A Bright Preview.

December 6 Workshop or conference. Was there a conference or workshop you attended that was especially beneficial? Where was it? What did you learn?

I'm not sure if this counts because I don't really have to go to workshops or conferences for my job, nor do I really attend them independently, but I did go to a workshop of sorts that I think qualifies for this topic and it's also something I'm really excited about.

Last November, I attended a preview day at the University of Washington for the Information School. It was a Saturday at 830 in the morning and instead of snuggling up in my bed and indulging the playground of my dream world, I was bundling up and braving the cold in the early morning hours to travel to the UW campus. I passed by George with his foreboding presence looking down on generations of students, across the expansive of red brick in red square towards the impressive and imposing Suzzallo Library, down the stairs and around the corner to a fairly new edition to the campus, Mary Gates Hall.

Thanks physics dept.

Perhaps on a day when the sky was not so saturated with clouds, one could have caught a glimpse of Mount Rainier in all it's majestic glory.

That morning, for the first time in a long time, I got excited, genuinely excited about something, so much so that to this day, my mind is often interrupted with the possibilities of what could be. Recently I became interested in getting my Masters in Library and Information Science and this preview day fueled my interests and put then into high gear. Not only did I learn more about the program, but I also attend a mock lecture by Professor Joseph Janes on searching for information and how that process has evolved and will continue to in the modern world. There was also a student panel that spoke about their experiences in the program that actually changed my perspective on how I want to approach the program myself. All in all it was a great morning and by the time I left it didn't matter that I woke up at the crack of dawn in the freezing cold, because I had a new outlook on all the opportunities at my fingertips.

A Night to Remember.

December 5 Night out. Did you have a night out with friends or a loved one that rocked your world? Who was there? What was the highlight of the night?

Best night of oh nine...wow, a lot of memorable nights have been drunken and hazy and while the details are not always clear, I know I had a good time, but at my age I feel a good night out should be more than just drunken abandon, it should put a smile on my face and make me want to hold onto the night forever because it was just that special, and to me there is nothing more dear to my heart than my family and loved ones and so I'm glad I had to take time to ponder on this topic because as I did the best night fell right into my lap and it happened just last night.

On Saturday December 5th, @omgconor, my parents and I shared pitchers and wings and watched the Huskies defeat the Bears in the last game of the season. Now this was no ordinary night and was not something that could just happen on a whim, see my parents live in Hawaii and my father my father, @treestumps, has been following Husky football passionately this season and every season since I came to the University of Washington in 1999 and while never seeing a game in the flesh he supports the team as best as he can even though the games are not always televised out there in the middle of the pacific ocean and after driving 20 miles last weekend to watch the Apple Cup that was ultimately not shown, he and my mother flew 2,600 miles to watch the last game of the 2009 Husky football season.

Although the game was just a 15 minute car ride away, the 30 degree temperature made sitting in the Husky Stadium for three hours an impossibility for my folks and so we settled in our new favorite sports bar and had the best night ever! The excitement on my fathers face will stay with me forever and it's small gems like that that can turn another Saturday night of college football into the best night of 2009.

An Amazing Read.

December 4 Book. What book - fiction or non - touched you? Where were you when you read it? Have you bought and given away multiple copies?

I started this year with a newfound interest in comic books and I read them obsessively. I couldn't get enough of them, I was the girl on the bus who read comics, balding, middle aged men would strike up conversations with me (ew), someone even proposed to me when I told him I was reading Swamp Thing, and I would get recommendations from people left and right. The thing I realized about comics is they tell really amazing stories that are surprisingly well written and I've always been interested in how a visual image can enhance the written word. As an English Major in college, I would often find inspiration from paintings or scenery or images for my writing, so comic books or graphic novels for adults touches on that interest.

So, after about 8 months of reading strictly comic books, I decided that I needed to read a real book and I actually found it difficult to shift back to the novel form. The book that I read was The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon and it was a great segway since it was a book about the two title characters making their way into the comic industry during the 1940's.

Thanks amazon!

Once I got used to not having pictures to accompany my story, I got lost in the lyrical rhythm of Chabon's narrative. He is an amazing writer with a masterful grip on the English language with the ability to reach into his expansive bag of descriptive vocabulary to provide such a memorable reading experience that every sentence is a true gem. I absolutely loved it. I haven't bought copies for people, but I have gone to my favorite used bookstore and bought nearly all of Chabon's other titles because he is an amazing writer and I'm glad that I was introduced to his books this year.

An Article of Behemoth Proportions.

December 03: What's an article that you read that blew you away? That you shared with all your friends. That you Delicious'd and reference throughout the year.

I used to read the actual newspaper daily, I don't do that anymore. I would read the New York Times, Seattle Times, and Honolulu Advertiser all online but I don't do that any more either. I don't read magazines except for Wired and the occasional US Weekly only when I'm on a plane. I get all my news and any other information from NPR, which I listen to all day at work, Twitter, my Reader, or Facebook.

This is another hard one, not only because I have come across countless articles all of which have been inspirational and thought provoking, but because I have a hard time remembering everything I read/hear. I consume so much information on a daily basis that it's overwhelming, that being said, I'll pick a fairly recent article I first heard on Talk of the Nation then read on the NPR website, I tweeted about it and also put it up on Facebook. It was called 'Googled': From Brainchild To Behemoth. Author Ken Auletta was on the show talking about his book Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, traces the growth of Google and touches on the ways in which the company enhances our lives in amazing ways, yet alarmingly it has the potential to ruin us, it's users, as well due to sheer amount of information that Google has about the people who use their applications.

