Cycling and photography. When I say my new project has to do with those two things, you can all assume that it’s entirely due to the influence of my husband. I mean, I owned a bike and a camera before we met, but being with him has transformed those objects from tools into interests.

I try to commute to work on my bike as much as possible, and during the summer months you can bet it’ll be even more often. Lately I’ve been struck by the beautiful strange details of Seattle I notice on my bike. Not only am I going slower and riding with more awareness than if I was in my car, but I’m often forced to take alternate, less trafficked routes. I started carrying my camera with me to show these oddities to friends.

Like this slipper, carefully abandoned on some old piece of machinery in South Park.

My project? A Tumblr page where I’ll be posting the random photos I take along the many bike paths this summer will hold. Check it out, and hopefully I can show you a side of Seattle that not that many people see.

My recent visit to Yakima for my niece’s birth meant an opportunity for a visit to Fiesta Foods, which is in my opinion the best grocery store in the world. I grant them that status almost entirely because of their vast mountains of tomatillos and jalepeños in the produce section. Show me another grocery store that has more than a weak handful of wrinkled tomatillos tucked in the corner of their “odd foods” section. Fiesta Foods, obviously, wins.

My default is Mexican cooking, on account of my mom’s cooking, and the prevalence of Mexican food around me when I was growing up. But in the last few weeks I’ve started thinking about how little I actually know about Mexican food, and I’ve pushed myself to learn to make the four dishes which make up the title of this post.

This is inspired by the tortilla press you bought me, mom. Really, I have only you to blame for the six hours I spent in the kitchen today alternately frying dried chilis and swearing as I scrubbed mole spatters off my kitchen cabinets.

I served the rather delicious mole to my writing group tonight with a sigh of relief. In the last week I’ve forced myself to make leaps and bounds in my Mexican cooking repertoire.

One more procrastinative excuse to check off the list.

Time to get back to writing.

When I started this blog, I had high intentions for it. No matter if anyone else ever read it, I planned on using it as a motivational tool for my own little writing course. I would read books and analyze them for their style and voice, their pacing, their world-building, etc. I would treat blogging like an assignment for school, and therefore I would keep on track.

Of course I didn’t.

But I’ve kept on reading, and I’ve kept on thinking, and I have quite a few books I’ve recently finished that I want to post about. My thought here is that if I make this little promise right here and now, in words, I’ll actually do it.

So. Coming up, look for:

• On Creating an Imaginary World that Looks an Awful Lot Like the Real World: Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn and The Gaslight Dogs by Karin Lowachee.
• On Scenes and Pacing: Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane.
• On Voice: In the Woods by Tana French.

From youtuber Ryan Iverson. Thanks Ryan.