Cid Bloggity Blogs

Pseudo Loneliness?

2011-05-09T12:38:00.000-07:00

I spent the entire weekend around people. Saturday I did family things all day long. Sunday I went shopping. I was around people. I was with family and friends and I had a great time.

Today I'm having social withdrawl.

While sitting at work I started throwing myself a little lonely person pity party. After an exchange with an old college friend I was feeling a little blue, and truth be told a little jealous of how their life has turned out. I'm in my mid-20's, single, not working in a field I am educated in, and lets face it: I'm different.

I started in on the whole, no-one-gets-me, blues. Truth is almost everyone wants to be feel some human connection. We want to know and be known. Why do you think social media is so popular? It lets us connect with people when we may not be able to overcome social phobias or shyness.

The truth is that we all think we're special. We think we're the only ones who feel disconnected or alone or [insert state of being here]. The truth is that we all feel those things. I do. You do. Your neighbor probably does as well.

How do you solve or combat this feeling of loneliness or feeling like you don't belong? Reach out to someone and connect. People don't know you need them unless you let them know. I do my best as a friend to reach out when I can, but I'm one person.

The Walking Dead

2011-04-30T19:58:00.000-07:00

I rewatched The Walking Dead series this last week. Based off of a graphic novel series, there's an established following for the show as well as lots of material for future TV episodes. The first 'season' was only six episodes long. It begins in a fashion like 28 Days Later, the main character waking up from a coma in the middle of a zombie infested world with no idea how things got this far.

There is a lot of really awesome conflict going on in this series. One of the things I love about zombie stories is that they aren't afraid to dig in and explore the darker side of human nature. People do some very bad things at times. How far are you willing to go to protect your family or the people important to you? The series covers a lot of ground in six episodes. In a lot of ways I thought it covered too much ground and left too many things open since there wasn't a guarantee of a second season.

I just read that there will be a second season, which I'm excited about. Hopefully the 13 episode season does more than the first season did. It was awesome, but here's hoping it's better.

New Season of Dr Who

2011-04-24T15:46:00.000-07:00

The new season of Dr Who started last night. Since I don't get BBC America I bought the iTunes season pass. It's handy, but the iTunes playback kind of sucks. I can't wait to get it on instant play via Netflix to watch without the hiccuping video feed. The audio at least was fine. I then discovered that my version was playing the HD video back. I switched to the standard and it worked MUCH better, so I rewatched the premier.

Now I will talk about the new episodes and this is littered with spoilers.

I know that it took me a long time to warm up to the new Doctor, and I'm still not a huge fan of Amy Pond or Dr. Riversong, but I love Rory. The new season started off with a kick though! Anything that starts off with the death of the main character is a pretty risky start. We know that somewhere along the season we'll learn why the Doctor had to die. It's a pretty big dose of expectation in my oppinion.

Anyone else catch Dr. Riversong's allusion to her own death? I'm not a fan of her character. I don't like her, and in many ways I doubt I'll ever see any of the Doctor's having a romantic arc with anyone but Rose as okay. It's silly, but that's how I see it.

What I really liked are the new alien creatures. Very Men in Black kind of feel in the vein of the angels. With the angels you couldn't blink, with these MIB creatures if you look anywhere but at them you'll forget they even exist.

Yes, I'm rambling and I'm okay with that. All in all, I'm excited about where this season is going!

Detox makes me cranky.

2011-03-28T18:24:00.000-07:00

Seriously.

Today was the first real day of the detox. It's also been over 24 hours since I've had real sugar. Unfortunately because of those two things I have splurged on an extra Dr Pepper. Can't be perfect, right? The detox will last about two weeks. The problem I'm having right now is that it's making me hungry.

Today was also Dentist Day. I'm not sure if it's just what the poking does to me, but I seem to always get a migraine after going there.

In completely unrelated news, I bought a pink shirt. I'm a little nervous about this. I haven't worn pink in ages.

Shopping Mis-adventures

2011-03-27T11:41:00.000-07:00

I didn't blog about this, partly because it was a little embarrassing and I didn't feel like it at the time. Several weeks, maybe a month or two ago, both of my f-a-v-o-r-i-t-e pair of jeans ripped. I'd owned them for two years, they were wearing really thin, and for $20 jeans from Target they had served me well. Desperate for jeans for something going on that weekend, I ran into Target, found my size and my *'fit' - and bought them. Ran home, pulled them on... and panicked.

