How to Make Chocolate Without Oompah-Loompahs OR That's Some Good Candy...

There is something incredibly wonderful about well-made candy. After all, if we really just wanted the sweet taste and energy we could eat spoonfuls of sugar. In the end it'd be much cheaper and have the additional bonus of helping the medicine go down.

Well-made candy is an art. Not just because of the carefully crafted flavor artistry in the initial recipe, but also in the production of the candy. After all, everyone wants another piece of candy, so just making one incredible truffle isn't enough. Pans of these need to be made, and every one has to have that texture and taste combination of the original.

Enough talking. Let's get to the Good's stuff.

HAH! I'm so clever...

The name Good's isn't just a boastful title. It's one of those kismet circumstances where the owners of this small candy shop are actually named Good. In fact, the Good family has been making good candy since the 1940s, and with a few obvious exceptions most of the confections and candy are made in-house.

It's a Good house.
(Okay, I'll try to limit the puns...)

So let's take a look inside! Those of you in the audience who are faint of tastebud may want to turn away, for you will probably be craving candy by the end of this post.

First stop: Pictures of chocolate.

Taking a picture of a chocolate camera with a camera.
Artsy, or just weird?

Their chocolate just by itself is incredible, so they made it into a hundred awesome shapes for almost any occasion.

I didn't count, so maybe "a hundred" is a hyperbole...
...but not by much.

Say, for example, your team won the local basketball tournament. Or say the only trophy you got is the "Thanks for trying!" trophy. (This is more likely if I was allowed on your team.) I'd feel a lot more triumphant/mollified if this was the trophy.

Also I would never pass the ball. Ever.

And these go on:

For the record, you gave me chocolate AND a pun!
Awesome.

My favorite themed set: The police one with handcuffs and a badge.
It's the perfect way to say, "Sorry for speeding!"

But say your tastes range beyond mere chocolate. Aside from the fact that chocolate should never really be described as "mere," they still have you covered.

Google has Google+. Good's has Chocolate+.
...I would much rather go to a Chocolate+  hangout.

Squadrons of truffles in formation.
(Side note: "Truffle" is a fun word.")

That one in the center has chocolate, toffee, and coffee flavor.
You heard me.

Yes that does say "Chocolate Covered Oreos."
Pro tip: Drool isn't good for your keyboard.

Literally yards of chocolate.
And yes, that is a correct use of "literally."

But let's take a step back from the chocolate and take a step towards cynicism. How do we know the chocolate is made right on the premise?

Short answer: Because they show you.

And it smells AMAZING.

Seriously, off to one side is a lovely little walkway where you can go back and watch them make things from behind sanitary plexiglass.

Because if there wasn't plexiglass I might just grab me a handful of vanilla creme...
...I mean, come on, it's right there! Taunting me!

And this isn't some show to make them look good. This is their actual production floor, which means sometimes they're making things, sometimes they're not...

The packaging and decoration line just waiting for tastiness.

Sadly, there are no oompah-loompahs, but there's also no man behind the curtain here. What you see is what you get.

There is, however, a large chocolate bunny behind a curtain.
Oh, and that spinny thing? That's where they cut the caramels in the box next to it.

But what if you don't like chocolate at all? What if you're in the mood for gummies, jelly beans, ice cream, coffee, or even honey?

They got your back, yo.

Just step this way past the Good's gummy candy...

Past the local honey...

Stop for a second at the Jelly Belly jellybeans and coffee...
(Because they're Jelly Belly and coffee. Duh.)

To arrive at the handmade ice cream counter.
(The ice cream is handmade. The counter was probably prefabricated.)

There's a level of impressive thoroughness to the whole shop.

Right down to the ice cream cakes, take home quarts, and SPRINKLES.
Sprinkles are important, people.

Though Good's is in the same town as me, it actually took me several months of driving by before I went in. It's kind of removed from the beaten path of the city, and not in a particularly walking friendly area.

But eventually I did go in, and I'm glad I did. Now I use their chocolates to celebrate a variety of situations, often to the point of stretching the normal definition of celebratory reasons. ("Because it's Tuesday" is a reason to celebrate, right?)

