S – Dallas Stars

Published on by Sydney Aaliyah Michelle5 Comments

a-to-z-letters-sLike I said, I am such a homer when it comes to sport. I became aware of the game of hockey on my birthday in December of 1992 when I met Mike Modano at a grocery store appearance.  He was fresh off the plane from Minnesota in town for the press conference that announced the Minnesota North Stars would be moving to Dallas, Texas for the 93-94 season.  It was quite the scandal because at that time there were no southern states with a hockey franchise. The hockey purest said there was no way hockey would be successful in Texas. It was to damn hot.  They were so wrong.

In 1999, in the 3rd sudden death overtime the Stars won the Stanley Cup Finals.  The game ended at 2:00 am and I watched every second of it.  I, along with the rest of the metroplex was hooked and a Stars fan for life.

images2

images

images1 images3 Unknown

 

 

 

My favorite hockey player is still Brett Hull. Are you a hockey fan? 

Photos courtesy of the DallasStars.com

R – Rail System – DART

Published on by Sydney Aaliyah Michelle14 Comments

a-to-z-letters-rIf you spend any kind of time in Dallas/Ft. Worth, you would agree, it doesn’t seem like a public transportation kind of town. It’s to spread out and people seem to like their cars, but the city government and DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) had a different vision. In 1996, after much scandal and turmoil, the largest light rail track system in the United States (85 miles long) began carrying passengers around the Metroplex. I rode it for the first time last week, but this isn’t a story about me.

DSC02381

It’s the morning of my 15th birthday. My friends and I have the whole day plan. We finally talked our parents into letting us ride the train downtown and have a picnic in Klyde Warren Park. We are so excited. It must be how kids in New York feel being about to ride the subway where ever they want to go. I know my mom had to wait until she turned 16 for this type of freedom.  
We are waiting on the platform. All six of us. My mother dropped us off and I had to beg her not to wait until the train left.  We boarded the train and waited for it to leave. Before I sat down, I realized I left my bag on the platform. I jumped off the train to get it and the doors closed behind me. My friends were all screaming and laughing as they realized I standing on the platform, but there is nothing I we could do.  The train pulled away without me.  
I start to panic, but my best friend called and reminded me I could just catch the next train.  Even though I didn’t get a chance to ride with my friend, I was excited to ride the train by myself.  How grown up?  
As the next train pulled up, I picked up my bag and boarded. 
At the next stop, a cute boy boarded the train. This day is getting better. He sat in the seat in front of me. I could study him all the way downtown. I am so loving this train. His wet curly hair fell over his eyes.  He kept pushing his hair out of his face. His fingers were long and strong and they weren’t dirty. All the boys my age had dirty finger nails.  
He pushed his hair out of eyes and caught me looking.  I smiled and put my earphones on and continued to look out the window. 
He smiled back and spoke. I had to remove my earphones to hear him. 
He asked me where I was going. I told him about my birthday picnic. I asked him where he was going. 
He told me he was heading to downtown. Then, he joining a group of teenagers to go to West, TX to help with the clean up.  He explained to me how his grandparents lived in West before they died a couple of years ago. He had to spend every summer there working in his dad’s farm and he hated it.  Once he heard about the explosion, he felt guilty and wanted to help. 
I told him his grandparents would be proud of him. He invited me to come with him and told me the bus would bring everyone back around 7:oo pm.  Perfect, I just had to be on the train by 8:00 pm to get home in time.  
When we got to the final platform, I told my friend, change of plans. We are going to West, Texas.  
It was nice to do something good for someone else and I meet a cute boy, too. It was the best birthday ever. 
DSC02336 DSC02338 DSC02335

 

 

West, TX is about 80 miles from my home. My thoughts and prays go out to the victims, the survivors, the police and fireman, volunteers and everyone else effected by the bombing in Boston and the explosion in West, TX, which is about everyone in the world.  

Q – Quotes

Published on by Sydney Aaliyah Michelle6 Comments

a-to-z-letters-qAnother quick pause in my A to Z Challenge theme to bring you another cool blog tour.  This guest post includes another of my obsessions, quote.

Let me introduce you to Rebecca Berto.

Favorite quotes for writers and readers

We social media addicts are suckers for a good quote. From our favorite books. One of those inspirational pictures on Facebook. The right quote can make your day, and being the social media junkie I am, I have my favorite ones from books and writing in this guest post to get you going.

As the author of Drowning in You, I have many favorite quotes and snippets, but these are others I’ve collected and I hope they resonate with you, too.