Yes, I knew I'd lost a little weight.

Just a little.

Not enough to give me dreams of being teeny tiny, but enough to make a girl look in the mirror and think, Oh I can do this!

But there was no way I'd lost enough weight to make these jeans literally drop off of my hips. In the end I had to actually roll the jeans so that they were tight enough to not slip down. I haven't gone to buy more jeans because 1) lazy, 2) I'd kinda hoped to drop a few more pounds and celebrate with nicely fitting jeans.

I'd kinda decided this last week that my jean situation was redonkulous and I just needed to go shell out $25 for a pair of jeans that don't threaten to expose me. I'll spare you the shopping play by play, but for kicks I went and grabbed different sizes and fits of jeans. I compared the exact same size of what I was looking at to what I was wearing. I should have taken a picture. There were four inches of difference. My X size jeans have to have been mis-marked by about four sizes.

Anyways, Target is my weak spot for shopping right now. I'm addicted to their 'boyfriend' cut shirts, super soft t's in tons of colors.

In other news, I bought some artificial sugar today in the hopes of substituting it in my tea. I'm sure I'll have a product review or rant later. Now, off to dye my hair 5th Element Red!

*Target has an amazing system of fits, 1 through 6, that allows you to chose super low waist to natural waist, straight through the thighs or curvy to get the 'just right' fit for you. Really the system is awesome.

yes, I know about roller derby

2011-03-24T18:57:00.000-07:00

In the last week I've had no fewer than six people contact me about roller derby. A vendor from work came by my office to give me a magazine that featured local roller derby. Several repeat clients have commented about the leagues moving around, and a few people I talk to occasionally.

Is this the world telling me something?

#fatespeaks

another tattoo

2011-03-20T09:17:00.000-07:00

This last week was almost a comedy of mishaps between my friend and I trying to hit up a certain tattoo shop when they were open. Both of us hate calling and talking on the phone, so the logical course of action hasn't happened - yet.

I was surprised that I still feel anxious, or maybe it's just nerves, when a new tattoo is imminent.

It's probably something like an addiction. Part of the ink of a tattoo is a certain kind of oil. That oil does eventually seep into the bloodstream and if you get tattooed enough you do have a mild addiction. It's what causes that euphoria when you step into a tattoo shop, when you just want another tattoo. I seem to do okay with it. If I go into a shop, heck yes I want another one, but I don't have to have it.

Right now my time table is every two to three years I get more. May will be my two years, so it makes sense that I'm starting to think about adding to my collection. I really want to do my left arm, but it's going to cost somewhere around $500 and I don't have those resources right now because I have to buy new tires soon, contacts in a few months, the inspection on the Jeep - ug! It adds up, this whole being an adult thing.

Anyways, I'm going to push my friend and look into making plans sometime either this month or next. Tattoos aren't something you should rush. And now, I'm off to write and be writerly. I think, that if I ever sell a book, I'd get a tattoo to celebrate.

And now I want an anchor tattoo.

2011-03-13T22:36:00.000-07:00

I've been emailing with an old friend and during the conversation we started discussing tattoos. Not an abnormal event, people often come to me to discuss these things and I normally don't mind.

But a weird thing happened during this conversation.

While it wasn't a direct result of what was being said, I had this thought in my head that I was sorry I'd ever gotten a tattoo.

What. The. Heck?

Long ago, when I first fell in love with the first in a long line of tattoo'd rock stars, I decided that when I got tattoo'd, because I would, mine would mean something. They would be personal, and a part of me. I've always loved my tattoos, I've never minded the attention, and except for one instance* I've never allowed people to make me feel less for simply having rainbow colored skin.

Something's happened recently that has made me feel self conscious about my skin. Probably some of it has to do with my weight, which I'm working on, but another part of it I think is that I'm now the black sheep. Before, there were always people around me with tattoos. When I did audio, there were tons of people with tattoos. When I was in derby, the minority went without them. But now, most of the people I'm around have naked skin. There's nothing wrong with this! I'm just wondering if it's effected my personal outlook on myself.

After some introspective time, I've come to the conclusion that I still like my tattoos. Yes, my life would be easier were my skin not inked. I wouldn't crave a tattoo. I wouldn't have to bother with covering them up for certain occasions. In general, life is easier without them. But they're part of who I am, and my friends, people who love me, etc accept them and me.