I end this post with a full disclosure:

Upon asking for permission to take pictures of their store, they presented me with some of the clearance Easter candy (the date being shortly after Easter.) This candy was fudge in the shape of a bunny, and may have skewed my impartiality in this post...

I regret nothing.

...OR it may have just showed that in addition to being Good candymakers, they are also Good people.

I'm gonna throw my vote with the second option.

Gathering for Caffeine OR Musical Coffee Style

Indie Indy Coffee Shops Series #3

I'm gonna start off with a disclaimer:

Some coffeeshops aren't technically in Indianapolis. They are, in fact, in suburbs or small towns just outside of Indy, depending on which label you prefer.

For those longtime readers of the blog: 1) You're awesome and possess incredibly good taste. 2) You may remember a separate post about Pendleton.

We revisit that town, this time concentrating on the caffeine.

Gathering Grounds, Pendleton, IN

Kudos for the alliterative pun!

The title Gathering Grounds brings forth images of a group of friendly, welcoming people coming together to chat, laugh, and drink tasty coffee. It's the kind of sentimental idea that can work really well for marketing but in execution can be far more disillusioning.

Gathering Grounds laughs in the face of such cynicism.

And then invites you to come sing Simon & Garfunkel.

The place is pretty small, but doesn't feel cramped at all. There's a good amount of seating, and even on a crowded, busy Saturday morning one can find seats.

And a rather large variety of seats, at that.

That man with the guitar is, in fact, the owner. When there's a lull in coffee-making he'll grab his six-string and plays a few tunes, sometimes taking requests.

While I can't adequately record the audio component of the experience on this blog, I can say this: The man knows how to play in coffee shops. His volume, style, and tone fits perfectly, even when doing more frenetic songs. To illustrate: I can, in fact, continue to work on my book while he plays only ten feet from me.

It's pretty impressive, actually.

The general decor follows the same Thrown Together Yet Put Together look:

The coffee bar.
It's hard to see, but the cooler in the back holds some awesome quiche.

Coffee next to syrup, next to toasting your own bread.

It's hard to see, but this map is covered with pins.
The owners have been all over, and returned to make this chill place.

To be honest, the whole place is an intriguing blend of laid-back, almost hippy sentiments, strengthened with enough good commercial sense to keep the place around.

Kind of like your favorite Indie band: Doing something different, but there's still a merch table.

Or merch wall, as it were.

All in all? It's a great place to spend a Saturday morning/afternoon.

A Venetian Retrospective OR Freezing and Wading through Beauty!

Gonna throw in some variety with another retrospective this week! A couple months ago I wrote a post about visiting Paris with my then-fiancee. Spoiler Alert: Soon after that she became my wife.

From Paris we went to Rome (where we got married), then Florence, then finally: Venice.

I guess I could go in order. But that's just what they'd be expecting...

We got to Venice on January 3rd catching the tail-end of the Christmas/New Year's crowd but a month or so before the Carnivale crowd.

Which was, in my opinion, a very cold, very wonderful time to go. Most of the time when I see pictures of Venice it's on a bright sunny day in summer. The squares are packed, gondolas glide gracefully along the water, and the whole place is bursting with life.

Not so much when we were there.

Carting tourists around or staying at home with mulled wine...
...Guess which one the gondoliers chose.

Not to say the place was deserted. But you could wind your way through the alleys and side streets of Venice without running into people, quickly getting lost in the twists and turns that are navigating through Venice.

Someone's courtyard? Nope! Just another Venice street!

And there are a lot of twists and turns. Navigating in Venice is basically done by this method: 1)Look at a map to figure out the direction you want to go. 2)Wander in that general direction. 3)Eventually you might make it there. Maybe.

For longer distances, you could take the bus.

And yes, their bus is a boat.
How awesome is THAT?!?

But the alleys are where I really enjoyed Venice, and we spent most of a day just wandering around through alleys, getting lost, making random decisions by impulse.

We had to make tough decisions like: Do we go over the canal or into it?

The city would go through a series of tiny, winding alleys, then open on squares with long-disused wells and neat buildings, then plunge back into the alleys.

