I’m enjoying writing though. I’m primarily writing biographical stuff and observations, rather than fiction - I’ve tried writing fiction in the past and always found myself staring blankly at the screen. This seems to be working much better for me and the words are coming much quicker.

Everything tends to be quite short, sketches of the people and things I see around me. Honestly, it’s possible that what I’m writing is a blog on paper … short pieces that talk about what’s going on around me. But I’m not sure whether that’s accurate, since it all has a different feel to the kind of thing I write here.

Yes, I’m rambling I know. I’ve decided to just let myself ramble in all of my writing with the goal of separating the process of creation from the process of editing. I feel that the mechanical process of writing, of exercising the writing part of my brain, is valuable in itself. Sure, I may be writing complete nonsense, but I’m writing and I’ve had trouble doing that for a while.

The one thing I do plan to avoid for as long as possible is any attempt at writing poetry. I wrote some poetry when I was in high school, and it was absolutely execrable. I’m not going there again any time soon.

Wodehouse wrote dozens and dozens of books, and is probably most famous for his books featuring Jeeves, the consummate gentleman’s gentleman. Without Jeeves, his employer Bertie Wooster would be quite incapable of functioning. The Jeeves and Wooster stories are unmatched for their clever wit and style and complete irrelevance to anything in my life today. Wodehouse is complete escapism, a way to fling myself into a world quite different to anything I’ve ever known.

He writes primarily about the period between 1910 and 1930, or thereabouts, and the majority of his characters can loosely be described as “the idle rich”. Lots of minor aristocracy, country houses, butlers, parlor maids, and opportunities for long trips to the South of France. Strangely, none of these things have much prominence in my day-to-day life. But Wodehouse’s language is an absolute delight — his ability to skewer the pompous, pretentious, or prissy, is unmatched.

I recommended Wodhouse to dozens of people in the bookstore I work in. Several of them have taken up my suggestion, and I’m glad to say that I’ve created some real Wodehouse fans here in town.

If you’re looking for a book with which to begin, I suggest skipping Wodehouse’s earliest works and jumping straight into the Jeeves stories with Carry On Jeeves, the book in which Jeeves and Bertie Wooster first make each others’ acquaintance.

The town I live in has made a big investment in bike paths, so it really is a terrific place to ride. Other than needing to cross a road every so often, I can ride for 15 or 20 miles without ever going on a street, which is obviously much safer than trying to ride with traffic — drivers just really don’t see bike riders. I had a great time, because I had no particular place to go. I took a couple of sandwiches, bought a soda about half way through my ride, and sat under a tree to read for a couple of hours before I rode home. Just a lovely day.

This evening I made pizza for dinner, and it’s time to go see if it’s ready… more in the next gripping installment!

Honestly, I think if you put a gun to my head I’d be hard pushed to define the difference between chill or low fi music, and elevator music. But there really is a difference — it’s not necessarily simply background music, although it is quiet and atmospheric. At its best, there’s a kind of swirling and moving feel to the music that gets deep inside you. And elevator music really doesn’t have that quality.

We decided to pass on coffee, figuring that caffeine and chill wasn’t a very good combination. Instead, we split a bottle of Petit Syrah and got pleasantly buzzed. Walked home late, fell into bed, and this morning I’m waking up with a cup of coffee as I write this post.

According to my parents. I was named after Nikki Giovanni, the poet who, like me, doesn’t often use the name Cornelia (she was born Yolanda Cornelia Giovanni). I suppose a little of the literary lustre must have rubbed off on to me; I’m the manager of a bookstore in one of the more artsy parts of the small town I live in. In theory the bookstore carries a little bit of everything, but we do have something of a specialty in self-help, self-actualization, pop psychology, therapy, etc etc since the community we serve buys a lot of that type of book.

What else is there to know? I eat a mostly vegetarian diet, although I’m not particularly militant about it. I do eat meat occasionally, but not very often — although one of my favorite meals is beer can chicken, sometimes known as chicken on a throne. Maybe I’ll drop the recipe for beer can chicken in a future post.