An interesting question popped up in /r/genealogy this week.
What’s the distance between your place of birth and your current home?
For me the answer(s) are
- Right now, in Northeastern Oklahoma to my birthplace? About 180 miles.
- From my birthplace to where I grew up in Southeastern Ohio? 1,088 miles.
- Childhood home in Southeastern Ohio to my current home in Northeastern Oklahoma? 938 miles.
On a side note, this weekend marked 7 years here at Wayfarer’s Refuge. It seems longer.
So what about you? What’s the distance between your place of birth and your current home?
Dinnertime
You know how you spend hours scrolling Instagram and YouTube and TikTok and you see all those cool recipes? I do the same thing. I’ve got a folder of recipes bookmarked on IG that I’ve been meaning to try, and I finally got around to attempting one this week.
WhatsMomCooking had an Italian Stromboli recipe that looked tempting, so I made a couple Tuesday night. They came out pretty tasty, though the ham I used—pre-sliced deli meat from Walmart—was a little too salty. The overall verdict was that the concept works, but maybe we should try different meat next time.
The trick she used in the video of using the parchment paper to help fold it over worked out well for me.
I used Rao’s Pizza Sauce because we generally like their pasta sauces. One jar covered the two stromboli I made and gave us about half a cup for dipping, which was perfect for the three of us. I added some parmesan cheese both inside and outside, along with melted butter, Italian seasoning, and garlic powder on the outside. The recipe called for 20 minutes at 400°. Our oven runs a little hot, even on the convection cycle, so I ran 395° and they came out nicely browned.
We’ll try it again next month, maybe with some turkey, chicken, and something else.
Football
Our grandson’s team lost their game Saturday, 38-6. They looked a lot better than they did last week, with a few flashes of offensive brilliance. The thing that’s hurting them the most is a lack of tackling skills. They have good pursuit of the ball on defense, but they can’t quite close the deal and make the tackles that count. Still, they’re showing a lot of improvement.
Tulane looked really good for most of their game against # 17 Kansas State. They just couldn’t hold on at the end. I’m betting KSU drops a few spots, and Tulane may well move into the Top 25. I think they’ve got a fair shot at making the expanded playoffs this year.
I was not at all sure about how Michigan’s game was going to go. Texas came into the Big House as 7-point favorites, and it’s been several years since anyone did that. They beat us in 2005, the last year we played. But last season, they lost to Washington in the playoffs, and we beat Washington the following week.
But last year’s record doesn’t matter. We lost 13 players to the draft, and Texas didn’t. We beat Fresno State last week, and I said at the time that if we played that way against Texas, we’d get beat.
This is one of the few college games where I feel divided loyalties, too. I was born in Texas, and Dad was from Austin, the home of UT. But he went to Michigan, so I wear the Maize and Blue.
Michigan got really lucky on Texas’ opening drive, and not so lucky on their own. Ewers looked great, and our O-line just wasn’t firing on all cylinders, much like last week.
I did catch myself saying a couple of times “Corum would have gotten more yards on that one.”
That second-quarter interception hurt. I think we got spoiled last season by McCarthy’s accuracy.
I think Michigan needs to make better use of Alex Orji. We can’t just put him in for single plays and expect teams to not plan for those plays. I’d like to see Michigan play Orji as a double threat, like a running back who can throw really well. Rotate him in and out just like a regular back. I think that would give our offense a lot more flexibility.
One of the post-game summaries I read rightly called Michigan a shell of its national championship team. And Ewers is a legit Heisman candidate leading a highly ranked team that almost won the natty last season. So yeah, Michigan didn’t look great, but the team that beat us deserved to win.
Writing
Definitely getting some writing done this week.
Ghost
I got about 2,750 words in on Ghost this week as I caught up on some outlining details, like character history and such. Not as much as I wanted to have done at this point, but I think I’m primed to hit the ground running next week.
I’m in the middle of Chapter 22 right now, and I think this will come in around 30 chapters. I’ve got 23 and 24 essentially outlined, as much as I ever do. My outlines are usually about a paragraph or so, maybe 50-100 words, rarely done in complete sentences.
I’m also getting to the point that I need to contact some people in the real world to ask questions about processes in the District Attorney’s office, the Public Defender’s Office (which they call the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System), and the Department of Corrections. I learned during my research that state offices in Oklahoma don’t like sharing their email addresses on their web pages for some reason. DOC shared a general address—on their Facebook page.
I also learned that few offices seem to have designated media contacts. That just strikes me as odd. I’d think a state agency would want to broadcast that person’s contact information far and wide.
After
Here’s a question for the two or three of you who are reading After.
I have seen authors in the past switch from first-person POV to third-person POV. The main example I bring up when I talk about this is The Martian by Andy Weir. In the scenes on Mars, he writes in first person. In the scenes on Earth, he writes in third, and I think the whole back-and-forth works really well.
I decided to do the same thing in In Plain Sight, the third book in The Sad Girl series (which I haven’t yet released, I know). There was so much happening in multiple places that I thought it would be better to write much of the book in third person even though the other two books were in first. I think I pulled it off. My editor and beta reader agreed. So if I ever release that book, that’s what you’ll see.
I’m somewhat tempted to write portions of Gabe and Cece’s stories in third person. But one of the big themes in After at this point is that Adam doesn’t know if his brother or sister survived The Event. In fact, the chapters that I wrote last week cover the beginning of Adam’s journey west to his brother’s ranch in Montana to find out what happened to Gabe and his family. So if I were to write and post those chapters before Adam actually finds out what happened, it’d ruin the suspense for everyone.
Maybe I’ll write those chapters and not post them until after everyone finds out who survived.
Oh, yeah: the question. Which do you like better? First-person or third?
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