Neat buildings with odd decor, might I add...

That's a well.
...annnnnnd more alleys!

Random buildings would have random informative plaques detailing something significant that had happened in that building. This would have been completely fascinating, except we were in Italy, so they were, of course, in Italian. I meant to translate these later. Which I totally never did.

Informativo!

Occasionally random gems of shoppes would be hidden away in the alleys and wanderings. We found a random Irish pub filled with local Venetians. (Yes, Irish pub. They're actually a big thing in Italy.) We found an incredible leather and paper shop. I got a notebook from there that still, to this day, smells slightly fishy. Not to mention dozens of other random shoppes with glass, masks, and random Venetian things.

This shop was closed when we went by.
Which is good, because I was a little too creeped out to go in.

But because Venice ends in water on all sides, getting lost was much more fun than other locations, because sooner or later you'd know exactly where you were. (Hint: Next to the water.)

For example, the time we wandered vaguely in a general direction through a variety of sketchy alleys...

And though a couple buildings.

...And came out near the water, next to a chapel I didn't know was there!

Behold, the Chapel of St. Someone-Or Other

Sure, I could have found it by looking at a map, but it was much more fun to wander and stumble upon it. It was neat, with its own collection of art, and very different from the larger cathedral in Venice. Some of which I totally didn't get.

Ah yes, the parable where Cupid steals a staff
and becomes a bishop for a day...

Beyond random wandering, we also got to enjoy the various standard tourist-type activities of Venice, like taking pictures of canals.

Big ones...

Small ones...

Ones right outside our hotel room window...

And, of course, St. Mark's Square, the center of Venetian tourist activity. But with a winter twist:

Occasional flooding.

And little kids putting sissy adults in their PLACE, yo!

During certain times of year and certain times of the day, the water level of the lagoon will rise enough that lower parts of Venice get flooded. Sometimes this means finding another way or wading through the water. But in well-trafficked areas, it means very efficient workers break out the walkways.

BAM! Your flood self is neutralized!

And I mean efficient. I saw these guys do it only once in three days, and it was impressive. Burly Italian men in knee-high boots wading into the water, slapping down metal braces, then equally burly men coming after them with boards. A few seconds later and they'd be gone, off to save another person from getting soaked.

When the waters receded, they'd come back out and take the walkways away just as faster, if not faster. Someone had seriously thought this whole thing out.

Seriously.
Side spots for tourists to take pictures? Genius!

You may have noticed everyone being bundled up in all the pictures. You may have noticed snowflakes. That's because it was cold. And that water flooding the square? Also very cold.

But you know what? I'm glad we went then, and wouldn't have had it any other way. Like all parts of the world, certain part of Venice had left up the Christmas lights, so we got to experience empty alleys and squares still festively decorated.

This is a pretty main side street,
and during the summer would be packed.

A far corner of Venice. Almost completely deserted.
Also, that restaurant was a total locals-only place.

We wandered around enjoying the stillness and beauty that is the man-made island of Venice.

Not even that late at night, but still mostly to ourselves.

And as we went to view the famous Bridge of Sorrows, which was currently being restored, we were reminded that, like most great places of man-made beauty, sometimes bills must be paid.

If you look closely, you can see the shocked face on the bridge.

Finally, I'd like to offer this final picture as a palate cleanser, since it's kind of a bummer to end a post on commercialism.

Ahhh.... Much better.

Tracking Writing OR Graphs Are Fun!

My path to fiction writing has been a strange one. Sure I wrote short stories, papers, poems, and other such things as a kid, but thinking of writing as useful rather than fun took a bit. It started with writing my own monologues for auditions in high school. An acting teacher had mentioned the idea, and combing through plays to find an already written perfect match seemed so much harder than just making one up.

I probably should have taken the hint and focused on writing then and there, but we all have our own paths, jah?

From there it was playwriting in college, then years of pursuing screenwriting before ending up at fiction. My current project? Taking a story that I loved as a script and turning it into a novel. The good part? I get to include all of the juicy world bits that couldn't be crammed in the mere 112 pages of script. The bad part? Novels are frikkin' LONG.

