Day 15: Leviathan

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld.  ISBN: 9781416971733.

This is one of those books that makes me think about all the other books I've read over the past twenty-something years.  Most of which I've forgotten.  So far I can't say this has been a fairly memorable read, but as I'm only a quarter of the way through the four-hundred and a half pages I'll reserve judgment a little longer. 

Still, I'm enjoying this.  The large print has been easy on my eyes, which is a nice change of pace from the strain of driving (I've finally stopped seeing Volkswagen Beetles when I close my eyes, thank you).  And as far as Young Adult literature goes, this is one of the most age appropriate things I've read in a long time.  This is the kind of book I would have really appreciated when I was between 8-12, where I was reading at a very high level both vocabulary and concepts, but wasn't quite ready for adult reading. 

On the other hand Leviathan is very well suited for this age range I think, and maybe even a little beyond.  There are some complex themes, or at least themes that have the potential to be complex.  The characters started out as very rough sketches, but I get the feeling they'll soon be fleshed out.  The one problem I do have with the novel is that it does that common thing of, "I'm a strong kid because during times of danger I manage not to break down and grieve."  I think this might be a potentially harmful thing to teach kids.  I know there have been times where I've taken the martyr role in my grieving or suffering as a child and I would have been better off to just cry and let my mom hold me instead of keeping it inside. 

It's strange because I find myself more emotional as an adult than I ever did as a child, but then I lived in a very emotionally heavy household with one parent who was incapable of dealing with my emotions, and one who was so busy dealing with everyone else's that I just wanted to give her a break.  Even after my father and brother were removed from the household I felt unable to unburden myself to my mother, which led to a lot of time spent alone when I felt sad that might have been improved by someone else's presence. 

Today I'm almost always on the verge of tears, and every now and again I go to my fiance and let him comfort me and reassure me.  It's terrible that it's taken me over ten years to find someone else to take on this role for me, I should have allowed more people into my life, but reading all those adventure stories where the heroes and heroines aren't allowed to cry, where a lack of emotion was seen as a boon rather than a potentially crippling emotional flaw (which, trust me, it is), made me slow to open up.  This probably prevented me from making a lot of friends, which was difficult enough due to moving around every couple of years.

So someone tell me, why don't we have main characters who are so stricken by grief that they curl up into balls in their bedrooms for hours at a time before picking themselves back up and facing the world?  Is it because crying isn't romantic enough?  I can tell you one thing, I feel closer to characters who mirror my emotions more than I do the ones who remain stoic under all circumstances no matter what.  I read to be reminded of my humanity, not to be whisked into a world of wooden characters and flat emotions.

Day 14: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith.  ISBN: 9780446563086.

Abraham Lincoln by himself is a fascinating person; or rather I should say character. At this point he isn't much more than a character, a figure, in our national history. He is almost the perfect pre-formed character to be inserted into a crazy whirlwind adventure of vampire slaying.

I have to say I've enjoyed the depth this book gives Lincoln as a character. I'm not sure how much research Grahame-Smith gave this novel, and since he thanks Google and Starbucks in his Acknowledgements with no mention of a librarian or even a serious research assistant... Well, let's just say I'm taking almost everything as fiction, although many of the "journal passages" do sound like direct quotes from Abraham Lincoln, however out of context they may be. In any case, I still found similarities between Grahame-Smith's work and the work of historians.

No, I'm not hinting that there were actually vampires and that they instigated the Civil War. I am hinting that as much as historians like to pretend they know every single detail of famous lives, it's just not true. There's a little bit of fiction wrapped up in the hi-stories we tell, a little bit of guesswork and conjecture. We think certain things influenced certain people to think and act in a certain way, but since we can't go back and ask anyone we'll never know. Not that they would necessarily tell us the truth about their lives to begin with. I have another historians' secret for you: All history is revisionist history.

