Mariah Walker's Blog, page 3

Do you like Dinosaurs?

I do. So for the past month, I did nothing but draw them.

Just living the dream!

Don’t read any further if you’re easily scared, because this dinosaur is ferocious. Well, at least he thinks he is. If you know someone who is under three feet tall, loves dinosaurs, and wants hard data on whether dinosaurs ate ice cream (they did), then you should get them this eBook.

It’s only available on Amazon for now, but the best part is that it’s free to borrow if you have a Prime membership. You can also buy it, but if I’ve learned anything from commercials, cute dinosaurs are priceless.

Get it on Amazon!

Get it on Amazon UK!

Hope you liked the sample! Thanks for checking it out.

Why I Love My Kindle

I hated the idea at first. It would ruin the experience of a book. I wouldn't be able to admire the cover, smell the pages, or figure out how much I had left to read. But I wanted to be able to check my ebook's formatting, and see what the fuss was about. I reluctantly gave in.

It doesn't have to be a Kindle, of course. It can be any eReader. Still, I'm very happy with my choice. (Money please, Amazon! *grabby hands*)

Now, you might not need an eReader if you only use books to prop up that uneven leg of your coffee table. A Kindle isn't thick enough to help there. But you might want to consider one if you really love books.

I do. Books have always been in my life. The first I remember reading on my own was One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, and it was a magical feeling. From there, I went on to new worlds. Mossflower Woods. Middle Earth. Arrakis. Hogwarts. Panem.

During my journey(s), I developed a method of holding a paperback and turning the pages with one hand, so I could eat with the other. Otherwise, I might not have eaten. This system does not allow the book's spine to bend, because that is horrifying. It's the only thing my left hand can do better than my right, and the patent is pending.

My transition to the Kindle took time. I didn't like how the screen flashed when I "turned" the page. Too lazy to set up my library account to get ebooks, I borrowed a physical copy of The Hunger Games.

That was a mistake.

I read the first book the day I got it. Darkness had descended by the time I had finished, and the library was closed. But I needed the second book immediately.

Since I had loaned out my grappling hooks and skeleton keys, the library wasn't an option. But Amazon had all three books in one snazzy package, and would deliver them to my Kindle. Immediately. Which was nice, because I didn't want to sleep that night anyway.

I got so wrapped up in the Games that I didn't notice the flashing after a few pages.

A few days later, I sat down to read a physical book. Despite my perfect paperback method™, I do enjoy the slow slide toward entropy (see "lazy" above). I had gotten used to propping up the screen any way I wanted, clicking buttons for the next page. Now I had to HOLD the book open? What was this, the space program? Luckily for the book, it was too good to put down.

I just moved into an apartment, and had to be selective of the books I brought with me. For reference, my bookshelf can hold no more than three juvenile koalas. Of course, now that I'm here with some of my absolute favorite books, I want to read one that I left behind. I guess I'll have to set up my eLibrary account after all…

Look, I get it. I have so many fond memories of books. The form and aesthetic has been perfected since monks in the Middle Ages toiled in their scriptoriums (which sound awesome, by the way. I want a scriptorium for my birthday). And I bet a bunch of them moaned about leaving behind the lovely papyrus scrolls and tablets of antiquity for these newfangled manuscripts.

We're in an age of transition. Our kids aren't going to care about paper as much as we do. Their kids will care even less. But you don't have to choose between electronic and physical books.

You can have both.

(And maybe, if you ask real nice, one of my koalas.)

Mmm, Centaur…

Tonight I went to a restaurant. They were having a special promotional night, so I had to order everything at once, including dessert. The pressure! You got to choose between cheesecake, crème brûlée, and a chocolate sin torte. It wasn't a difficult decision. I don't trust anyone who thinks cheese and cake go together, and crème brûlée has been voted "Most Pretentiously Accented Dessert" ten years running. As soon as I learned that chocolate was involved, I had made my decision.

Time for dessert, and I see a piece of chocolate cake go in the other direction.

Brain: CAKE.

Brain: I WANT CAKE.

Stomach: CAKE?

Then the cake came back towards me. 8D

Waitress: *Holds up cake*

Brain: MY CAKE.

Waitress: Did you order the centaur cake?

Me: MY CAKE. Wait, what?

Waitress: Oh, is this not what you ordered?