During conversations, another point was brought up. I haven't dated recently - at all. I got fed up after a few bad dates and haven't paid attention to the opposite sex. My tattoos play a part in who I date. Not going to lie, a lot of guys will say a girl with tattoos is hot, but secretly we intimidate them. I'm a strong personality, and I know dating me is hard. I'm me and no matter how much I like someone, there are just parts of me that won't change. The kind of guys that would put up with me are few and far between, and they're weeded out a lot of times by the tattoos.

I still plan on doing my left arm and finishing my back. Someday I'd like to find someone who loves me and my tattoos. I will always caution people who want to get tattoos to think seriously about them before. Most people end up regretting their tattoos. Some day I might regret mine. Today isn't that day. Mostly I'm writing this to say that sometimes, you have to find yourself again.

*The one instance when someone made me actually feel crappy for having tattoos was when a complete stranger walked up to me and said, "Oh my, why would you ever get tattoos? You'll never be a beautiful bride."

Planning Paris

2011-03-10T05:32:00.000-08:00

I'm beginning to compile a list of places I want to visit when I go to Paris. I'm still a little overwhelmed at the idea of coordinating everything on my own and the idea of being alone is starting to really sink in - but I'm still excited. So here's a quick rundown of the places I want to visit:

Catacombs - The underground passageways where the bodies of the dead were interred when the cemeteries began to overflow.
The Louvre - Art. I'll probably devote an entire day just to this.
Cathedrals: Sainte-Chapelle, Englise de la Madeleine, Notre-Dame - When I visited Russia my favorite places were always the cathedrals. I'd love to find a cathedral tour of Paris and spend a whole day going from cathedral to cathedral.
Castles/Chateaus: Versailles, Vincennes Chateau, Champs-sur-Marne Chateau, Chateau de Maisons-Laffitte - If I'm going to Paris, I should see a castle or a palace or something, right? These are all within the Paris 'area', and if I take a train I can go see even more, but there are only so many opulent castle like places I think I can see.
The Paris Opera - I doubt I'll see anything at the opera, but I'd still like to see the building, which is supposed to be fab.
Arc de Triomphe - The famous arch, also the place of the Unknown Soldier.
Basilica de Sacre Coeur - I'm not 100% sure what it is, but it's big and pretty and touted as a must see place so I'll probably do an evening tour of it one day.

I actually don't care a whole lot about seeing the Eiffle Tower. I'd be happy walking past it and snapping a few pictures.

And I'd like to just go shopping some. Find a little open air souvenir market and shop for chintzy stuff I don't need!

The actual PBP Ride takes place from the 21st to the 25th. This means that my mother and I will have four days prior to the race I think to sight see together and do things with the cycling group. The 21st will be all about the evening start, so we'll probably stick close to the area and rest. I would imagine that if I can get a wifi signal I will be online and blogging and uploading pictures. From the 22nd to the 25th I'm on my own. During those days I'll be doing most of the above. My mom's not much for sight seeing so what I want to see I'd better see while she's cycling her buns off! The 26th my mom will most likely be catatonic so I'll probably stick close to her. We'll then have two days to sight see and recover from the race. We've discussed going down to Normandy beach, so we'll see how that goes.

[Edit: Below are places people have suggested that I'm adding.]

Musee d'Orsay - more art stuff

Heartburn

2011-03-09T06:44:00.000-08:00

I remember the first time I had heartburn acutely.

I was living alone for the first time, and playing roller derby. I remember waking up in the middle of the night with a painful, firelike feeling in my chest that was not passion, ardor or anything pleasant. It hurt. A lot. I thought I might be in serious trouble. Maybe I'd fallen wrong and had one of those injuries that take a while to pop up. It was the early hours of the morning and while I was in physical pain, it wasn't unbearable. I decided to google my symptoms and see if I could self-diagnose to either decide if I merited an emergency room visit or if I could wait and make an appointment.

After reading and rereading I decided I might have heartburn. Since my dad pops antacids like candy, my mom had stocked my medicine cabinet to supply a small drug cartel I dug out some antacids, chewed the chalky pills and sat on my couch watching Bravo until - the pain went away.

Traumatized, I dreaded having heartburn ever again.