History is a messy, dirty business that involves plowing through gossip, scandals, contradicting facts, strong opinions, inane details, misconceptions, and downright lies. And, oh-my-god, do I love it. Researching papers for my history degree was one of the most pleasurable experiences I've ever had, not just because I was able to pull all of these strings from hundreds of different sources into a compact eight to ten page paper, but also because I came across facts of life from a time period I knew nothing about, and would have known nothing about had I not been doing research. I'll share one with you: in the 1850's, they put opium in everything (and if I remember correctly this lasted up until the 1910's). And I do mean everything. Chances are you had a great-grandparent who was weaned off of breast milk with Opium-tastic Baby Formula.*

There's another secret pleasure that I've experienced as a historian: my long lasting love of microfilm and research. Having someone with a background in history go to library school is like giving an angry cat with sharp claws spiked armor (I smell another t-shirt idea here). I loved the fact that my major required more research than most at Antioch; I loved being the only one to spend time in the microfilm room, with the faint smell of vinegar and the soft glow of the reader. I prided myself on learning how to load a film in less than five seconds and using print indexes because the Apple iMacs running OS10 were prohibitively slow and crashy. Apples can't get viruses my ass.

Basically what I'm saying is that history is an exciting, adventurous profession. And I don't mean profession as in a career, because unless you have a real drive to be poor but possessed, it's not something I would recommend people pursue as a livelihood. I mean profession in the way that religious people have a profession of faith. There has to be a certain calling and a certain love, a willingness to set aside the cleanliness and barrenness of the computer and handle the documents that were touched and soiled by the hands of the people you're studying. That's what history is. It is dusty documents and forgotten people, but it's also the drive to bring those things to light for a generation that needs to stop and slow down for a moment and remember what ocean they crawled out of, and look back at how long it took them to get there.


*Not an actual brand.

Day 13: Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman. ISBN: 9780380789023.

Virus, pages 160-162.

Yesterday my fiancé and I found ourselves in lovely Elizabethtown, Kentucky. We left Alabama on Wednesday, after I had a job interview with a state university in Tennessee. I felt pretty good just getting into Kentucky, but was dreading the drive around Louisville this morning. If you ask me, Louisville is one of the worst cities to drive anywhere within a 20 mile radius of. We've several times been forced to go into the city because some joker thought it would be hilarious to feed the 265-beltway entrance ramp onto I-71 less than a mile away from the exit ramp. Ugh.

Anyway, during the drive back to Kent, Ohio to drop off the future Mr. Campbell and spend a little time with the in-laws, I was thinking about this short story. As an avid Tetris player both on the original Game Boy and on any platform I can get today, I found this particularly appealing. The gist of the story is that there's an addictive video game that acts as a virus that infects the human population: people pass it on to their friends, who end up playing it and passing it on to their friends. The more they play, the more they want to play, to the point where they are playing it even in their sleep or in their minds as they go about their daily tasks.

I've had jobs like that. I've had social interactions like that. And I've certainly played video games like that. Unfortunately with video games you don't have anything to show for it at the end of the day. As much as you advance your little digital avatar through the maze, as many little digital demons as you've killed, as many sexy princesses as you've chatted with (even if it is a real person on the other end of the thousand miles of cables), what proof do you have that you've bettered yourself in anyway? There's only so much hand-eye coordination that you can gain and use practically from video games. Okay yeah, Wii Bowling might give you a general idea about what stances work best for you, but it's not going to take into account the wax on the floors or the weight of the ball. When it comes down to it, you still only know how to throw around virtual balls, and they aren't real buddy. (That so needs to be a t-shirt, who wants one?)

I think Gaiman captures this point very clearly not only in the demise of the human race as everyone becomes addicted to the game, stops going to work, and dies in their own filth from hunger because they're so addicted to the game that's all they have the willpower to do; but also because the game itself is representative of what you have left from energy spent on this task. Nothing. The goal of the game is to have nothing left on the screen, and therefore nothing left in your life. Think about that. All that coinage you amassed on W.O.W., all those crops you harvest on Farmville. It's nothing.

What are you neglecting in favor of that? How many novels could you have finished in the time you were using? How many hours of exercise? How many rewarding and engaging conversations? Hell, you could even improve your typing so u doan al tipe liek ths. You could be reading more of my blog posts, and that would be awesome.

I'm not saying video games don't have their benefits. God knows I love me some Katamari Damacy on stressful days, but please, don't let it eat your life. You have so much more to live for. And let's face it, when the zombie apocalypse comes, you'll be glad you learned knitting needle kung fu.  Oh god, I hope that's real.

Day 12: The Story Sisters

The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman.  ISBN: 9780307393869.

I believe this is the first novel I've read by Alice Hoffman, although I've been tempted to read some of her young adult literature.  I was surprised to find a lot of myself in this novel.  I was expecting more of a fairytale existence for the Story family and what I got was a brutal reminder of how hard my teenage years were.  The characters were so real in this that I had trouble figuring out which one I related to the most, so I'll say that I related to them all, but especially Meg, who retreated into her books as her home life became more difficult.