I know. You’re welcome. Here you go:

“First drafts are like falling in love; you think everything is great. Second drafts are like marriage; you see all the faults.”

— Rebecca Berto

I came across these from Tweeters and still I cry, “YES!” when re-reading:

“Overly describing a passing character is like hiring a decorator for a hotel room you’ll only be staying the weekend.”

— @PureText

“Female PoV characters notice more facial expressions, male PoVs typically notice posture more.”

— ‏@RayneHall

And then there are my favorites from awesome authors that make me LOL:

“i have never regretted staying home with a book. i have often regretted having conversations with people.”

— @TaherehMafi

“I’m listening to that Mariah Carey song ‘Always Be My Baby’ because I need to unlock my inner-high school angst to write this book.”

— @MirandaKennealy

And, my bookish addicts, these are some from my favorite books:

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“He’s like a drug for you, Bella.”

— Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse

“The moment my lips touch yours, it will be your first kiss. Because if you’ve never felt anything when someone’s kissed you, then no one’s ever really kissed you. Not the way I plan on kissing you.”

— Colleen Hoover, Hopeless

“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”

— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

***

DrowninginYouOn book quotes, I truly love those that are about love, but also the struggles in life. Drowning in You is the type of book that will take you on a journey of love and pain. I hope you can find a favorite quote from the novel as I have, too!

DrowningInYouTourBanner1

P – Progressive Book Club

Published on by Sydney Aaliyah Michelle16 Comments

a-to-z-letters-pThe End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe – I read this book in Dallas. That’s work with my A to Z theme, right?

First of all, if you haven’t heard of the Progressive Book Club, check out what a our book club host ML Swift created.

I really loved this book.  It was simple, sad, hopeful and beautiful. I got so much out of it.

9780307594037

Life Lessons

“As in many book clubs, our conversations bounced around between the character’s lives and our own.”
“Still, one thing I learned from Mom is this: Reading isn’t the opposite of doing: it’s the opposite of dying.”
“It’s much easier to follow your bliss when you have enough money to pay the rent.”
“They help us talk. But they also give us something we all can talk about when we don’t want to talk about ourselves.”

Writing Lessons

Have a great first line.
Tell a story and involve the read in the lives of the character.

To Read List for 2014

  1. On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
  2. Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara
  3. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
  4. Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas
  5. Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk
  6. Couples by John Updike
  7. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
  8. Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamont
  9. March by Geraldine Brooks
  10. Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey
  11. Continental Drift by Russell Banks
  12. The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith
  13. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
  14. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
  15. The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara
  16. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
  17. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
  18. Big Machine by Victor LaValle

And, I saw myself in this book:

This is exactly how I feel about London:  “I think it was the first place she really felt like an adult.”

This is exactly how I thought about the movie Auntie Mame: “It rekindled in her the fantasy of being Auntie Mame, the women who took her nephew on a glorious trip around the world and taught him that “life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.”

BTW, if you haven’t seen Auntie Mame, check it out (the Rosalind Russell version). 

This is the exact reason why I need to get over my insecurities and start telling people I am a writer:  “Never make assumptions about people. You never know who can and will want to help you until you ask.”

The book made me feel good about myself. Like the author, I to spend a significant portion of my life watching reality television and that is in no way disrespectful to my creativity:  “Part of curating, collecting and appreciating was editing – mom never had much patience for junk or for crassness and less so now that she knew her time was limited.  I, on the other hand, continue to waste a significant portion of my live watching reality television, learning about the lives of dubious celebrities and consuming cultural garbage with the feigned irony and faux populism that’s a hallmark of my generation and the ones that immediately follow.”

The book was about a mother dying of cancer, a son who tries to deal with it the best way he knows how and the time they spent together reading amazing books. And, if that’s all you got out of it, you missed the point. Great book.

Have you read it? 

O – Dallas Observer

Published on by Sydney Aaliyah Michelle4 Comments

a-to-z-letters-oMy second trip to New York, I was 17 years old and pushing the limits of my parents patience with my quest for independence. They humored me by taking me on a college tour even though they had no intentions of allowing me to attend university there.   I was roaming the streets and shops of The Village and picked up a copy of the Village Voice.  I devoured the quirky and eclectic stories and features. Little did I know, we had our own version in Dallas called the Dallas Observer. Even today, I read it every week either in print or the online version.

8712973.15

Let me share a few of the stories from a recent issues:

Did I mention it was free? Does your town have a paper that features the not so normal side of the news?