Road Trip, Day Two: D.C.

Ohhh, boy, it has been quite the day. Essentially, the highlights were seeing the U.K. Embassy for the E.U. Day Open House or whatever it was called, and hanging out with old college friends Marianne and Ellyn. I’m also really tired, so while Marianne and I watch MST3K I’m just gonna post pictures on here.

I have so many pictures that I decided to do a slideshow. Some of the pictures have captions; most of the pictures that are left un-captioned are at the U.K. Embassy.

You can hit “stop” on the slideshow to look through the pics at your own pace.

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Road Trip: Day One!

I had a beautiful and fun drive to Arlington, Va. (OK, yes, technically not DC) today, and arrived early and in perfect safety. I’m hanging out at my friend Marianne’s and I figured I should post some pictures now before I forget and fall behind.

First of all, the weekend actually began last night, when my friend Tori and I went to the Rumba Cafe to see my favorite indie band, The Spring Standards. I saw them at a free show back in 2010 in DC and have been following them ever since. I was so, so excited that they were doing a gig in my new home of Columbus AND that I had someone to go with me!!! I only took one halfway decent picture, and here it is:

It was their one acoustic song…

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I had their album “Would Things Be Different” already and then bought the new one, “Yellow/Gold.” Even though I had already checked out three audio books from the library for my long drive(s), including A Tale of Two Cities (which will take me a while because, you know, Dickens), I ended up listening to The Spring Standards for 99% of the 7 hours I was on the road. Way to go, guys!

I took some pictures during my drive.

Still in Ohio, I think…

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Somewhat artsy…Yeah, I meant to do that.

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HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! SUCKAAAAAS!

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Aw, crap.

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Say what you will about West Virginia, but there is some gorgeousness to behold there.

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Cumberland, MD, an old industrial town that is about 2/3 to DC from Columbus; I love driving by it because the old architecture is wonderful, but I didn’t get any very good shots this time.

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More Cumberland

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And then it started getting too dark and I was getting too tired to take pictures and drive at the same time (yes, I took all these pictures while I was driving).

What Many People Miss in the Debate Over Same-Sex Marriage

I’ve generally been avoiding politics lately, but there are still things that get under my skin and make me a seething ball of libertarian rage. Today it’s the reactions to North Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriage.

This democratic decision has given rise to cheers from right-wingers who apparently thought the country was going to hell otherwise, but has sparked anger from the left who, in their ever-present tolerance, are now slinging insults against those close-minded, incestuous southerners.

As a Christian, I believe that God forbids same-sex marriage, and that it is wrong on moral grounds.

However, as a Christian libertarian, I don’t believe that those morals should be legislated upon non-Christians.

Under the law of the land, I think it should be completely permissible for a person to marry his or her cousin, same-sex partner, or dog, as long as it’s all consensual. It’s none of my business—God can take care of it. He knows what’s going on.

What does this mean? It means that this shouldn’t even be a political issue. Sure, it’s an issue, and we can debate it until the cows come home. But the government has no place in marriage. The Constitution says nothing about it. However, the government is so overreaching now that many people can’t even comprehend a world where something—gasp!—might not even be the government’s business.

This is what I just posted on Facebook:

If you uphold freedom of speech, you have to be prepared to hear things you don’t like.
If you uphold democracy as the ideal form of government, you have to recognize that at some point people will vote for something you think is stupid.
Then again, you could get government out of marriage entirely, since defining marriage is not government’s job in the first place.

What makes me particularly angry: People A who tout the virtues of “democracy” but mock People B for practicing this oh-so-sacred right if People B don’t vote the way People A think they should.

Now, as a defender of free speech, I believe that People A still have the right to mock People B. And I still have the right to think that they’re terrible hypocrites, and if they love democracy so much, they need to shut up and let it do its terrible, terrible job.

So I beg you, FOR ONCE, think outside the box. What if we don’t need government for this AT ALL?

A Bit of Book News

First of all, Radicals & Royalists is now available on Kindle! It’s $4.99 or free for Amazon Prime members!

Secondly, I’m planning to have a giveaway on Facebook (and I may have one on this blog, as well), but only once I’ve gotten at least 50 fans. So if you are on Facebook and you haven’t done so already, head over to the Radicals & Royalists’ page and “like” to get faster access to book updates and other fun stuff, and to learn when the giveaway will be.