Elv, the eldest daughter, creates her own world, complete with its own language.  She and Claire, the youngest, have a special bond because Elv saved her from a predatory teacher.  Elv eventually begins to use drugs, stay out at all hours of the night, and be promiscuous, all while remaining half in her made up world.  I cannot tell you how close the events in this book came to my real life story, especially the middle part of the book, but I will try without revealing too many family secrets or too many spoilers.

Like Elv, when my brother hit a certain age he started to live in his own world, not quite as detailed as Arnish, and he completely withdrew from the family and became a stranger.  By the time we was fourteen he was sneaking out at night, my mother couldn't keep him in the house and didn't even know how to try, he came home high or drunk and skipped school.  I played the roll of Meg in my household, trying to avoid confrontation with my brother whenever possible, who was more often cruel than not.  My mother tried to do everything, but she couldn't make him go to therapy, she couldn't make him go to school, and she couldn't make him stay home at night.

One night when he was god-knows-where, I found his drug paraphenalia in the bathroom closet and I showed my mother.  It was not the first time I told her I couldn't live with my brother anymore, that he would ruin both of us if he stayed, but it was the first time my mother listened.  That night my mother made plans with her boyfriend to drive my brother to my dad's house in Oklahoma and drop him off.  My brother came home late that night and was too stoned or tired to protest.  I can't imagine what that drive must have been like for my mother, and I'm amazed that my brother didn't try to run away.

My brother, like Elv, eventually improved, and through oddly similar means.  Those years of quiet were much needed to see me through to my full potential.  I was able to make friends without the stigma of being my brother's "uncool" sister.  I had my friends and I had my enemies, and there were no other connections.  It took a long time for me to reconnect to my brother, as it did for Elv and Claire, and some of the losses we both faced in the meantime were devastating, but now we share the joy of watching his son grow up.  And I no longer have to fear his demons.

Day 11: The Story Sisters

The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman.  ISBN: 9780307393869.

I think one of the things I love most about borrowing books from the library or buying them used is all the extras you get with them.  The left over inscriptions and dedications, the underlining, forgotten bookmarks, and lingering smells.  These are objects that carry their own history, however ephemeral and distant.  You can trace your fingers over the edges of the book that were touched by someone else, but in most cases you will never know who held hat book before you.  There's still that connection though, there is some bond or similarity that caused you to pick up the same book and read it, regardless of your individual responses to it.

I wonder about the person who had The Story Sisters before me.  Whoever they were they lived in a house with a dank, musky smell; perhaps a combination of perfume and cigarettes, or incense.  I can almost smell dirt on the pages, the longer I keep them open the fainter the smell gets, either because I become accustomed to it, or because it is slowly disipating from the paper.

These are not exactly new thoughts, but they have become more refined and intense as I grew from passionate library user to history major to library student and hopefully to professional librarian one day.  As a young woman and even today I go back and forth between wanting a copy of a book that has been circulated as much as possible to one that has never been checked out, despite the obviously outdated cover. 

I feel pity for llibrary books that have never circulated.  Sometimes they are even the rare gems that everyone should have been reading, but were passed over in favor of the latest vampire novel.  These were items selected by diligent librarians who wanted to improve the literary tastes of their patronage, who purchased that well received first novel in the hopes that someone would pick it up and love it, and maybe recommend it to their friends.  I love these books because it feels like they've been waiting for me on the shelf for all those years.

But the battered and abused have their appeal too, as do the brand new copies with shiny covers, those that have been handled and those that will be handled.  There is a joy in being on of the first to read something new.  I think that's why my fiance loves reading my blog posts before they go live, it's why some people go to release parties or pre-order books from their favorite authors.  If they're one of the first or one of the few it makes them feel like they have some ownership over the story, and they do.  They can ruin it for other people.

I think that's why I like sharing my thoughts about the books I'm reading rather than reviews.  It doesn't really give much away.  I can expose important details about the books to you, but until you read them you won't know how they relate to the story; you only know how they affect me.  Rather than seeing the fingerprint I left on the book, you're seeing the fingerprint it's left on me.  And now I have to wonder if and when you read the same books I'm reading, if you'll think of me, and what the book will make you think about.

Day 10: (Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents

(Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class by Nan Mooney.  ISBN: 9780807011386.

