Hey There, It's Christa!

An October to Remember

I can hardly believe there's only two more days in my favorite month of the year, but my, what a fun month it's been! :) So as we bid farewell to this illustrious 10th month, here are a few of my favorite memories...

A pilgrimage to Austin: On October 8, Will and I celebrated six (!!!) years of wedded bliss, so we decided a roadtrip was in order. And since Nashville is just a little too far away for a weekend, we decided that Austin might be perfect, especially with some killer mixtapes playing in the background. It was a little rainy and overcast, a rarity in sun-drenched Texas, but we had such a wonderful time nonetheless. Not only did we stay at a hotel that's supposedly haunted by friendly ghosts, but we sampled some great eats at Bess Bistro, not to mention the life-changing beignets (seriously, they were heavenly bites of sheer deliciousness) at Annie's Café. I'm pretty sure I could've eaten 40 of them...

Plus you can't help loving a city when their motto is all about keeping things weird. And considering we live in the oh-so-corporate DFW, the wide array of truly unique shopping and dining was definitely a nice change from the norm. Yay, Austin!

Celebrating another year of Will: Will has the distinct pleasure of having a birthday and our anniversary in a five-day span, so we always make the most of it (and probably gain a good five pounds in the process). I spent hours and hours slaving in front of a hot stove to whip up an Italian feast of grandeur, namely homemade penne alla vodka, caprese bruschetta and per the birthday boy's request, the decidedly non-Italian dessert of homemade yellow cupcakes with semi-sweet chocolate ganache. Will liked the cupcakes so much that he ate 14 of them (I'm so jealous of his enviable metabolism!). Adding to the meal's overall deliciousness was some incredibly potent prosecco that's apparently one of Mario Batali's favorites. So thank you, Central Market for that.

Remembering why I loved baseball: Little known fact about one Christa Banister: I used to travel with my high school's baseball team as the official statician and absolutely loved every second. Yes, at one time, I actually knew a lot about baseball—the numbers that corresponded with the various positions, all the weirdo terminology like what a sac fly is, not to mention the  difference between a change-up, a slider and a screwball (apparently, it has nothing to do with vodka and orange juice).

I wasn't the best history student on the planet (I thought it was basically b-o-r-i-n-g with a capital "b"), so I needed the extra credit, and since my history teacher was the coach, well, it was a pretty great trade-off. He got his stats, I got a decent grade. Plus, being the boy-crazy girl that I was, I thought the guys were pretty cute in those uniforms (even if they were always spitting sunflower seeds...gross).

Unfortunately, my love of professional baseball has always been pretty non-existent...well, until I started watching the Rangers with Will. Growing up in Texas, he's been a lifelong fan of the team, so the fact they've been to the World Series two years in a row is pretty incredible for him. And seeing a game in Arlington was so much better than watching on TV—well, except for when fly balls headed in our direction. That freaked me out a little—as has the Rangers' World Series run. I wish they'd go ahead and close the deal because games like last night's are incredibly stressful. Guess we'll see what happens tonight since it's Game 7. Chances are, I'll be biting my cuticles.

The return of Coldplay, Feist and Beavis and Butt-head: All worth the wait—especially Coldplay's Mylo Xyloto 

Enjoying a weekend of firsts with my Mom: My Mom and I have actually spent her last two birthdays together, and it's a tradition I'm really digging. This time around, she decided to see what DFW was all about and (gasp!) hopped on a plane to see us. In case you're wondering what the "gasp" is about, it's because she loathes flying, let alone by herself. But I had to give her major kudos,  she put her big-girl pants on and found out it wasn't quite as bad as she thought.

After picking her up from Love Field, we embarked on a weekend filled with firsts. In addition to her first solo flight to Texas, she had her first pedicure, tried her first Thai food and was the first person to sleep in our brand-new bed in the guest room. We also introduced us to the glories of Tex-Mex (Mi Cocina all the way), made sure she saw the Packer game in the land of Cowboy fans, checked out the many culinary treasures of Central Market (guess they get two shout-outs in this post) and introduced her to our favorite preacher, Matt Chandler, at the Village Church.