(You don’t have to be Facebook friends with me personally to become a fan of the R&R page, and when you become a fan I still can’t see anything about you but what you’ve already made public.)

Coming Soon: A Road-Trip Saga

Starting Friday, I will be going on a road trip that will take me from Columbus to DC to Providence, RI, with a one-day hop up to Boston, and a possible stop in Wethersfield, CT.

I’ve done road trips before, but I’ve never done one this extensive on my own. The longest drive I’ve done by myself was from DC to Columbus. I’ve been thinking that I should blog about this one, or at least take pictures to post later. Then I figured that I probably wouldn’t get around to it unless I made myself accountable to my four, maybe even five readers. Yeah, I kind of failed to properly document my week of dressing up back in March, but trust me that I did do it. I’ll try to be better this time around.

As with that experiment, I am counting on you guys to hold me accountable.

Avengers: Good, 3D: Bad

I saw The Avengers last night (in 3D), and it was a really good time.

When it comes to any superhero, I’ve never seen any Saturday-morning cartoons or read any comic books. Therefore, I’ve never thought of myself as a comic book/superhero movie person. Last night I realized that I have seen the first two X-men movies, all 3 Spider-man movies, both the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, and last year’s Captain America. That hardly makes me a fangirl (thank goodness), but I saw most of these movies in the theater, own several on DVD, and genuinely enjoyed all but one of them. So as I applauded with the rest of the theatergoers when Avengers was over, I realized I just can’t say I’m not much for superheroes. (It also kind of made me want to watch Thor and the Iron Man movies.)

I can’t talk much about the specific story, mostly because I had trouble following the techno-jargon, but I didn’t get too worried about that and I still liked it. It’s your basic superhero story: Evil guy(s) capture some very important substance with which they intend to enslave/destroy the earth, and it’s up to the hero(es) to stop them. It’s well-acted and well-written, and I was genuinely interested in the characters and got sucked in and invested.

This is probably the part where a lot of people go on a fanboy/girl rant about the brilliance of Joss Whedon, but I’m not familiar or attached enough to his work to do that. I’ve seen (and liked) Firefly and Dr. Horrible and a few season of Buffy but that’s as far as I go. Not because I have anything against him or his fans, it’s just not something I personally feel like becoming a fanatic about.

When I go to see movies, I primarily go for the story or the actors involved. I liked Captain America (and I have a soft spot for Chris Evans) so I wanted to see this. I actually very much dislike Scarlett Johansson (I have some personal issues with her, plus I think her acting is poor and wooden), and loathe Gwyneth Paltrow, both of whom are in Avengers, and yet I still really, really liked it. Even some of the scenes they were in! I’m not a fan of Mark Ruffalo, but I ended up quite liking him as Bruce Banner, and I’m also not much for Robert Downey Jr., but I enjoyed his scenes as well (although his arrogant-quipping schtick got a liiiiiittle old).

Honestly, my biggest problem with the movie was that we saw it in 3D. This was the first time I had seen a modern movie in 3D, as I had been actively avoiding it. I think it’s gimmicky and unnecessary and it really doesn’t add much to the story. You get a couple moments of “Whoa! That arrow just barely missed piercing me in the eye!” or “Watch out for that flying schrapnel!” but I don’t think it’s worth the price of admission. Maybe in a movie like Avatar or Alice in Wonderland it adds to the audience’s immersion into the scenery, but as I said, I go to movies to see specific actors or to be told a certain story, not just to watch a pretty moving picture. I like a good fight scene or a good explosion, but I don’t need to see it in 3D. I don’t think it even looks real—at least, it didn’t for Avengers. It just looked like a high-tech pop-up book. I realize this may make me sound like a Luddite, or like those people back in the 1920s who thought that talkies wouldn’t go anywhere, but as I’ve written before about my appreciation for the modern world, those aren’t really my issues. Obviously they’re making 3D movies because people are willing to pay to see them, and I can’t fault them for that. I just hope this is a trend that dies out, because I like movies and I don’t want to see them all made this way!

Oh, calm down, it’s not that realistic.

But as I said, that was really the only thing about the movie I found worth complaining about. Granted, it’s a big part of the movie, but not so much that it kept me from enjoying it.

(Plus, I popped the lenses out of my glasses and I’m going to wear them as hipster frames.)

To sum up: Go see Avengers. It’s worth it—just not in 3D.

Have you seen it? Will you see it? What do you think?