What a terrible time we live in.  It seems that I'm not the only person struggling to make it in this cutthroat world, not by a long shot.  People with good jobs and better educations are suffering too, just because they picked the wrong career it seems.  They chose to pursue a career that they could be passionate about.

The appeal to be happy over wealthy is so strong.  It's funny that one of the most lucrative professions (lawyers) has the highest percentage of people who are dissatisfied with their careers.  Meanwhile it's hard to even get into librarianship because no one retires from it.  I'm entering a profession where even I know someone who literally died in their career.  From old age.

Reading this book was not a comforting thing, well, not completely.  There was comfort knowing that there are people who are much better off than I am right now who are still in debt, but it's sad too.  I'm rethinking everything I want and how realistic it really is, right down to even getting married.  And I have so much privilege, you would think that starting out as ahead as I did, I would get a little further than I am right now.

Things I have going for me:

• No debt...yet. 
• My mother paid for my undergraduate, with contributions from both sets of grandparents, and some of my own very small savings.
•  I snagged a good job working in insurance after graduating from Antioch College and was able to put away 10,000 in savings before I discovered that the job was killing me.  Literally, that job would have killed me.
• Because of these two factors I don't have any student loans.
• I have good friends.
•  Even though I'm unemployed I have a friend who is letting me eat and sleep at her place for free.  I would be in a much worse situation right now if she was not so generous, and it's honestly more than I deserve.
• I'm still living off of my mother's income.
• She's paying my gas money every month ($50) which allows me to go visit my fiancé every once a month, at least while gas is still under $3/gal.
• She pays for emergencies and necessary job searching things like an interview suit, business cards, car insurance.

Despite all of this my resources are running thin.  I know at some point my friend won't be able or willing to keep me around, even though I'm gone for 1/3 of every month.  The longer I'm out of a job the worse I feel as a person, not so much because I'm not making money, but because I'm not contributing to society (except for the volunteer jobs).  And what's worse, when I run out of savings (I started with $5000 when I graduated in August and I'm down to $3000) I'll either have to tap the IRA I bought myself as a birthday present when I turned 23 (with a whopping $500 in it), or I'll have to move in with my mother and sell my car.  If this happens...  If this happens no matter how much I love my fiancé we will probably not be able to get married.

He knows this.  We've talked about it.  It is distressing, especially since if you had asked me two years ago if I thought I'd ever get married I would have scoffed at you.  I want to marry my fiancé because I can't see not being married to him in my future.  It feels like the right thing to do.  But I question whether it will be financially possible for me to marry him, and I can't help but be a little angry, because I did the best I could even working three jobs in grad school, and it wasn't enough.

And that's not all: I'll be giving up other things that I would love to have in my life that many people in previous generations just had dropped in their laps.  I'm not having children; I doubt that I will ever own a house or even a condo; and I don't foresee being able to retire.  Ever.

The truly sad thing about that first one, I'm starting to want children.  For the longest time I was adamantly against even the idea of having children.  Not because I hate them, but because they didn't fit into the lifestyle I wanted and I couldn't imagine giving up that much of myself for someone else.  But now I've found someone I would be willing to have children with, despite the ginormous heads they would have (his side, not mine), and it seems like that choice has been ripped away from me.  I didn't miss it so much when I thought I still had a chance about having children, but it pisses me off to realize that my options are financial solvency or having a child I can't afford.

Resources, it's all about resources.  In the animal kingdom predators increase their numbers to reduce large populations.  Unfortunately we can't just let people die, because that would be "wrong."  But we can allow credit card and private loan companies to completely ruin peoples' lives just because they wanted something better or because the only way they could pay for a hospital visit was with a credit card.  These predatory companies are worse than those found in the animal kingdom, because they are farming us so they can kill us again for yet more profit, hoping that even if we do get our heads back above water we'll sink down again.  And then it will be over.

Day 9: On the Road

On the Road by Jack Kerourac.  ISBN: 9781415943403 (audiobook).

In the hot, hot Alabama mid-day my fiance and I are hiding out in our bedroom, normally my mother's, and finishing up the last disc of On the Road.  Our own trip is slowly coming to an end.  My nephew, his mother, and my brother left after Easter service and now it is just the three of us in the house.  The house feels quieter, but somehow just as full.

My entire life I have dealt Dean and Sal's drive to travel; to move on; to go, man, go.  I like to call myself a vagabond sometimes.  It makes all the moving seem a little more romantic than it really is, than people think it is; moving sucks.  I haven't been in one place for more than four years.  Ever.  I don't know that I'm even capable of having a face-to-face friendship that lasts more than a year or two.  There's something sad about that.

