What's Making Me Happy This Week, 11-28-14

I can already see that making this a blog feature is going to be good for me. Because even when there's a lot of bleakness in the world (including the very literal kind where we've just entered the dreariest two months of the year in Seattle, where it's still dark when I come into work and dark already when I leave, and the few hours of daylight are often grimly gray), it forces me to look around and find something positive to share with you all! So here are some things that have made me happy this week:

1) I learned while reading a book on life in Elizabethan England that Sir Francis Drake's ship The Golden Hind, the one that circumnavigated the globe, was a major London tourist attraction in the decades that followed...AND you could rent it out for banquets! As someone who's done a bit of event planning in my day, that just charms me somehow. Imagine being an Elizabethan bride and holding your wedding banquet on that ship!

(This is a replica of The Golden Hind. The original rotted after about a century per Wikipedia.)

2) This fanfic where Rocket Raccoon from Guardians of the Galaxy visits Sleepy Hollow and is confronted in a bar by Abbie Mills. It's good goofy fun that IMHO completely nails the character voices.

3) Cinnamon toast. It's the perfect bedtime snack for cold, blustery nights. Miss Fraser likes to make it with me now, which gives me a certain Circle of Life feeling, since it's the very first thing I ever learned to make in the kitchen as a child.

4) I'm always looking for new ideas for quick, convenient, and reasonably healthy recipes for weeknight dinners, what with the whole having a full-time day job and being an author thing. This week I added two more to my repertoire, Kid-Tastic Pizzadillas and Sausage Ragu over Creamy Polenta.

5) No matter what happens in the Iron Bowl tomorrow--and given the way Auburn has collapsed down the stretch, I'm not optimistic--I will for the rest of my days rejoice that I live in a universe where this happened:

At the intersection of luck and skill

As those of you who follow me on Twitter are no doubt aware, I am an Auburn football fan--I'm originally from Alabama, and my brother is an Auburn alum. Since my own alma mater (the University of Pennsylvania) isn't what you'd call an athletic powerhouse, my football loyalties remain with that family tie.

Last year Auburn was painful to watch. They went 3-9, 0-8 in conference. As almost always happens in such cases with a major program, that meant head coach Gene Chizik was fired. His replacement was Gus Malzahn, who had been Auburn's offensive coordinator under Chizik until that very year. As a fan watching the team from the opposite corner of the country, I was happy with the choice and figured we'd see a marked improvement right away, since it wasn't like the team lacked talent. Along with Alabama and LSU, they're one of the traditional powerhouses of the SEC West, the stronger division of the mightiest conference in football, and they were just three years out from their last national championship. I figured they'd go 7-5, maybe 8-4 with a little luck. They'd go to one of those random bowl games between Christmas and New Year's, thump their opponent, and be in a position to contend for a championship in 2014 or 2015.

And that would've been a fine turnaround indeed. But instead they finished 12-1. They're SEC champions, and tonight they're playing Florida State for the national championship. FSU is the heavy favorite, since they've dominated opponents all season while Auburn has tended to win nailbiters. Auburn, naysayers say, is just lucky. They then point to these two plays as evidence of that luck.

Here's the winning touchdown from the second to last game of the regular season vs. Georgia. Hail Mary tipped by two defenders with 25 seconds left on the clock:



And here, two weeks later, is the winning touchdown from the last game of the regular season, vs. cross-state rival Alabama. Until this moment, the last second of the game, this was undefeated Alabama, unstoppable machine Alabama, New York Yankees of college football going for a threepeat as national champions Alabama. The score was tied thanks to an amazing last-minute touchdown by Auburn, and Alabama coach Nick Saban decided to try to avoid overtime by attempting a 57-yard field goal despite his team having struggled with the kicking game all day. He put in a freshman kicker instead of the regular who'd been doing the struggling, and, really, what did he have to lose? If he makes the kick, game over, we all go home, and the Tide keeps rolling. If the kick falls short or is blocked, they're just going to overtime, same as they would if they'd just let the clock run out. That's the worst that can happen, right? There's no POSSIBLE way it could backfire, right?

Let's watch what happened:



I've been watching football all my life, and I didn't even know you could run a missed field goal back like that. For the first fifty yards of that run, I was muttering, "He can do that? That's allowed?" After that I was screaming, screaming so loud and long Miss Fraser came racing downstairs to make sure I was OK.

So...were those two plays nothing but luck? For the first one, luck certainly played a big role. That wasn't a great pass. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it either falls incomplete or is intercepted or batted down by one of the Georgia players. But this time it was batted up, and Ricardo Louis was alert enough in the moment to get his hands on it, pull it in, and run it into the end zone. When luck gave him an improbable opportunity, he had the skill to make the most of it.