"What?!?" says our friend Cynical Reader. "Are you saying novels are harder?!?!? Are you saying scripts are easier and thus less valid?!?!?!?"

First, you should really tone down the punctuation, CR. Second, let's just say that since a picture is worth a thousand words, when you go from movie to book someone has to write those thousand words.

Fortunately, my amazing wife (who is also a writer) pointed me in the direction of WriteTrack. (Website located here: http://nano.davidsgale.com)

**Ahem** Seems we need to register and login...
Hold on a second...

WriteTrack is free (awesome!), but generous souls can donate to keep the lights on. And it does exactly what the name implies:

It keeps track of what you write.

Namely your goal, how much you need to have done at this point, and how much you actually have done by this point.

Forget Science and Technology...
...THIS is what Progress looks like!

It works by setting up challenges. For example, I had 35,000 words of an estimated 100,000. I decided I wanted to finished my rough draft by May 1st, so I entered in 65,000 as my goal, and...

Voila! Numbers on a calendar!

Every day you simply enter in how many actual words you wrote, and it redistributes the remaining words across the given time period. Wrote more than you need? Great! That's less you'll have to write later. Wrote less? Then get to work, slacker!

Truth be told, I completely love this thing for the graphic elements that it does automatically. Sure, I could do all the math and keep track on a spread sheet. If I did it would look just like the raw data report you can access.

Hooray. A data table. It's so exciting...

I could even make simple line graphs normally associated with stock prices:

Sell, damn it, SELL!

However like a magpie I also enjoy shiny things, and the ease of entering in a single number every day to get neat looking graphs is a completely wonderful feeling.

Take, for example, the daily performance graph.

Orange is NormalVille.
My blue is in the land of Awesome.

But how does such exceptional performance (if I do say so myself) add up in the long run? Who knows?!?

Oh wait. The total progress graph knows.

The Total Progress Graph knows ALL.

As any writer can attest it is really easy to get a little lost in the middle mire when writing a book/script/poem. I've seen people get lost in the middle of haikus.

You start to feel like each day is disconnected from the next, and at night that little voice in your head starts saying, "What's it matter if you don't write today? It's just one day... You deserve to eat that ice cream. A little ice cream never hurt anyone. Also you shouldn't exercise. And should sleep for, like, 72 hours straight. And every meal should be pizza. Topped with chocolate."

Well I'm gonna lay it out right here, right now: That voice is a punk. And not the cool kind with dye in their hair and metal in their face. That voice is the kind who I can't describe without unintentionally pissing someone off. It's that offensive.

And call me weird, but something about being accountable to those little blue and orange lines makes me shove that punk away and get writing.

Because it's easy to feel down on yourself while writing. But it's a nice kick in the ego pants to produce graphs like this one:

Every day I have exceeded 100%.
That's right: I have defied the laws of math.

That being said, sometimes we can't write for very good, non-punk related reasons. Say we're going on a trip, or have to pull a really long day at work, or the kids are sick.

Fortunately, WriteTrack ALSO has you covered there by allowing you to adjust the weight of each day in percentages.

Having no kids, mine are all at 100%.
That sound you just heard is all of my friends who are parents slapping me.

Now this may not work for everyone. But for some awesome reason it motivated my wife, and it's motivated me.

You know how many words I wrote in February? Me neither. I didn't keep track that well, but I can tell you it wasn't much.

You know how many I've written in the last two weeks? 19,000.

I'm not bragging here (okay, maybe a little), but I've clearly shoved that punk voice away from center stage.

Seriously though, this isn't just about bragging. Not only do I find this tool and all the data fascinating, but I'm also fascinated about how well it works.

It's not like I have anyone to answer to but myself. I'm the only who sees this goal. I don't have an agent or publisher waiting on the deadline. Even the possibility of making money from the book is at best a dim hope in the future at the end of many obstacles, so the threat of not making money off it has no teeth in the slightest.

But the graph becomes tangible. It becomes a very real thing that I see at the end of every day, a moment when I can pause and say to myself, "Well, Self, it seems you have created something quantifiable today."

And I can look back and say, "Ummm... Okay, I really need to stop talking to myself so vividly. But that is an awesome graph."