But I've had opportunities too from all the travel.  I've seen more of the country than most people and I've figured out that despite some scenery and food and a few strange customs, that people are pretty much the same everywhere.  That's not to say that there aren't any differences, just that they are so small and insignificant that I have no fear that I can survive anywhere.  I don't care if I end up in California or Alabama or Montana.  I don't care if I only stay for two years or if I stay there forever.  I think I'm much more flexible than a number of people I've met.

I have itchy feet, but I also have feet that desire familiar ground.  I've been moving so long that I think I'm finally ready to move somewhere and not intend to move somewhere else.  I feel like I've been dragged and pushed across the country and the world my entire life, and in many ways I have.  I am worn thin emotionally from starting over and over and over everytime. 

I have had the fortune of having good friends, and the misfortune of losing them again.  I have had the fortune of seeing wonderful things, only to return and find that they've been torn down.  I have had the most delicious food, only to learn that they closed because a McDonald's moved next doors.  I don't think it's the loss that's so sad; we lose and gain things naturally during our lifetimes.  We outgrow friends, and places have a tendency to come and go, to change; but my losses were so sudden.  I'm a collection of loose ends; some stillness might help me weave them back in.

Day 8: Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman.  ISBN: 9780380789023.

The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories.  Pages 74-110.

I wasn't so pleased with the plot of this story, but it followed Gaiman as writer dealing with Hollywood, which I'm sure is completely different than dealing with book publishers.  The one thing I did get from this short story was a fantastic quote about being a writer and how obnoxious it must be.

"The irritating question they ask us - us being writers - is, 'Where do you get your ideas?'

"And to answer is: Confluence.  Things come together.  The right ingredients and suddenly: Abracadabra!"

This makes so much sense to me, not just creatively but in every day life, trying to get by and get things completed.  There are times when I am moved to clean the kitchen or reorganize the closets.  More recently all that energy has been going to writing cover letters, being unemployed and all.  Writing cover letters is possibly the most tortuous part of unemployment.  Forget the shame, forget not having money to eat out or pay my car insurance: sitting in front of the computer every morning and forcing myself to write a page and a half about myself and my experiences to match a job description, only to wake up and do it again the next day, is a worse punishment than ever bestowed by those bastards on Mount Olympus.  Hm, I bet that would be an interesting rewrite of the Greek myths actually.  Feel free to steal the idea, I'm not going to write it.

I've actually left cover letters dead in the water because I couldn't even force myself to write them.  Having 8+ months of rejection under my belt has not helped matters at all in this respect.  Maybe if there was some promise of receiving even an interview, it would make it worth while to slog through those cover letters.  Instead I sit in my pajamas and stare at the cat, hating my miserable life.

However, on the rare occasion I get this sudden burst of energy and I am all about writing those cover letters.  When I get like that I can churn out a good cover letter in about an hour and nothing feels better.  I go out, and I take a nice long walk to the library.  At the very least I feel like I've done something and don't feel guilty watching Netflix movies.  Getting out from underneath that weight of guilt, even momentarily, is blissful.  It's unfortunate that it doesn't come more often.  But yes, I agree with Gaiman, that feeling of "confluence" can make all the difference in your life whether you're creating art, writing a paper, or a daily task that you don't particularly care for.  Sometimes it pays off to go ahead and slog through the pain, but other times you just have to wait for that inspiration.

Day 7: Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman.  ISBN: 9780380789023.

The Price from pages 51to 58 is a charming story about a feline who makes sacrifices for a family he chooses to fight for. It also has a very remarkable last paragraph in its simplicity and its depth.

"I wonder what we did to deserve the Black Cat.  I wonder who sent him.  And, selfish and scared, I wonder how much more he has to give."

I myself adopted a black cat some ten plus years ago from a pet store that hosted rescue cats in Montgomery, Alabama as a teenager.  Now I find myself back in Alabama, although in a different house and in a completely different situation.  My fiance is asleep in the next room, and I'm diligently typing away on my mother's computer.  Outside there are some neighborhood cats, some who probably belong to other neighbors, but others you can tell are a little ragged, and would probably be more so if my mother wasn't feeding them.  It's interesting to watch how they interact with each other.  Right now a grey tabby seems to be standing guard while a black cat with a white bib and boots eats, and just now they've switched positions.  I know they are not as social as dogs, but they do seem to have their own social order and society.