Brain: ABORT. ABORT. OBTAIN CAKE AT ALL COSTS.

Me: Uh, yeah. That's mine.

Stomach: CAKE NOW.

Only after I finished the delectable cake did I stop to think about what had transpired. Centaur cake? Whaaaaa?

Then it hit me. Sin torte. The waitress had said "sintorte cake" really quickly and my erstwhile brain heard "centaur." It's not a very reliable brain, but I think the warranty expired a few years ago.

All was well. I got what I ordered and the cake was delightful. But…

Now I really want some centaur cake.

How to Write a Novel in 6 Easy Steps*

Step 1: Write a word, any word. Don't panic, you can change it later if you don't like it.

Step 2: Write more words. Add some punctuation if you need it. Don't forget the period after the last word. Congratulations, it's a sentence!

Step 3: Write more sentences until you have a respectable paragraph.

Step 4: Write more paragraphs until you have a scene. Make sure that things happen in the scene. If nothing happened in the scene you wrote, delete it and try again.

Step 5: Write more scenes. Put them together to form a chapter.

Step 6: Repeat steps 1-5 until the story is finished. Congratulations! You have written a novel. Have a cookie, or several cookies (proceed with caution if eating several cookies).

Step 7 (Optional): Repeat steps 1-6 until madness descends.

*Warning: Steps are not all easy. Post may not be helpful.

Trick or Treat!

Hope you have lots of acorns…

… and a high midichlorian count.

One Lion's Opinion

This is what one lion thinks about The Lion King in 3D:

Don't fall for the hype. Wait for The Lion King in 4D. Then you'll get to experience the movie in four stunning dimensions when you're thrown into a dark room filled with lions.

"I can taste the fourth dimension!"

It'll be a box office smash!

Don't worry about cash, Disney. You can send me a check.

One Lion’s Opinion

This is what one lion thinks about The Lion King in 3D:

Don’t fall for the hype. Wait for The Lion King in 4D. Then you’ll get to experience the movie in four stunning dimensions when you’re thrown into a dark room filled with lions.

“I can taste the fourth dimension!”

It’ll be a box office smash!

Don’t worry about cash, Disney. You can send me a check.

The Most Tragic Story You Will Ever Read

I was in Denver this summer. I wanted cookies. These two weren't related; I like cookies everywhere. Anyway, I wanted freshly baked cookies, so I went and bought a silver cookie sheet that juuust fit in the tiny dorm oven. (The fact that the sheet was silver is essential to the story. It's that kind of story.) I also bought a pack of pre-cut dough. When I got back, I discovered that the packaging lacked high-altitude instructions. Since Denver is 5,280 feet above sea level, high-altitude instructions might be important. I shrugged it off. I've made roughly three tons of cookies in my life, so I thought I could improvise. To recap, so far we have:

Scary dorm oven
Untested cookie sheet
High altitude
No instructions
General cluelessness

Ryan and I popped the cookies in the oven, set a timer for 12 minutes, and settled down to watch Family Guy three feet from the oven. Eight minutes in, the oven announced its unhappiness with a minor explosion. I still don't know what exactly exploded, or how, but the oven began to belch an alarming amount of smoke. The oven was turned off, useless windows cracked, and arms waved frantically. We closed the doors leading to the kitchen, essentially turning it into an asphyxiating smoke box. We didn't dare take the cookies out of the oven, afraid that opening it would release enough smoke to set off the smoke detector, causing evacuations and hatred. I went downstairs to let the student at the front desk know that the fire alarm might go off; keep in mind that this building has 10 stories.

Me: By the way, where can I find the fire extinguisher on my floor, just in case?

Front desk: There is no fire extinguisher on your floor.

Me: Oh… Is there one for the building then?

Front desk: No.

Me:

As if this disturbing safety oversight weren't enough, when I got back to the smoking kitchen sans extinguisher, I realized why we hadn't set off the smoke detector: there wasn't one in the kitchen. And that's the story of how we could have been quietly immolated.

After 20 minutes, we finally got the cookies out. Ryan documented the evidence.

Bon Appétit!

Yup. The silver pan turned gold. Also observe the charred cookie imprints.

Down side: The cookies were inedible.

Bright side: The non-stick pan totally worked!