I found this interesting because 1) I absolutely love Google and eveything they produce (except their phone because the iPhone is better) and

Thanks niall-larkin!

2) because I'm interested in how we search for information in this modern world and how searching for information has significantly changed since I was growing up. A friend of mine often says 'why wonder when you can know' and that is exactly what Google provides for us, a direct link to knowing, to knowledge that a lot of people literally have at their finger tips and carry around with them in thier pocket, the possibilities are endless and that makes it so exciting.

Restaurant Moment.

December 02: Share the best restaurant experience you had this year. Who was there? What made it amazing? What taste stands out in your mind?

God! This is a hard one, simply because I absolutely LOVE eating, out, in, anything, everything...I've been thinking a lot about this one and I've been to a lot of deliciously tasty restaurants over the year, some finds thanks to Brett and Mandy over at Seattle Date Night who offer great recommendations of places to dine around town. Yet I keep going back and forth among a handful of moments unable to decide, mainly because part of what makes these times so memorable are the people with whom I shared meals with and for me that is key to a pleasurable dining experience.

Thinking about this brings back a lot of great memories like the time a friend and I shared a cozy corner at the end of a bar in a carefree organic cafe and munched on tasty bacon and savory jam, or the time at the seafood buffet in Vegas that turned into a food frenzy gone wrong, or the countless Friday Vietnamese lunches with my coworker(s), or the birthday dinner for my boyfriend's mom where we dined on Italian Food and closed down the place, or the drunken feast of salmon burgers with my brother, or the last of a whirlwind of eateries when relatives came to visit, the list could go on and on but I keep coming back to a meal I shared, not too long ago, with my boyfriend @omgconor, and while we share practically every meal together and it's always good times, this one particularly sticks out in my mind because I ate the most amazing piece of meat! I love a good piece of bloody meat nothing in the world is better than that, which makes me wonder why I ever was a vegetarian, youthful idealism probably, anyways, back to this meal...it was a somewhat spontaneous dinner, although we did make reservations and we braved the pouring rain and blustery winds to dine atRuth's Chris which neither of us had ever been to which is another reason why I picked this night because while I patronized many places, they were all repeats of restaurants that I dine at frequently. I had the

Thanks Passionate Eater!

ribeye and it was divine, so savory and juicy in all it's meaty goodness. @omgconor watch in absolute wonder as I devoured the entire thing, well almost, I took a very small piece home because we also had dessert, but he was still pretty amazed at the amount I consumed, so with our bellies contently full and a giddy smile on our faces, we once again stepped out into the November cold on our way home but this time we didn't seem to notice the whipping rain drops and chilling winds because nothing could put a damper on our wonderful evening.

Best Trip of 2009.

I came across an amazing find today thanks to The Novelista Barista, it's a blog challenge hosted by Gwen Bell. It is 31 post in 31 days about the best of 2009, I think this is a great idea! After nanowrimo, I really need take some time off from writing and do something fun. This is a real departure from what I usually write on this blog and while I wanted to stick to short stories, perhaps it's time to deviate from the well worn path and try something new, so here it goes...I'm a day behind so i'll do two posts today to catch up.

December 01: What was your best trip in 2009?

I didn't go on a lot of trips this year, I went to Hawaii twice, Las Vegas, and Canada. They were all fantastic trips and served it's purpose of relaxation and good times, but if I had to pick one, I think I would have to choose Canada only because it's the only place that I've never been to before and the experience was shared with people I love and hold very near my heart. I would like to mention that I've lived in Seattle for the past 10 years and have NEVER crossed the border so it was all very exciting!! I was like a little kid going to Disneyland, seriously I was that amped about it and although it wasn't that much different, I was not disappointed in the least.

X plus Y.

Now if you ask my Aunt Yanni, she'll tell you that she knew way before either one of my parents that they were destined to be together. I often tried to pick her brain about that, but she remained elusive and would simply smile and say, 'when it's meant to be, I can always tell.' I never knew what to make of that, sometimes I thought of my Aunt Yanni as some prophet, like in the way olden days, way before even my mother's time when people lived in villages and traveled in carts drawn by horses or some kind of animal and sought out the eldest person who spoke in cryptic messages that always had some deeper meaning; my Aunt Yanni had that kind of aura. So while Aunt Yanni was sitting on this secret knowledge, my mother still didn't know even after six years of dating, but if you ask me I'll tell you that five years into dating I knew they were meant to be because something changed in my mother's eyes in the pictures I would see from that day at Comicon. But to really understand where my mother's doubt and uncertainty came from you would have to know about everything that led up to that day when they stood up on the stage as Yorick and Amp, my dad dressed in a gas mask and a cape and my mom as a monkey wearing a diaper and everything that came after that day. Their outfits were fashioned after the graphic novel series Y the Last Man in which Yorick is the last male human being on earth and along with his pet monkey Ampersand aka Amp, make their way across the country and over seas amidst all the surviving women, to find out what caused the death of all the men. Let me just stop for a minute to say how silly these interest were that my parents slightly obsessed over, I mean this wasn't written by a man hating feminist during the Women's Right Movement, this was in the year 2001 and while that may have been eons ago, it was still well within the time frame when women were equal and had been for many many years.