Meanwhile, my heffalump of a cat Simon is being both hefty and lumpy on the couch in the other room.  Simon was a Christmas cat.  A few months before, my mother kicked my brother out of the house for some very serious problems that were negatively affecting both of our lives and it was the first Christmas without him.  My mom was still recovering from the divorce only a few years prior, and she gave me a choice: Christmas tree or cat.  I never did like Christmas trees and what could be more fitting and in the spirit of the season than taking in a new family member who would otherwise be out in the cold.

We went to the pet store near our apartment building and looked at the few kittens they had from the Humane Society or ASPCA.  They all had fleas and some of them looked downright ill.  My mother wanted a little orange tabby, but he seemed irritable when held and had patches of fur missing.  Today I may have taken the orange kitten knowing that the ones who don't look healthy are harder to adopt.  But I was 14 going on 15 and I wanted a cat that would match my demeanor.  I picked up a little black kitten who was mostly ears and looked vaguely bat-like.  He was playing with the others, but calmly.  When I held him he snuggled in close to me and began purring rather than struggling or trying to climb over me.  My mother picked up a very cute puppy and we introduced the two to see how he would get along with other animals.  He was more curious than anything else and did not seem distraught by the interaction.  He came home with us.

For the first day or two I tried to come up with a better name for him than Simon.  I dislike giving animals human names and I wanted something that would better fit his personality but my mom vetoed anything I suggested, and they weren't very good suggestions anyway.  So Simon it was and Simon it has been ever since.  And he has been for me there through it all, taking care of me and my mother. He was there when I left for college and kept my mother company; he traveled with her to Germany and was there for me when I spent ten months with her on co-op; he was there when my grandmother died and dutifully crawled into my luggage to make me laugh.  He's here now to sleep at the foot of the bed, with my someday-to-be husband sleeping the coolest part of the Alabama morning away.  But I know he won't be there forever, and even though there will be other cats to come and bring joy to our lives, there will be no cat like Simon. He has given everything to us that we could ever ask for, and I only hope we've been able to do the same.

My big Heffalump cat, Simon.  April 2010.

Day 6: On the Road

On the Road by Jack Kerourac.  ISBN: 9781415943403 (audiobook).

During the first leg of Sal's trip he eats nothing but ice cream and apple pie. Being someone who appreciates food the way I do, I thought this particular quirk had some interesting merits and problems.  On the one hand, eating something as American as apple pie all across the country would give you an excellent way of tasting the delicate differences in spices, crust, and the apples used.  But I wonder if those differences are even present in today's current culture and grocery system.

In the few places lucky enough to have a diner or greasy spoon, most of them still have to rely on chain grocery stores which sell the same varieties of apple across the nation.  This is assuming that they even go to grocery stores and don't receive their apple pie frozen from SysCo.  The very reduction of variety in our diets and our grocery stores, despite the grotesque number products on the shelf, has reduced the ability to create unique local flavors.  You can't find apple pie made with apples that only grow in that region anymore, because we aren't buying regional apples and grocery stores aren't selling them.  And this is the problem with everything, down to the butter, sugar, eggs, cinnamon, and every other single aspect of our lives.

On the other hand of this problem, apple pie isn't necessarily a forte of every state.  I, for one, can't imagine eating apple pie in Hawaii.  By the very act of eating one kind of food you limit your diet to exclude local specialties.  There are foods that you cannot find anywhere else.  I've had pigeon in France, rattlesnake in Oklahoma, and other less exotic but equally delicious meals in my many travels.  Had I limited myself to eating burgers I would have eaten more fast food than I cared to, because let's face it, that's almost all that's left right off the highways these days. 

Instead, my fiance and I bravely forged into Nashville, Tennessee in the search of some local food.  We went to the Travel Channel and scanned a list of restaurants (I was disgusted to see that they actually listed Outback Steakhouses, for shame).  I came across Neely's Bar-be-que and it rang a bell: I had watched a previous episode of something that mentioned it, or overheard it mentioned when I was closer to the area or from someone who visited the area, who knows.  It was well worth putting up with rush hour traffic for, and if we had just stopped when we got hungry we would have missed out on a wonderful opportunity to try something new.  In this day and age that is becoming such a rare feat.

Go out and try something new today.  Let me know how long it takes you to find something truly unique for you to try.