I complained to the cookie people about their lack of high-altitude instructions on Denver packaging (leaving out any mention of my own ineptitude), and they gave me a coupon for free cookie dough. I just finished the last of many normal, tasty cookies. The moral of the story is that cookies are delicious.

Surfing with my new best dolphin friends

Ryan has been teaching me how to surf. I'm on my tenth lesson or so. I've mastered the skill of falling down repeatedly, perfected my technique of horribly bruising my knee, and can now ingest up to seven gallons of salt water. But I finally got to the point where I could stand up regularly and actually ride waves, which was pretty cool. Unfortunately, I was doing it all wrong. When you surf, you're supposed to go from lying prone on the board to standing up. Instantly. If you think that this is impossible, you're onto something. I have never in my life gone from lying down to standing up in a single motion. It takes me a good ten minutes to muster up the will to get out of my cozy bed in the morning, and even then I do it in stages. I like being balanced above the water, not flailing under it, which meant that I went slow, making sure to get stable on my knees before attempting to stand up. (This led to much falling, knee-bruising, and water-ingesting.) Eventually I got good at standing up terribly.

Last lesson, Ryan told me it was time to start popping up. Popping up means you must go from lying down to standing up with no breaks for tea or coffee in between. If you don't like tea or coffee, there are no breaks for cookies, either. It is very sad. Anyway, he told me we would catch one more wave and then rest. I was determined to pop up on the next wave. Somehow, miraculously, my feet came into place and I stood without a problem, all the way to shore. There were promotions all around. When I went again, I thought about how I had done it, where I had placed my feet and how I had balanced. Ryan pushed me into a wave and I promptly tipped into the salt water. Apparently I was overthinking it by thinking about it at all. Popping up is a twitchy creature because you can't learn how to do it by watching it, reading about it, or thinking about it. You just have to fail at it many, many times. The more you do, the less you do. Yes, that is from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, one of my favorite movies. If you haven't seen it, you should watch this clip of the main character getting a surf lesson, which is basically my life.

(My teacher is much more helpful, but I still sometimes feel that it might be best to lie on the board and let the ocean take me.)

Today, I went surfing again. That water was very, very cold. I had Ryan's wetsuit, which is, as you may have guessed, for boys. As a boy's wetsuit, it is tight in some places and loose in other places, and overall I imagine it must be mildly comical. However, it keeps me warm in the veryverycold water, which I appreciate. I just wanted to catch waves when we began, so I kept to my trusted method of standing up like an idiot. About halfway through Ryan asked if I wanted to try paddling into and catching waves myself (more impossible tasks for another day), and I decided that I should probably know how to actually stand up before trying those things. After a few attempts that hopefully provided entertainment to onlookers on the beach, I popped up, again and again. It was miraculous. (I'm aware that I've already used that modifier, but I'm convinced that any popping ever occurred is miraculous, especially when I am the popper-upper.)

Now, I know what you're thinking: "I was promised delightful sea creatures, WHERE ARE THE DOLPHINS?!??" Well, they're right about here.

I had just gathered my board and was returning to the ocean, as both Poseidon and I are wont to do, when I saw a gray fin slice through the water a few yards away. I've seen enough nature documentaries to know the fins of major underwater denizens, but I still held a little Q&A session with my brain.

Me: Dolphin!

Brain: Dolphin?

Me: Dolphin?!

Brain: Lol, it's a dolphin.

Me: :[

(Brain: 1, Me: 0)

I confess, I almost wanted it to be a shark because I think that they are friendly creatures. My goal in life is to give one a high-five. I guess it's good that I have yet to achieve this goal, because I don't know what I would live for after that.

Since I know too much about animals, I have a healthy respect for dolphins, since they are not always friendly. But this pod of five or more seemed very happy, arcing out of the water and catching some major air. It would have made for truly spectacular photos, but, alas, I was surfing instead—I lead a truly tragic life. Though I would have liked to capture them, it was nice to experience them, and to really watch, without worrying about framing, exposure, losing my camera to the briny depths. I don't have any photos, but picture an ocean rolling with gray-blue waves that wash you with spray as they pass. Look to the horizon as dolphin after dolphin launches itself into the evening sky. Turn back to shore, catch a wave, and pop up.

Then paddle out and give every single dolphin a high-five. Because that would be awesome.

Test

I writted a post.