Recipe: Twice Baked Potatoes
Lately I have not wanted to eat meat. Not that I was a huge meat-eater before—I have all these weird dietary rules for myself concerning meat, so I basically just eat birds and fish—but I’ve been craving fruits and veggies. And any time I’m like, “Hmm, I guess I’ll make a chicken breast.”, as soon as I put it in my mouth, I lose my appetite.
So, basically, my body is forcing me to become a veggiesaurus.
The other night I was super hungry and also super lazy, so I decided to repurpose some leftovers to go with some easy-to-make roasted veggies. I checked out the fridge and remembered the extra baked potato I’d made a few nights earlier. I’ve never actually made twice baked potatoes, but I’ve always loved eating them (Because starch + cheese = awesome) and I thought to myself, “I can figure this out.”
And y’all. I DID.
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What’s Making Me Happy {3}
This was the Week of Weird Weather. One day it was 70 and sunny and perfect, the next was 45 and drizzly and gross. And then the day after that was sunny and 59. But you know, I’ll take that instead of snowy and cold and gross.
But outside of the wonky weather, the week was pretty good. Work was mild, I had brunch with friends in the city, I refrained from strangling the drunk undergrads playing the bagpipes on the train into the city, and I should finish Storm of Swords today. Huzzah!
But there are a couple other things that made this week pretty great, too.
1) My car hit 200,000 miles
And did not do die like Marshall’s car in How I Met Your Mother.
2) I Love Lamp
I rearranged furniture a couple weeks ago and set up a nice little book nook for myself in my room. Problem was, I had no lamp over there, and my overhead light SUCKS, so at night it was really hard to read. BUT NO MORE. I now have a cute little blue lamp. 🙂
3) Chocolate Pudding
It really is the best snack ever.
4) Little Lion Man Coat
I was playing around on Pinterest the other day and came across this freaking adorable coat from littlegoodall‘s Etsy shop. Why are little things for little people so dang cute?!
5) Supernatural is Streaming on Netflix
Now the last thing I need in my life is a new TV obsession (read: novel writing distraction), but everyone I know loves this show and—honestly—I’ve wanted to watch it for awhile. Sadly, Supernatural isn’t the kind of show you can just mindlessly watch whenever you feel like it. You actually need the back stories and such for it to make sense. So, yaaaaay new TV show!
And those are the things that are making me happy this week. If you want to share what’s making you happy this week, feel free to do so in comments.
What I’m Writing: Awkward Scenes
When writing a book about teenagers, it’s only fitting that there will be very some very awkward moments, since, you know, being a teenager is a highly awkward process. My goal in writing is that my characters and their situations seem real and relatable instead of idealized and perfect. Not that there’s anything wrong with characters that are obviously too cool and perfect and confident to be “real”—sometimes that’s exactly the type of character I’m hoping to find when I crack open a book. But for me, I want to write characters that are dealing with the same issues and scenarios and feelings that most teens face on a daily basis.
And because my WIP deals with a long distance relationship, there are a lot of awkward, self-conscious moments for both my characters, especially during the few-and-far-between instances that they are actually sharing the same space and breathing the same air and trying to figure out what they should do with their hands.
But what’s interesting for me is that when I write, I try to “see” the scene in my head and then interpret it into words. And I’m one of those people who, when they watch a really awkward or embarassing scene in a movie or on TV, gets awkward and embarrassed for the characters and can’t hardly stand to look at what’s happening on screen. Which has created a couple really bizarre moments for me this week as I’ve been writing because I’m all, “OMG I CAN’T,” until I remember that I’m the one coming up with all of it and therefore I have to.
That probably makes absolutely zero sense, and y’all all probably think I’m a crazy lady, but, so it goes.
And now, I’ll be a brave little writer and share with y’all a little slice of one of these awkward scenes.
TGIF: Social Networking.
This week Ginger at GReads has asked:
Social Networking: Do you use Twitter or Facebook to promote your blog? How has it benefited your book blogging experience? If not, how do you promote your blog?
I loooooooove Twitter. I tweet a lot. About a lot of stuff. But I do promote my blog and my other writings on Twitter fairly aggressively. For me that means the day a post goes up, I’ll tweet about it two or three times in that day. I try to be a little creative about the way I promote it, so that at least the annoying CHECK OUT MY BLOG POST tweets are amusing and not all CHECK OUT MY BLOG POST.
Facebook, on the other hand, I do not have the love for. There’s a plethora of reasons as to why, and I won’t waste your time with them here, because that would make this a VERY LONG blog post. But I do put my blog link in my profile and leave it at that. If the Faceb peeps wanna come and browse, wonderful. If not, they’re not my audience anyway.
Anyway, Twitter is my jam. It has allowed me to connect with other bloggers who have similar interests as I do and to actually cultivate what I feel to be friendships with them. I’ve met up with a few of them at a couple at events in the city or big convention-like events and have had a really wonderful time meeting them IRL.
Pretty blogger ladies with Gayle Forman at Brooklyn Book Festival.
And, not to wax poetic, but I’m a fairly guarded, awkward person IRL, so I feel like Twitter has really helped in the “getting to know you” portion of deciding whether or not I think I’ll be friends with someone. The people I can have fun conversations with on Twitter are basically people I know I could have a blast with.
So, in sum, YAY SOCIAL NETWORKING.
If you’re not a Twitter fiend like I am, I highly recommend you become one.And if you would like to follow me on Twitter, you can click here.
Happy Friday!
My Bookish New York {1}
This past weekend I went with a couple friends on the New York Public Library Tour.
Well, sort of. We didn’t actually stay for the entire tour because we were really hungry and had seen what we really wanted to see and the tour was free so we didn’t feel guilty for leaving, so we left.
However, the places and things we did see got me to thinking about all of the amazingly bookish things New York has to offer. And there are a lot of them. From the library itself to all of the actual, physical publishing houses to the bar Jack Kerouac frequented, there is an incredible literary history in New York. So I figure that since I live here, I might as well share all of the goods with y’all!
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Bethany Larson 