I require a lower-maintenance Thanksgiving this year).
1 medium grapefruit (red or yellow)
1/2 ripe avocado
peeled and seeded cucumber adequate to the task
1 or 2 ribs celery
well-washed fresh young spinach, several handsful (or substitute romaine lettuce)
1 Tablespoon whole-grain mustard
2 T hazelnut oil (or olive oil, or avocado oil, or walnut oil, as you like)
kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
pinch of crushed dried red chili flakes
Rice vinegar (optional)
Peel the grapefruit and use a sharp knife to section out the pulp. Do this over a bowl to catch the juice. Put the fruit in a separate bowl and break into bite-sized chunks.
Peel and cube the half avocado, thinly slice the celery and cucumber, and make sure the spinach/romaine has been well washed and well dried.
Put the oil into the bowl with the grapefruit juice. Add the mustard and a pinch or two of salt, and a few good grinds of pepper and the crushed dried chili flakes if you like that kind of thing. (It’s nice with avocado and citrus, a lesson we should have all learned by now from eating at the better sort of Latin American restaurants, namely, the kind where no one really speaks any English and the food is astonishing and there are lots of happy feasting families around — happy feasting families speaking the non-English language relevant to the cuisine in question being a reliable guide to good ethnically specific eats generally speaking.)
Whisk the dressing ingredients with a fork to emulsify, and taste the dressing. If it is too sweet — that is, if your grapefruit is a particularly sweet one — add a dash of rice vinegar, and taste it again, and correct it further if you need to.
Toss the greens with the dressing so that they are well-coated. Add the celery and cucumber. Toss again. Transfer to plate(s) or bowl(s) and distribute the avocado and grapefruit attractively. Finish with a little flourish of black pepper.
Eat and be happy.
Serves 1 as an entree, or more if not. I recommend hogging it all to yourself and letting other people make their own, though.
It would be nice, if you happen to have them, to pan-roast a few hazelnuts (or ooh, black walnuts!) right before you serve the salad, and maybe chop them coarsely, and throw them in. Dry, heavy pan over a medium-high heat, until the nuts are hot and fragrant. You know how. I didn’t have any hazelnuts, so I didn’t try it, but if you do you should.
This would also be lovely if you happen to have some fresh water chestnuts on hand. Which I actually do, but I didn’t think of it until just now.
Water chestnuts are an underrated salad vegetable (as are Jerusalem artichokes now that I am on the subject of unassuming but delightful crunchy root vegetables that too few people eat), but only the fresh ones. Canned ones aren’t worth the aluminum they’re canned in. Just so you know, fresh water chestnuts are supposed to be hard as rocks. Peel them and immediately put them into a bowl of cold water. Soft bits or yellow bits are rotten, do not eat them. Only the white/cream-colored ones that are hard and crunchy are good. Get them at the Asian market, they’re in season in the fall and winter. Pick through the bin for the best ones. Everyone else does. If you don’t the old Chinese ladies will cluck their tongues at you and may even scold you (if they have for some reason taken a shine to you) for not picking the best water chestnuts available. When in Rome, you know. So get over your squeamishness and pretend you’re the snotty yuppie lady who picks through all the cherries in the entire bin in summertime as if 90% of them were dog turds. That is precisely how picky you have to be to maximize your rate of getting the really good water chestnuts.
I guess now that I remember I have water chestnuts, I have to brave the local Whole Paycheck for a grapefruit and some hazelnuts tomorrow, so I can try this with all the bells and whistles (as it were). It will be outrageous, I can tell you that much. Possibly orgasmic.
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11.20.06
Posted in good things, links, sexuality, squeeeee!, women at 8:53 am by Hanne Blank
Now it may be that you’ve seen one of these before. Perhaps you’ve seen both of them before.
But if you have, then you know that there is nothing at all wrong with seeing them again. And again and again, if you like.
Lo-Rider, “Skinny” (uncensored and very likely not safe for workplaces)
Anthony Hamilton, “Sista Big Bones” (more worksafe yet still ooohbaby)
I noted to my spouse this morning that had the “Skinny” video been made in 2000, I probably wouldn’t have had to write Big Big Love, I could’ve just told people to go watch.
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11.17.06
Posted in advertisement, geek, good things, links at 9:16 am by Hanne Blank
I have been having an idiotic amount of fun, lately, playing with the free “lite” version of Transparent Language’s Before You Know It language learning software. They offer the software as a free download, and then you can go nuts downloading content files in as many different languages as your little heart desires.
The language learning content files are limited for any given language, in the free download version. I think most of the packages I’ve downloaded so far have 17 files, which translates into 17 “units” of instruction, essentially. But if you go through the limited materials and want to buy the full version, you can upgrade to the full version (75+ files, lots of additional interactivity, etc.) for a really reasonable $40.
What’s weirdly wonderful about BYKI, as opposed to other language learning softwares I’ve encountered in the past, is that it manages — somehow — to make the interminable drilling of basic vocabulary acquisition enjoyable. Last night I spent about two hours drilling two sets of introductory vocabulary in the three languages I’m currently working with and was having a ball. It feels like a game.
I am currently working with Czech, Italian, and Mandarin Chinese. I’ve studied Italian in the past, and read it pretty well (speaking/writing are less good but passable), so working through the Italian is just review and reinforcement of remembering gendered pronouns correctly, which has always been a pitfall for me. I’ve never studied Czech before, but have sufficient background in variegated Slavic languages that a lot of it is familiar enough that I can trust the backbrain to grab cognates correctly.
Mandarin? Whole different kettle of fish! But like any language, it has its patterns and internal logic. Particularly when I work with the Mandarin files, I can see how BYKI is a successful teaching tool: the combination of rote drilling and repeated exposure to the written and spoken language (the Mandarin files use both written ideographic Chinese and a transliterated/Romanized version to help you deal with the gap between phonetics and written language) helps the pattern recognition kick in.
I think that I would like it if I had someone on hand to explain ideographs to me a bit, because having to figure them out as I go is kind of hard and I’m not sure if I’m doing it right. I know some of them are right — the one for “wine” is pretty distinctive, for instance — but then again, the “wine” ideograph is also part of the way you write the word for “beer,” so I suspect that the ideograph may in fact be more related to alcohol, or fermentation. This is something I will be able to deduce, of course, if I keep noticing the ideograph in places where that interpretation would make sense (say if it were part of the word for “vinegar” and other fermenty things, which it might be, but I don’t know that yet). But I would find it satisfying to be able to find out now. Because I am impatient like that.
Anyhow, I’m having a good time refreshing my Italian, getting a bit of Czech, and wrestling with Chinese. I’m pondering adding modern Hebrew and Spanish to the list, just for fun. If you like playing with languages, you should try it out. Also, if you think you’re crap at languages, you should try it out — my strong suspicion is that it would work well and be fun for people who don’t have a knack for them, too. It’s geek-friendly language learning, and there ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.
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