The Day My Book(s) Arrive

I got my first shipment of copies of Radicals and Royalists today. I spent last night tormented—tormented—by anxiety and paranoia that there was going to be something massively, massively wrong with them: the page numbers screwed up again, an embarrassing typo in the acknowledgements thanking my editors, or the cover all wrong.

Everything is fine. (I’m still working on formatting it for Kindle, by the way.)

Sometimes my dreams make no sense, and sometimes I can pinpoint exactly what had burrowed into my subconscious to make me dream the things I dreamed. And last night these worries manifested themselves quite strongly in three distinct dreams.

1. I had a dream that I woke up at 10:30 a.m., missing the first deadline for my daily assignments and had to call my day-job editor to apologize and explain.

2. I had a dream I was at a party, and eventually I found myself sitting in a booth of a restaurant with Julia Roberts (no idea why, I’ve never been a fan), and we were talking about the futility of her celebrity life. But during this conversation, all I could think about was how my coat was missing from a rack of others, and that someone else at the party must have taken mine by accident, and it was winter outside, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get back to my car and get home without freezing to death and/or getting attacked by ruffians in an alleyway. Everyone else went home before I could find my coat and/or bum a ride.

3. Then I had a dream where I was taking a road trip through the desert, and I stopped by this bridge to climb down into a ravine to see if there was a rest stop down there (????). Some old trucker/prospector-looking man was there with me—he wasn’t driving with me, he just happened to stop there at the same time. When we climbed back up, to the road, having failed to find a rest stop down in a ravine, I saw that a gas station had spontaneously materialized next to where I’d parked my car. Coming closer, I saw that my car’s passenger door was open. I got into my car and looked through my stuff, and I grabbed my wallet out of my purse with a feeling of dread and saw that it was completely empty—no cards, no ID, no cash. I was just starting my freak out and wonder if I could use the phone in the gas station to report the theft when I woke up. I think God knew that’s all I could handle.

Kind of like this.

In Which I Actually Do Something Right For Once

I had a really amazing weekend, and it was more than my book being published and purchased (by actual people who may even read it!).

I got to witness God at work.

Weeks, even a couple months ago, I began to feel worried that I wasn’t really a Christian. I John 5 says that the Spirit testifies that we have received eternal life in God’s son, Jesus. All throughout the New Testament it says that the Holy Spirit works within us to fulfill God’s purpose and make us more Christ-like. My pastor at church gave a sermon a while back about how these changes in our lives are one piece of evidence that those of us who call ourselves Christ-followers belong to God. But I wasn’t seeing that evidence in my life, and it made me worried. I couldn’t see any changes when I looked back, I just saw the same effed-up girl who fails over and over and over to do the right thing and be even a halfway decent person.

That began to change on Thursday. Well, Wednesday night, really. I had already planned not to go to small group on Thursday, because I didn’t feel like it, because I didn’t want to. But on Wednesday night, I sensed God telling me that I was supposed to go. Since God was watching and he’s bigger than me (and also loves me and wants the best for me), I went.

I’m so glad I did. There weren’t many of us there, but it was a good talking and bonding time, and to pray for each other and for me to ask them to pray for my loneliness issues. My friend Courtney has been dealing with a physical injury since October, and as she was talking about it, another girl suggested she go to the Healing Prayer session that I guess our church hosts every Saturday morning, or every few Saturdays. I offered to accompany her for moral support, so we agreed that I’d pick her up on Saturday and we’d go to the prayer session together.

On Saturday, neither of us knew what to expect, but it wasn’t scary. We sat in the chairs they set out in the designated room, and people from the church’s prayer ministry walked around and asked if they could pray for people. I didn’t go with anything in mind—I mainly went just to help Courtney out, since it sucks to go to new, unusual stuff like that alone. But when one woman came up to me and asked if I wanted prayer, I asked her to pray for my depression and anxiety issues (and the resulting sleeplessness that either results from or causes it), specifying that I wasn’t dealing with it at that moment, but that it was an ongoing thing in my life. I told two more women the same thing.

(I knew that, as I was entering a new phase in my life [namely, Post-First-Novel-Publishing], I was likely going to be beset by doubt and anxiety and feelings of failure and self-loathing and all that other wonderful stuff that enters my head when it seems like I’ve got too much of a good thing going.)

