— Jenny Neill

The headline suggests I have not been writing at all. That’s not true. I have. I have also contributed to a couple outlets on a regular basis and continued working with a small number of non-journalism clients.

What I have not been able to be, since the fall of 2014, is in charge of my schedule and thus my career. Instead, I have been very involved in helping a parent through a series of health crises and a major life transition.

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Lit Crawl Seattle, the local offshoot of the literary pub crawl founded by Litquake in San Francisco, is taking over many boozy spaces that wordsmiths gather for a second year. Starting at 6pm on Thursday, October 24 our local literati, myself included, will be bringing stories to the streets at 19 venues mostly found in Seattle’s Capitol Hill.

Jenny Hayes, a longtime friend and the woman behind the Three Jennys grouping, approached me to emcee because, duh, my name is Jenny. (Plus, I think she knew I’d groove on the idea.)

Come hear

Come hear “Three Jennys Walk into a Bar” at Sam’s Tavern,
Thursday, October 24, 2013 at 6pm

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This is my last weekend working at Ray’s Boathouse as Sommelier. I’m choosing to leave this job now, near the end of summer, because it is a natural time for such departures. Already some of the younger staffers have left to go back to school in some other part of the country or have started new jobs, taking steps onto other career paths. This change, for me, at this time, is more of stepping solidly to the center of a road I never fully left.

Ray's Boathouse sign with Puget Sound and the Olympics in the background

Ray’s Boathouse sign with Puget Sound and the Olympics in the background
Photo courtesy of Mike Russell. All rights reserved.

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My first camera, one I still occasionally take out to shoot with, is the Pentax Spotmatic my father gave me many years ago. He invested in this model with the then brand-new, through-the-lens exposure metering to cover sports events when he was a college student. Dad taught me how to manage the manual adjustments of that old 35 millimeter SLR while taking cues from the needle of the TTL light meter.

Seattle Sounders fans in rival territory

Seattle Sounders fans in rival territory

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The landscapes of my youth invaded my dreams last night. Having these images—of red brick buildings and expansive lawns, of the sepia of dawn or dusk, of the amber hues and shadows underneath the trees and shrubs—show up as the scenery for some moment of nighttime revery usually signals a shift. I woke up with Ohio on my mind.

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Brian Neely is a talented fine art photographer currently living in Kabul, Afghanistan. He works with digital and film cameras, loves single-origin coffees and microbrews, and is the only person I know who has run the Athens Classic Marathon in Greece.

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This post begins a new tradition for me, introducing you to the bloggers in my Blogroll. First up is Mike Pirnat, the man behind A Leaf on the Wind. I first started reading Mike thanks to his connection to my long-time friend, Eric Meyer. (Yes, Cleveland connects us all.)

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“You guys need to be having fun back there!” Those were our eating orders straight from the mouth of Penny De Los Santos, food photographer and instructor. I first met Becky Selengut, the sassy chef known on Twitter as @ChefReinvented, in person in May. It was cold and rainy. We huddled under a blue awning over a picnic table with a hole in the middle.

Jenny Neill and Becky Selengut at Oyster Roast Shoot for Penny De Los Santos Food Photography Workshop on Creative Live. May 15, 2011

Becky Selengut and me at the Oyster Roast Shoot

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what is left of Nothing, Arizona

On a whim, I decided to go looking for ghost towns on a recent visit to Arizona. That road trip led me to Nothing.

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Flavors intrigue me. That’s what got me into restaurant work in the first place. I’ve spent much of the past decade learning about and tasting wine in order to pair it with food. It took a little longer for that interest to spur me to experiment with cooking in my own kitchen.

The idea of making something as simple as a salad used to paralyze me with uncertainty. Some of my early forays into making up my own recipes were disasters: mushy pasta, broken sauces and dressings, or entrees with serious seasoning problems. Being around chefs taught me some valuable lessons.

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