As for the second play...I'm calling that one almost all skill. It feels like luck because it's so rare--I believe it's the only time in collegiate football history a game has ever been won on a field goal return. But the odds of that kick falling short were very high, when you think about it. A 57-yarder? That's rare even in the NFL. And the Auburn coaching staff, unlike a mere fan like me, knew very well that you can run back a missed field goal, so they sent their best return man, Chris Davis, to wait in the end zone. And the Bama staff, despite also knowing the rule book backwards and forwards, only had big, lumbering linemen out there to guard against a blocked kick as opposed to the kind of speedsters who might've had a chance of running Davis down. Improbable as it was, beautiful and thrilling as it was for anyone but a Bama fan, that last play was skill, skill, skill.

After the game a reporter interviewed Davis and asked him what he was thinking when he saw that the kick was going to fall short. He grinned, shook his head, and said (paraphrased), "Just catch the ball and run. Catch it, and run." Because, really, what else could you think in that moment?

Tonight Auburn plays FSU, and we'll see whose luck and skill dominates. But win or lose, this Auburn season is going to inspire me for a long time to come. (OK, I'm human. It'll inspire me a lot more if they win.) Because improbable is not the same thing as impossible. Because failure isn't the final answer unless you let it be. Because sometimes turnarounds after disappointment happen quicker than you would've imagined possible. Because if you practice and work your ass off to be the best you can be, you'll be good enough to be lucky. And if opportunity falls into your hands, you just need to be ready to catch it and run.

Books read the past two weeks

78) A political book. And that's all I'm going to say, since I try to keep my politics out of my author world, though they've been known to creep out on Twitter from time to time.


79) Love Thy Rival: What Sports' Greatest Rivalries Teach Us About Loving Our Enemies, by Chad Gibbs. As in God and Football, Gibbs writes a humorous travelogue of sports fandom with a light touch of Christian inspiration. At the end of the book he talks about rivalry at its best--the Army-Navy football rivalry between two schools dedicated to the common cause of sacrificial service to their country--and at its worse--the Alabama fan who poisoned Auburn's Toomer Oaks. The latter incident still makes me shake with rage, even though I'm not truly part of the Auburn Family myself. (My oldest brother is an alum, so I guess I'm family of the family?) What kind of evil person murders TREES, beautiful, hundred-year-old liveoak TREES, over football?

As you see, I'm having trouble loving that particular enemy. And when you suggest I ought to love my political or ideological enemies, it gets even harder. Heck, it even raised my hackles a bit that Gibbs closed the book with a challenge for rival fans to compete by giving to a nonprofit I'd personally never donate to for political reasons. (You will note I didn't name the nonprofit here. I'm biting my tongue hard, because if I named names, I wouldn't be able to resist explaining WHY I'm against them, complete with links and sputtering outrage. I really don't want to go there in my writer space.)

80) 45 Master Characters, by Victoria Schmidt. A writer's guide to archetypes and the hero's journey. I like that she described a masculine and feminine version of the journey--and then stated that sometimes female characters follow the masculine journey pattern and vice versa. I tend to get frustrated with gender essentialist approaches to such things.

More books read

I'm continuing on my journey to read 75 books in 2012. At the moment I'm on pace for 180, but I expect that to slow down soon. If nothing else, all but one of my eight Rita books was on the short side, while War and Peace, which I plan to start after I turn in my manuscript for An Infamous Marriage, is...not.

24) Social Q's, by Philip Galanes. Etiquette for today's world by the author of the New York Times advice column. I heard the author interviewed on Fresh Air and decided to pick this one up at the library. Galanes doesn't have the same level of insight, wit, and elegant prose as Miss Manners, but this was a fun, quick read. Galanes's advice boils down to chill out, think before speaking, and tolerate others' foibles as you would have them tolerate your own.

25) Book Which Must Not Be Named (6 of 8). I'm going to continue to be a good judge and not say anything that might reveal the identity of this Rita entry, but suffice it to say it was a disappointment compared to the rest of my panel.

26) Season of Our Dreams: the 2010 Auburn Tigers, by Van Allen Plexico and John Ringer. As a sports fan, I have a knack for falling in love with snakebitten teams and athletes. In baseball, Mr. Fraser and I hold a 16-game plan (i.e. partial season ticket strip) with the Mariners, who in 2001 put together the best regular season EVER, only to fall short in the playoffs. Ever since, they've either outright sucked or flirted with contention only to fall apart down the stretch. My all-time favorite figure skater is Michelle Kwan, she who won everything BUT Olympic gold.



And then there's Auburn. I'm not an alumna (I went to Penn, which is not to be confused with Penn State and is not at ALL a football school), but I grew up in Alabama, in an Auburn family, and it's my oldest brother's alma mater. Living thousands of miles from my native state, I find myself asserting the Southern part of my identity on fall Saturdays, watching SEC football and cheering on my Tigers. But if the SEC West is the AL East (and really, we are--I can understand why the rest of the college football world hates us), Auburn is the Red Sox to Alabama's Yankees.

