This last week my life has taken the work/life balance conflict to new levels. I am up against a hard deadline on a major project at the day job. Meanwhile my building was on lockdown with half a million people expressing their love for the Seahawks on the street outside. Last weekend my family passed a major milestone – all four of us rode the lift and came down the mountain together. And on Saturday, my youngest daughter and I caught the matinee of Pacific Northwest Ballet‘s production, The Sleeping Beauty. It’s a true classic, rich in symbolism and full of an entirely different, more graceful kind of balance. Read More
ByGD
Sleeping Beauty at Pacific Northwest Ballet 2014
ByGD
Book Report: A Year of Wonders
After randomly picking up Heliopolis, I put library holds on books by each of the remaining featured Iceland Writers Retreat authors. Then I wandered over to the fiction section of the Ballard branch to browse the shelves, and there was Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders. Read More
ByGD
Pursuing Excellence
As a government employee, succession planning is a common theme at my office; civil service is out of fashion, and we are what in HR circles is termed an “aging workforce.” What this means to me as the staff writer is that I spend a disconcerting amount of time writing death notices for our internal communications. I hate to say it, but we have boilerplate for this sort of thing. Read More
ByGD
Book Report: Heliopolis
In preparation for Iceland Writers Retreat, I am reading at least one book by each of the featured authors before I go. Although it’s a bit weird to review a book by someone who is about to become your teacher, I read best when I know I have to report on it later, so here we are. While I was reading Iain Reid’s The Truth About Luck, I took the girls to the Central Library for a children’s film festival. Afterwards, I browsed fiction, keeping an eye on my oldest daughter as she moved among the homeless in the manga section nearby. I found Heliopolis by James Scudamore first. Read More
ByGD
Book Report: The Truth About Luck
After I signed up for Iceland Writers Retreat, it occurred to me that I should probably be familiar with the writing of the featured authors who will be leading the workshops. That probably should have occurred to me before I committed, but if stories needn’t be linear, why should life be? At first I wasn’t going to blog about them, because if it’s awkward critiquing your friend’s book on the internet, how much worse would it be to criticize a future teacher? But I can’t read critically unless I know I’m going to have to type those thoughts later, so here goes. Read More