I'm sharing this memory because I woke up Sunday morning with heartburn. I thought I was sick to my stomach. I thought I was about to throw up, except I also felt like someone was driving a hot poker through my chest. I decided I might have heartburn. So again I relied on those antacids my mother stocked me with - and after a few minutes checking twitter I was ready to go back to bed.

So there's a funny story for you. Now I'm going to schedule this and go to bed!

Paris Travel is Booked!

2011-03-08T11:56:00.000-08:00

Okay, so it was really booked like a week or two ago, but I also had to do some things like take new passport and visa pictures and it really hadn't sunk in yet. It's slowly beginning to be real in my head that I'm going to Paris. OMG!

I'll be gone from August 15th to the 28th and I'm planning on having pretty much just a backpack with me, borrowing my dad's netbook, my ereader and a camera. My mom will be participating in the annual Paris-Brest-Paris cycling tour that covers 1,200 kilometers and lots of mountains and climbing.

The details are few and far between right now, but I'm really looking forward to it!

More Crafting Month Goodness!

2011-03-07T18:24:00.000-08:00

Okay, well I wasn't really sure if I was going to do anything for National Craft Month, but I had a spark of genious earlier today.

First, I'm going to be doing crafty posts for writers over on my Cid Tyer wordpress blog, which will go up on Thursdays through the end of the month. This is in addition to my monthly topical blogging series.

Second, I started a new knitting project! I also figured out what's been going wrong with my cast on's. I do a long tail, or continental cast on for my projects. Despite following along with youtube tutorials, for the last two or three years I've been knitting I've been casting on all wrong! On the second pass through the yarn looped around the thumb, instead of passing through the loop, I have been coming back up under the loop. Thus, when I would knit I would end up knitting three strands of yarn together as one stitch to make up for all the extra yarn. no friggen wonder all of my first rows have always looked so sloppy!

I figured this out last night while I started my bandanna/shawl project. I'm using a ravelry pattern called 22.5 Degrees that's sort of plain, as far as shawls go - but I like it!. No fancy panels or weavy wavy stuff - because I can't really figure that stuff out yet! I'll take pictures later. For now I just wanted to check in!

March is National Craft Month

2011-03-04T05:50:00.000-08:00

Dude, I think I knew this from last year, but I totally forgot - and now it's here again. Yikes! This makes me want to do more crafty things this month. I'm thinking about it - and there's at least two knitting projects I want finished and another Super Seekrit crafty project I want to do. Hurray!

One project I would like to do, I don't know if I'll have enough time, but my mother's birthday is the 20th of March. It's a Sunday. I'd like to maybe knit her a set of dish clothes or something.

Huh, I totally should have held off creating my writer's space until March officially set in - that would have been an awesome project to ascribe to the month!

On being a Christian, Gay Rights, Picketing Soldiers Funerals and other stuff...

2011-03-02T10:08:00.000-08:00

Earlier today I saw this shocking post on tumblr from thedailywhat about a Baptist Church that pickets soldier's funerals. This isn't the first time that I've seen this issue come up. This church has been at this song and dance for a while and each time I see something about them it gets me angry.

The Kansas based church pickets the funerals of soldiers, most of them have died in service to the country though some (from what I've read/seen) have also been veterans. They picket to protest gay rights.

They aren't picketing against the war, they're picketing about gay rights.

Before I even touch on why their actions make me angry - the correlation between the war and gay rights just doesn't make sense to me. In responce to why they would picket funerals, the pastor replied:

"When the whole country is given over to sodomy and sodomite enablers ... the country needs this preaching."

There seems to be a disconnect of logic here. Yes, preaching. As a Christian - I agree with that. However, I cannot nor would I ever approve of the method by which they go about fulfilling what could be an educational discourse of [insert positive topic].

Picketing a soldier's funeral, disrespecting the families of those who are having to say goodbye to a loved one is just cruel. How does an act like that spread Christ? What if those people saying goodbye to their child or sibling or parent are Christians? How does that create a loving community of believers? How does that win people over to your cause?

Alienating people and hurting them is not the way to have a positive discourse and convince them your way of thinking is right. It's actually the opposite.

I know that a lot of people have and will take issue with my opinions on gay rights, and that by stating them publicly will probably mean that I'll never be certified as a pastor, but this is what I believe:

Religiously - from what I've researched, I cannot in good faith say that my doctrine supports homosexual relationships.
Politically - it's none of my damn business who you marry or what you do.