To describe the exact effects that each of these women said over me is beyond my personal boundary for what I share here, but trust me that it was beautiful. They didn’t ask for specifics, and I didn’t offer any, but each prayer was just what I needed to receive and to hear: prayers to combat lies that get implanted in my head, prayers to be surrounded by encouraging people, prayers to give myself over to God and live in the knowledge that I belonged to him.

Sitting in a chair nearby, I saw that Courtney was also receiving prayer from other women in the ministry (there were men there too, but the prayers and prayer receivers were same-sex). Shortly before we left, we sat together and prayed for each other. (Difficult for me, as I equate praying aloud with public speaking, and thus am terrified of it.) There was no miraculous beam of light from the ceiling and Courtney wasn’t immediately healed, but both of us felt encouraged and loved and Spirit-filled, which must have been what we needed at the time.

In the car on the way back, Courtney and I talked about the series of events that led us to that moment, and apparently it all came down to Thursday night, when I decided to obey God and go to small group when I didn’t feel like it. Because otherwise Courtney wouldn’t have gone to the prayer session without my saying I’d go with her and drive, and I wouldn’t have been there even to hear about it in the first place.

It was God’s awesomeness at work in me, and not my own awesomeness, that made it happen. But I’m a broken, effed-up, horrible human being, and God still lets me share in his awesomeness. And that’s the greatest privilege of all.

In the end, not only did we get prayer, but God gave me specific moments to look back on and see the Spirit working in me. And it amuses me how creepy that may sound, but I have said before that God is kind of a creeper sometimes.

I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord. ~Psalm 27:13-14

Appreciating Our Modern World

As a history major, a history lover, and an author of historical fiction, I am as guilty as anyone else of romanticizing the “good old days.” Sure, maybe those of us who long for a simpler time or the days when neighbors actually knew each other have a point. But the more research I do, the less capable I am of this romanticizing, because you find out some really weird stuff, like how pretty knickknacks could also be used as flea traps that hung around your neck.

Going through the process of independently publishing and marketing a novel, I am simply astonished by what is at our fingertips now. Of course, being a libertarian/voluntaryist/anarcho-capitalist, you’d expect me to be enthusiastic about the greater amount of choice and the dissemination of power. AND I AM.

Do you know how much I paid CreateSpace for my publication process? Since I did all the interior formatting and used my own photos for the cover, the only thing I paid for were the two book proofs I ordered. I’ve already earned back that money in royalties. (I also paid for the copies that I’m having shipped to my apartment that I’ll distribute on my own, but that wasn’t a necessary part of the process.)

From my couch, using my laptop and the Internet, I have potential access to millions of people. My blog gets hits from Brazil, Canada, the UK, and Korea. One of my book’s Facebook fans is in Germany. Others are in Colorado and D.C. I don’t mean to compare myself in terms of substance, but this is the kind of coverage that Shakespeare and Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde never expected in their lifetimes. I can get advice from people I’ve never met or even spoken to. I can turn around and share that advice with a hundred other people with a few taps of my keyboard.

I know that a lot of people complain that technology and a global economy has spread people apart, splitting families, introduced new ways to commit sin, substituted technology for human interaction, and fed our self-centeredness. In a way, those are all correct. But then I’ll watch an old movie, one that’s only 50 years old, say, and I’ll see how people were limited by what their local grocer carried and couldn’t read a book if their local library didn’t offer it. Now a person in remote parts of, I dunno, Manitoba or something can order saffron online for a new recipe they found on a foodie blog, and a person in Venice can go on Amazon and order a book printed in the United States—or even just read reviews and decide if it’s worth it. Then I would dare the naysayers of things like Facebook to try to make it one day in that 50-years-ago world without going insane.

"Man, I wish someone would invent the iPhone so I'd have something to do while I wait for Patrick Henry to finish speaking."

Heck, even watching an episode from season one of Buffy is baffling to me—the library just got a new computer system! Only the school’s biggest nerds know how to chat online! It’s a brilliant reminder of how far we’ve come in less than two decades.

It’s an extraordinary time to be alive.

Edit: MY BOOK HAS BEEN PUBLISHED!!!!

Radicals and Royalists is now available for purchase through the CreateSpace eStore!

It will be available on Amazon.com in about 5-7 business days — So they say — or you could order it via CreateSpace NOW!!!!

AND IT IS ALREADY ON AMAZON!!!!

PRAISE THE LORD THIS DAY!! *cheers, happy dance, collapse*

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Buy a copy, and check out the Facebook fan page to join in the fun and joyness!