I know the difference between my toe and my heel, honest!

Okay, I am interrupting this post because CNN has just announced that Snoop Dogg got arrested in London for fighting at an airport and apparently he has a thirty person entourage. That last bit is what caught my ear. Can you imagine traveling with thirty people? Sometimes just being the in the car with my husband and my dog for more than an hour drives me crazy (the dog always wants to sit on the lap of whoever's driving which, obviously, can't happen, and let's just say my husband will only listen to music recorded between 1980-1989 and leave it at that)

Anyway, before CNN distracted me, I was going to tell you about my last tap class and how I have apparently lost the ability to distinguish between my heel and my toe. Naturally, this is troublesome as they are obviously quite different. (!) But for some reason, whenever we did this shuffle ball heel thing, I ended up doing shuffle heel ball which not only was wrong but also made me end up flailing about in order to keep my balance, which I normally wouldn't feel too bad about, as I am extremely uncoordinated, but there are mirrors *all* over the room and so, as I'm flailing about, all I can see is my classmates, standing upright, and this pinwheeling arm person listing to the right which is, of course, ME. And let me tell you, mistaking your heel for your toe even after you've told yourself "Ball=front of foot! heel=back!" is one thing, but seeing yourself doing that EVERYWHERE is sort of embarrassing.

teen authors on tour!

Last night I went to a Random House Teen Voices Tour event (note: the link leads to an interesting article about book touring in general, and the rise of the multiple author tour), which featured not one but FOUR authors of YA fiction. I got to see E Lockhart, Jen Bryant, Simon Cheshire, and Tanya Lee Stone and let me tell you, it was pretty overwhelming to be in a room with so many great writers! All of them talked about their books a bit, and then read from them before answering questions. Simon's reading was *fabulous*--by the time he finished, my sides actually hurt from laughing so hard. I even worked up the nerve to go up and talk to people afterward, and got Simon to sign one of his books for me (Kissing Vanessa), and managed to tell him how much I enjoyed his reading without sounding like a moron. (I hope!) I then got to talk to both Tanya Lee Stone (who wrote A Bad Boy Can Be Good For A Girl, which is a really thought-provoking verse novel) and E. Lockhart (author of the amazing The Boyfriend List, which was one of my favorite YA books of 2005, as well as Fly on the Wall, which I haven't read yet, but can't wait to now after hearing the bit she read from it)

I also *just* realized that the woman who talked to E. Lockhart right before I did was none other than Diana Peterfreund -- I thought it was her, but didn't want to make an ass of myself by saying "Hey, I love your blog and btw, congrats on quitting your day job! in case it wasn't her. But it was! And now I wished I'd said something. Story of my life...

why does my bacon hate me?

For some reason, I have lost the ability to cook turkey bacon, and for the past few days, every time I've tried to make some I've ended up with shrively burnt strips that even the dog won't touch. (I know, you're thinking, turkey bacon? Why not real bacon? Sadly, I can't eat regular bacon because I'm allergic to pork.)

Anyway, I've tried everything--fying, the oven, and the microwave. And yet I continue to produce inedible bacon! It's very vexing. I tried googling 'alternate ways of cooking bacon'' but the results were, shall we say, mixed. (By which I mean ODD, as I got links to food jokes, campfire cooking information, and a book about cooking tofu. Who knew asking about bacon could yield such answers?)

"I don't know."

I had written up this long post about how much I love So NoTORIous even though no one else seems to, and how I sort of wish I'd seen 90210 now, because Tori Spelling is hilarious (I can't even think "I don't know" now without giggling), but then blogger ate it.

BUT! It's just as well because as I was sitting there, procrastinating on writing the whole thing again by catching up on my blog reading, I read this post of Meg Cabot's and MEG CABOT LIKES THE SHOW TOO!

I know the shouting is annoying, but MEG CABOT! She likes So NoTORIous! She lives in Key West! My parents have a house there that they keep saying I can use 'someday!'

Okay, other than that, not too many similarities, but, you know, MEG CABOT!

and upon running spellcheck, wow, does blogger not like it when you write things in all caps.

back to school (sort of)

Last year I decided it would be fun to take a class. Not a college class, because I already have a degree, plus I worked at a university for a long time and sort of wanted to get away from the whole higher education thing. Also, I wanted to do something "relaxing." (You'll see why that's in quotes in a second)

So I signed up a pottery class. I was really excited about it, only it turned out that I had no aptitude for pottery. In fact, I was really REALLY bad. I could get the clay centered on the wheel, but past that, I'd go to shape it and end up mushing it back into a ball or worse, end up splattering clay all over myself and my classmates. I was so bad, in fact, that after a few classes the instructor, who was one of those very kind earth-mother types, pulled me aside and said, in the nicest way possible, that perhaps working with clay wasn't for me. I agreed, and pretty gratefully too, and went home determined to find another class to take.

I waffled around for a bit, and then, earlier this year, signed up to take a dance class. Now, I have two left feet and all the rhythm of a cucumber, so I know this is sounding like the start of another pottery story. But it isn't! I signed up for tap and I *love* it. I find all the stomping (which gets all sort of great names like flap and slap and step-ball-change) and noise-making very cathartic.

And in completely unrelated news, Justine Larbalestier, author of the outstanding Magic or Madness and the new Magic Lessons (which I have and can't wait to read) has a great post on the different kinds of work writers have to do, and her mentions of publicity really hit home for me. I've been thinking a lot about publicity lately, primarily because the conference I went to showed me I know nothing about it and that I absolutely need to learn as much as I can. Now I guess I have to get started!