But in 2010, at last, it all went RIGHT. Improbably, awesomely right. Season of Our Dreams chronicles that year, largely by excerpting blog posts Plexico and Ringer made during the course of the year. There isn't much context in the form of game summaries--it relies on the reader to remember all that--but it made for a fun stroll down memory lane, allowing me to relive one of my teams FINALLY winning the big one during what for me is the lull between football ending and baseball starting again.

27) Book Which Must Not Be Named (7 of 8). Like my fifth Rita book, this one pleasantly surprised me. I'm not this book's target market, but I can recognize and reward tight, subtle writing and solid execution when I see it.

28) Book Which Must Not Be Named (8 of 8). My last Rita book was just plain average.



29) Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Lost Adventures. Another graphic novel, more like a graphic anthology, to tide me over till The Legend of Korra comes out. This one had some nice character vignettes, all set in the same time frame as the original TV series. I especially liked Sokka challenging Zuko to "swordbending," and really all the Zuko interactions from after he switched sides for good--there were all these tiny, subtle little touches where you could see he was simultaneously the most mature and the most fragile and damaged of the team. Mm, characterization, and in a kids' show/comic!



30) No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice, by Judith Martin. I picked this up because the author is better known as Miss Manners, whom I've already praised above. Now I've learned that she's a serious Venetophile, spending a portion of every year there. She writes an enjoyable, anecdotal love letter to Venice that didn't quite make me share her passion, but did give me a vicarious taste of it. (I haven't been there yet, and while it's certainly on my list of places I want to go, I don't feel the same hunger I have to finally see Paris or Rome, and I don't think I'll love it the way I do London or Edinburgh.)

March Buy & Read Challenge

Here we are less than a full week into the month, and I've already fulfilled my Buy & Read Challenge twice over. (For the challenge I have to buy at least one book per month in 2011, and then read at least one book I bought during 2011 each month, though I don't have to buy the books the same months I read them.)

First up was Captive Bride, by Bonnie Dee.



I'm always up for an unusual historical romance, and this one definitely qualifies. It's set in San Francisco in the 1870's, with a Union vet for a hero and for the heroine a Chinese merchant's daughter who comes to America thinking she's going to wed a wealthy businessman only to learn she's actually intended to be a high-end prostitute. She runs away and finds a refuge with the hero, who owns a general store. Dee doesn't rush past the language and cultural barriers that separate them, but makes you believe in the budding friendship and love that develop despite them.

While Captive Bride let me visit a world I'll never see in reality, my second book, God and Football, by Chad Gibbs, was a trip home.



You see, I live in Seattle now, but I was born and raised in central Alabama, just south of Birmingham, where I was raised to be a Baptist and an Auburn fan. In that order. I think. I'm no longer a Baptist, but I'm still an Auburn fan. (I'm not an alum, but my oldest brother is, and since I went to Penn, which is not exactly what you'd call a football powerhouse, my education didn't change my rooting interests.)

Gibbs, an Auburn alum who is still a Baptist, realized that for someone who says he worships God, he spends a lot of time acting like his religion is Auburn football. Feeling like his priorities are out of order, he decides to spend the 2009 season attending one game at each Southeastern Conference stadium and talking to Christian students and fans about how they balance their sports fanaticism with their faith.

I'm not sure how well this book would work for someone who didn't grow up steeped in Southern religion and football culture, though I suppose it might be anthropologically interesting. But if you're from the South, and you're part of the 99% or so of Southerners who love football? You must get this book. It's hilarious, and you'll recognize yourself on every page.

I mean, look at me. I've lost my Southern accent. I self-identify as a Pacific Northwesterner. Mr. Fraser and I recently bought a house in Seattle, so we've got no plans of leaving anytime soon. I love my cool, soggy, green, mountain-girded adopted home city.

The two most Alabamian things about me now? Barbecue and football. When we threw a party to show our friends our new home and celebrate The Sergeant's Lady's release, I had barbecue flown in from Dreamland, because I'm sure not serving guests in my home the stuff that passes for 'cue out here. Seattle in general is foodie paradise, but for barbecue NSM.

And on the football side? Let's just say I thought I wasn't paying much attention to the SEC in 2009. It's tough to follow the SEC out here--the time zone difference works against you, and you don't get all the games televised, though between CBS and ESPN you get the important ones. Auburn had a meh season, finishing 8-5, 3-5 conference, and Alabama was on its way to a national championship, which didn't exactly bring joy to my Tiger heart. But just about every time Gibbs describes the games he attends, I think, "Oh yeah! I remember that play." Even when neither Auburn nor Alabama was involved. Because it's the SEC. REAL football.

Since I read the book in 2011, I had the privilege of knowing something Gibbs couldn't have known writing it--that 2010 was FINALLY going to be Auburn's year. I'm sure Gibbs had even more fun watching it up close and personal than I did from thousands of miles away, but he can't have yelled any louder than I did when Wes Byrum kicked the winning field goal in the BCS Championship Game.

So, Chad, if this post happens to pop up on your Google Alerts? WDE. And it's great to be an Auburn Tiger.