Screens in Every Corner

Today I walked through a human swarm. Historical downtown is probably as beautiful as ever, but certainly hard to see in the sea of humanity that spilled out of every building, filling sidewalks and taking over the road. I hear many streets surrounding the central plaza close down on Sundays so people can walk and bike about freely. That sounds like exactly the way to hang out at the zócalo.

What I did see downtown were flags absolutely everywhere! And screens in every corner broadcasting—of course—the World Cup. In the textile establishment my mother-in-law and I went to, there were four screens for patrons… and almost everyone—staff and shoppers—were women. As we walked out the door, we caught snippets of conversations all centered on the World Cup, from everyone: men, women, children... I could swear even the stray dogs were commenting. Getting together in the US for games is nice, but it’s just more fun to watch when the whole country is excited!

After our errand downtown, we headed back to the neighborhood where we stopped in at the tianguis to order barbacoa for an upcoming celebration. That’s right, the best place to order truly amazing Mexican barbecue is not a restaurant or banquet hall, it’s the local open air market. And yes, there were TVs there, too, with long extension cords plugged into surrounding homes and businesses, all broadcasting the World Cup.

One of those TVs exercised its magnetic pull on a friend we’d been hoping to run into since our arrival. Let’s just call him Roaming Hippie. After two years without hearing from him, there he was with his hand crafted jewelry displayed, beer in hand, pasted to the screen.

It was a day of get-togethers. After hanging out with said Roaming Hippie, I took time to see family. Getting there was interesting, what with offensive driving being a way of life here. I’m fairly certain I closed my eyes half the trip, which gave me a lovely opportunity to more clearly see my entire life flash before my eyes. It was worth it, though. Being with family is always comforting. The kids are amazing. And for supper… street vendor tacos to go! Woo-hoo!

Romanian Food Festival

I love sarmale. That's right, food talk first. The Romanian Food Festival held in Colleyville at St. Mary's Romanian Orthodox Church is small, but well organized with plenty of food. It reminds me in a way of a tiny ren festival without the bad English accents. You park in the grass, there's a row of food vendors, constant live music, pick nick tables, and people in costume walking about--but instead of pirates and women in bodices you have dancers in traditional Romanian outfits and little girls in their gymnastics cloths.


Today was the perfect day to play outside. It was almost 80 degrees, sunny, and breezy. That's the weather, now back to the food.

Sarmale are cooked sour cabbage rolls stuffed with finely ground pork and rice, covered with tomato sauce. Good stuff. We passed on the corn, beans, and cabbage salad. Today was definitely a naughty day. We continued on the carnivorous track we had set out on today and had  the mititei, a grilled a skinless sausage (probably pork as well) served with mustard. That's all I could handle. Hubby had a bit of grilled lamb as  well.

The only non-meat dish we had was an enormous chunk of bread and a pastry that I thought was an enormous goldfish, but was actually supposed to be shaped like Romania. It tasted sort of like a semisweet glazed donut with lemon zest. Yum.

You'd think that would be enough, but no. About four hours after we left the festival we ended up eating tacos. Unless the salsa and the onion and cilantro toppings count as salad, it was a meat and tortillas feast. I enjoyed every minute. I feel incredibly heavy and sleepy (shocker), but I don't care. It was good!

Tomorrow we have a couple of festive and naughty things to attend as well, so I suspect this coming week I'll be living on juice and attempting to digest the weekend.

Crowded Shower

Script Frenzy starts in 12 days, so I haven't set pen to paper--starting early takes the fun out of it. But I *am* holding auditions in the shower.

So far, I have four characters very loosely thought out and a basic plot with no ending. The plot points, though, are more of a car-coffee-traffic thing than a lather-rinse-repeat thing. And come to think of it, the idea for the story is something I chased down on the treadmill.

The one thing I can't decide is what sort of story it should be. Yes, my twisted mind has come up with creepy, funny, dramatic, and even surreal versions for this tale. But I can't do all those versions in one month. So help me decide.

Check out the poll on the right, and help me mess with the fate of my fake people.

Thanks!

Script Frenzie

So I'm out to make myself crazy again. In November I had jumped on the NaNoWriMo train and attempted to write a novel in 30 days. Well, I didn't make it to 50,000 words, but I do have a complete short novel at about 18,000 words. It's the one I've been editing for the last couple of days. So I feel it was a successful venture after all.

And now, the same people that have hundreds and thousands of us tapping at our computers like crazy in November, are having another such "race" in April: Script Frenzie.

So here I go again. This time: 100 pages in 30 days.