I've known gay people. I have friends who are gay. Heck, I've even written gay characters! I have nothing wrong with people who ascribe to a different sexuality than what I think is 'right'. I would never, ever dream of telling a person they were 'wrong'. I think that since we have a separation of church and state and marriage is more like a legal contract, a joining of two functioning parts of the society machine, you should be able to marry whoever you want, and thumb your nose at anyone who says otherwise. Yes, that's a very unpopular opinion for me to have in my conservative Christian circles, but it's what I think.

Religiously, I have to stand by the historical-cultural context of homosexuality in the Old Testament. I researched this because when I was in college the idea that there was an exclusion based on something as silly as sexual preference just didn't and in a lot of ways still doesn't make sense to me. After researching it, I have to stand by the religious decision that God frowns on homosexuality. I don't know what that translates to beyond death, I don't know if it's a deal-breaker for God, I'm just not the authority to say one way or the other.

(As a side note - if you really want to point out the OT talking about tattoos, before you do - go do some research please and then we can talk.)

After reading different articles on the picketing on CNN and NPR I'm angry and ashamed to be lumped with people who would picket soldiers funerals like that. I'm a Christian, yes, I won't apologize for that. I've always ascribed to a Love God, Love People mantra. At times I know I fail, but it just boggles my mind that people who say they believe in Jesus would do something so hurtful and purposefully malicious.

I went to the Westboro Baptist Church website for all of fifteen seconds before I was too shocked and disturbed to continue reading. They plan on picketing the school of a child who shot her mother in the head - because the child was sent by God to punish her mother. How is this a "Christian" message? It isn't. The God they say is so hateful isn't the God I know.

Blood and gore - except this is the real deal.

2011-02-26T13:30:00.000-08:00

Tonight on the news when they covered the stuff going on in Libya, I was shocked by the uncensored, violent video and pictures they were showing, most of it featuring bloody bodies, some without limbs. What happened to the age when we wouldn't show the bodies? I know a lot of people are desensitized to violence and seeing images of the real deal doesn't register as a true fatality, a life being snuffed out, but for those of us who are still sensitive to stuff like that - it's shocking and disturbing. I don't care why these people were killed, it's still the end of a life and it's SAD. It's upsetting, and it doesn't make me want to stay tuned. It makes me want to turn the tv off or go to another channel.

checking in, stuff is happening, i'm sure you care.

2011-02-25T15:30:00.000-08:00

It's officially the weekend. Woohoo!

Now what to do with myself?

I've been busy. If you keep track of my writer's blog, you've seen some of my current events blogs about writing or things surrounding writing and books, and my series on world building that's wrapping up this weekend. I've also been writing and reading like crazy.

And then there's the book buying! Dear ohEMgee! Borders has gotten its chunk from my hide. I'm doing a recap of books I've bough on my website Saturday, but I bought like $200 worth of books for a little under $100. A lot of money, but I'm excited about a lot of what I was able to pick up for a little discount.

I haven't talked about my teeth a whole lot since last weekend. I had ten days to get through with those capsules in my mouth. Last weekend they really started to irritate me, but as of Monday they're all gone. I've also had a lot healthier gums and less swelling and bleeding. TMI? Maybe, but that was the goal of having the procedure done in the beginning.

Last week I started belly dancing up again, spurred on by two friends who showed interest in joining me. We're working on a slightly Indian routine that's kicking my booty. I can do the steps, I think I have the sequence down, but I can't do the dang thing for a solid hour. It's been exhausting, but lots and lots of fun!

This weekend I'm going to do a deep clean of the apartment and make an appointment with my plumber to fix my washer. I'm also going to put my dining set on Craigslist. I'm not quite ready to do that to my Chinchillas yet. I'm thinking about it, but not there. I'm also going to be away doing writing things. I'm not going to DFWCon, which is this weekend. At $300 I couldn't afford it, so I'm looking at FenCon in the fall instead. We'll see!

Well, it's Friday, and I want to do something selfishly indulgent, like watch a movie or some more Paranormal State. Dude, PS is research!

Talking About Pounds

2011-02-20T10:28:00.000-08:00

Well, not really. Sort of. I'm blogging because um, I seem to have the bug right now and I haven't blogged about my attempt to lose weight recently. I switched over to using LoseIt.com because it does a better job of tracking calories and stuff than I do, it's also not as time consuming. What is difficult is not being able to tally up the fat grams.