It was definitely an ambitious way to start her 59th year, but I was so thankful for the time we had. :)

Last but not least: I can't wait for all the cute little Trick or Treaters to stop by on October 31. Wish my darling niece Miss Adelyn Grace (that's her in her much-beloved Cinderella costume) was stopping on by, I'd make sure she got lots and lots of candy.

 

 

 

Doing NaNoWriMo My Way...

Maybe it's my slightly anal-retentive nature or the adrenaline rush I get whenever one's on the horizon, but I've always loved deadlines. And no, not "the sound of them whooshing on by" that's referenced in one of my favorite movies, Julie & Julia.

In fact, one of my favorite things about college that didn't involve  working on the school newspaper or late-night pizza with friends was the first day of class when the professor passed out the syllabus. For whatever reason, I loved those flipping through those perfect white pages just so I could carefully write the assignments (and when they were due, naturally) in my beloved dayplanner.

Even in the era of SmartPhones and iCal, both fabulous inventions in their own right, I still buy a regular ol' dayplanner every year—usually with some exotic European city on the cover. After all, why opt for the boring Franklin Covey when you can dream a little while staring at pictures of London, Paris or Rome?

Yeah, that's pure deadline bliss.

So now that my love of deadlines has been firmly established (not to mention my utter geekdom in the process), it's probably no big surprise that something like NaNoWriMo is right up my alley.

For the unacquainted, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, something that happens each and every November. Your mission, should you choose to accept it (on a side note, I absolutely can't wait for Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol...I think the trailer looks so good), is to write 50,000 words, essentially, a decent-sized first draft, in a month's time.

Yeah, as someone who's written two novels already, lemme just say, that's rather ambitious.

But after having my first two novels published in 2007 and 2008, respectively, and taking my sweet time to decide what to write about the third time around, I think I'm up for the challenge—even if I'm not doing it exactly how the NaNoWriMo folks envisioned it.

See, I'm cheating a little because I'm not actually starting from scratch. I have a decent-ish start on my third novel already, but I want to jumpstart my word count in a serious way, so I'm using the month of November to do just that. It'll be like NaNoWriMo, but with a method to the madness. Or I hope so, anyway.

In any case, it gives me a deadline, and not just a pretend one that I can ignore if I'm distracted by something else, like the stack of delicious new novels practically begging to be read in my office or the latest episode of Two Broke Girls.

Updates TK, I promise. You know, when I'm not chipping away at that 50k...

Words I Didn't Know Were Words Until I Played Scrabble...

Once upon a time in a land without iPhones and Words With Friends, there was a young girl from America's Dairyland who loved to play Scrabble. In fact, any time she had an opportunity to throw down a bingo (the Scrabble term for using all your letters in a single play), it was a happy, happy moment.

And since she lacked the finesse and coordination required to play any actual sports that involved, you know, throwing, kicking and the like, Scrabble was the perfect avenue for her fiercely competitive nature. On snowy, wintry days when she simply didn't feel like trying a new cookie recipe (another one of her favorite pastimes), she'd been known to (gasp!) read the Scrabble dictionary just for the fun of it.

After all, most people believe it's possessing an expansive, GRE-level vocabulary that makes you the biggest Scrabble threat. But the secret that I learned from playing many, many games is actually...

(Drum roll please)

Knowing all the legit two-letter combinations.

For the unacquainted, those are words like qi, ai, za and fa—the vital force in Chinese thought, a three-toed sloth, an abbreviation for pizza and the fourth tone on the diatonic musical scale, respectively.

And once you've mastered those (and trust me, there's tons and tons of seemingly unlikely combinations), not to mention how to layer them properly on the board (a trick that yields the most points, even if the words are super short), there are slightly longer gems that are also pure Scrabble gold, namely words like turfy (covered with turf), jute (a strong, coarse fiber) and qat (an evergreen shrub).

Now of course, these aren't words I'd probably use in normal conversation. To wit, when I'm  watching football with Will, I never say the Metrodome is turfy. But it is fun (or a bit nerdy, take your pick) having a small sector of my brain dedicated exclusively to Scrabble words like "xi" (a Greek letter), "vig" ( a charge made to a bookie on a bet), "jo" (a sweetheart) and "ut" (the same as "do" on the musical scale in the French solmization system).

Whether I can work them into my new novel, however, is a different matter entirely...but a girl can try, right?