Every New Year’s Eve I write a letter to myself. I type it, actually, on the vintage typewriter I bought with my tax return while living in New York City. I do this partly because the typewriter was expensive and I’m still trying to get my money’s worth.

There’s something about being a woman and gaining weight that is entirely unpleasant. I’m a skinny person, so take anything I say here with a grain of salt, but there’s something about gaining weight that simply doesn’t agree with us.

Every weekend I put "write" on my to-do list, which is why this weekend is significant. It's the first time in a couple of years that "write" has been replaced with "edit." Because my fourth manuscript is officially done. There's a lot of work still to do, but I cannot emphasize what a big deal it is to get the writing all down. To finish the last few paragraphs and know that you've come to the natural stopping place. That it all feels done.

I was genuinely moved at a funeral this week when the deceased’s widow brought up William Faulkner. I would have been moved anyway, her husband having died much too young and in the sudden sort of way that left no time for goodbyes, but the literary reference caught me off guard.

This picture was taken without my knowledge while at Disneyland last week with a certain little person in my life. This little person is quite different than his older brother, whom I took to Disneyland last year, and as a person with no little people of my own, the differences between the personalities of little people is not something I’m able to observe very often. That’s one reason why last week was such a surprise to me.

There's a framed picture on my bedroom wall of a group of people ice skating in Central Park. It's a print actually, a creative artist's depiction of a whimsical and vibrant city. The people are thin, colorful, their limbs like sticks that dangle in front of or behind them as they glide along the ice. They are bundled, wearing scarves and jackets, a cityscape of buildings towering behind them.

A fan of Ira Glass and his weekly This American Life broadcasts (LaDonna, anyone??), I haven't been able to shake the story told in last week's How I got into College episode. The one about the Bosnian student who believed a certain teacher's reaction to an essay he wrote was the catalyst for the series of occurances that ultimately led him to success.

After several thousand more words, I'm officially 70% done with my new manuscript. Since my last update at 60%, I've been writing a lot about my months of gemology studies in New York City. Despite some city stresses, it was such a happy time of life.

As soon as I heard that luxury mammoth Tiffany & Co had opened a cafe in their flagship Fifth Avenue store, I was desperate to go. This is, after all, the girl who showed up early the morning that Tiffany's finally opened a store in Cleveland to have a pastry and hot chocolate in the parking lot. Breakfast at Tiffany's.

It's easy to forget that, especially because there are so many other things to talk about on this blog. Like LeBron. And gemstones. And the fact that I've fallen in love which is totally cutting into my writing time. (Worth it, by the way.) But I do write books.

It was never a question of whether or not I would go. And, despite the epic hard-coreness that is my fandom, it was never really a question of whether or not the Cavs would win the championship. I would go, and they would lose.

I'd never really done it, see, other than a company party one year where they brought in a bunch of dealers and gave us all fake money. I won a lot of fake money that night, all on the roulette wheel, and it seemed like there were a few key bets that really had pretty good odds. Still, it's easy to take risk when it's not real money.

My dear hometown jeweler, who recently passed way, has a son who spent several years of his life in the world of theater. A talented performer, during one summer that he spent home in Oregon, he staged a local production of the then-new show, Songs for a New World. I was working at his dad's store at the time, dreaming of how life would unfold and incredibly impressed by anyone who, like my jeweler's son, had left town to pursue a dream, a talent, and then come home to nurture our community with the spoils.

There's always a bit of shame for a bookish, English-degree-holding writer in books she probably should have read but hasn't. For me, most of this gets wrapped up in the classics...books I should have read in high school or college but didn't. Not out of neglect, just out of necessity really.

The trouble with visiting somewhere for work is that you don't really get a chance to actually see anything. I'd never been to Nashville before, see, and even after staying in the hotel that is literally connected to the Country Music Hall of Fame, I still haven't seen anything that the vibrant Music City has to offer.

One of the first things I thought upon entering the Museum of Ice Cream was that it was clearly designed for people much younger than I am. And I'm not even that old. The kind of place that's dripping with whimsy. The kind of place with bottlenecks around every corner while each person takes a selfie in literally every room.

As a writer of memoirs, I mention a lof of people in the course of my writing. As a no-name author, I've been able to do this with very few of these people even knowing they are mentioned. I have a very small readership, see.

Of course I would visit Paris during the coldest cold snap they've had in years. Of course I would become horribly sick over the course of my stay. And of course I would persist in walking around the city while nursing said sickness.