"All the fun is in how you say a thing." Robert Frost

In case you didn't realize, this year is the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. A few years ago I watched a great movie telling of the story called 'Good Bye Lenin!' http://www.sonyclassics.com/goodbye/flash.html It's a movie must-watch, in my opinion. It's quite humorous and presents the conflict between the East and the West from a unique perspective.

Speaking of unique perspectives, I found a great tool for teasing out ideas when writing fiction. The site is called Language is a Virus http://www.languageisavirus.com/ and the more I play around on it, the more of a useful resource I find it to be. As we may have mentioned, both Erica and I have aspirations to write and publish fiction. Personally, I've been picking away at a manuscript for a while. Without boring you with the details, it's a historical fiction that I'm gearing towards young adults. Although I'm good with the 'historical' part (since I'm basing much of it on my MA thesis), I still get stuck on the fiction. Mainly, I find that I second guess the believability of what I write. I want it to be compelling and exciting but I also want readers to be able to buy into the story; to be able to escape into the fiction and fantasy of it. I suppose it's about striking a balance. What I really need to do is start scheduling some designated writing time. I'm not kidding myself into thinking that this will be a short process, but I am hoping get some big chunks of it finished within the next few months. More on that later.

In 100 Mile Challenge news, I wrapped up the challenge this weekend and consider that it was a great success. I think it was a good idea to pick 80% though, I'm not sure I'm tough enough to go the whole 100%. I'm going to keep it up as much as I can. It's so easy to head to the farmer's market although I might allow myself to purchase the non-local vegetables now. It's still supporting the local economy though, right? I'll also continue baking bread and muffins regularly. My freezer is full but it's just so much easier to do it that way than to purchase it from the grocery store. This is especially the case considering the amount of sodium and sugar (were you aware?) that are added to commercially baked products. Same for pizza dough- 100 mile pizza with local pork sausage, tomatoes, peppers and mushrooms was my favourite meal by far! Overall though, it was an important personal challenge and certainly worth the struggle. Apparently it's also becoming quite trendy! http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/07/14/f-grocery-stores-independent-buy-local-meat-produce.html