Right now I eat around 1,200 calories a day, on averate. Technically I'm "allowed" 1,800 and on some days I do. Must most I don't. Most days I don't even consume all of my alloted fat grams per day.

I've gone back to belly dancing, once a week.

I do half hour walks fairly often. I can read and walk which is helpful.

And I've only succeeded in losing a very small amount of weight. It's not even worth saying. It's depressing. So, I'm thinking that in the coming weeks I should do a few things.

Cut back on Dr Pepper. Not cut it out, but cutting back. I'm transitioning from drinking a full can, to one of those 100 calorie cans. Smaller portion, still get a little caffine kick in my day.
Carbs. I have a suspicion that this is a big culprit in my life. I eat oatmeal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and then there's dinner which is sometimes just a repeat of lunch. That's a lot of carbs. And this last week was like a carb induced coma between the bagels, pizza and donuts.
Try to exercise more. More walking, which will mean more reading, but I'm okay with that.

If I don't see an improvement after a month, I think I'm going to go see the doctor I saw when I hurt my hand. Maybe I've developed allergies to something or some other really weird something that's preventing me from losing even a little bit more weight.

Blog Stats

2011-02-19T12:40:00.000-08:00

Dispite my ability as a blogger to say anything of real worth here, it seems that I have quite a large audience. I'm going to play with the stats of my blog here a bit, because really this is kinda fun. I've heard that blogger's stats aren't very honest, so when I lay some of these numbers down, please take them with a grain of salt. I don't think my innane ramblings are anywhere near this fascinating. How can they be?

I've had Cid Bloggity Blogs since September of 2009, when I started it as a weightloss blog. I failed miserably. Now, as Shona pointed out, this is my 'cocktail blog' and I talk about - whatever.

To date I have had 5,700 views.
These viewers come from mostly 10 different countries.
The most surprising country my viewers come from? South Korea.
Most of my referrals come from a water filtration site that I've never heard of.

My most popular post was on Dr. Who's Angels. It's had almost 700 views.

The keywords people use to land here the most are:

avatar the last airbender movie 2; avatar last airbender character names; avatar the last airbender 2 movie
blogger
dr who angels
cid(s) blog
"eric james stone"

So thank you Dr Who and Avatar for plenty of random views.

I go through waves of blogging, I know. But thanks to everyone who has stuck with me, especially those of you in far flung countries I wouldn't have expected.

Reorganizing my space.

2011-02-18T07:53:00.000-08:00

I've been looking around my apartment, weighing staying or moving in the summer. My lease is up in late July or early August and I need to start making decisions. I think that with everything else going on this year, I should stay another year so long as rent does not increase. I'm not crazy about the new payment system, which is a tangled web of problems on the best day and a complete wreck on the worst. I would prefer that the gates, ya know, CLOSE. But the apartment is comfortable, I like the layout. And lastly - it's expensive moving. Movers cost hundreds of dollars and because I was an idiot and bought huge funiture when I moved out on my own I've kind of sealed my fate where movers are concerned.

So I'm evaluating what I have, what I do, and what could make me happier.

And I start thinking about happiness, and I wonder if my Chinchillas are happy. And now I get worried. I'm not at home as much as I was when I got them. I've steadily become more and more busy. I no longer spend time each day feeding them raisins or scratching their little ears. My Chinchillas aren't incredibly social, they're rather shy and perfectly happy just coexsisting in the same room with you, but that doesn't mean they don't feel my lack of presence. I've begun to think that I should re-home them. Find a person or a family who would take care of them and love them. My Chinchillas are a little older, 7 and 5 if I remember correctly, so they are not breeding animals. They're also attached to one another. Both of those factors make it a little more difficult to find them a new home. I'm moving very slowly on this idea. But, if you're interested in them, shoot me an email at [ mailto:cidsound@gmail.com ] and we can talk. I'm not looking to make money off of the rehoming, it's more about finding them the right home.

With that in mind I started to look at the rest of my furniture.

Bookshelves are a must.
The entertainment set has been taken over by more books, which is fine. It looks quite nice with all those books on it.
I'm still very much in love with my overstuffed leather couches.
The ottomen are new additions, but hold all of my knitting stuff.
The old coffee table is now a side table for the couch and I've discovered its presence is quite necessary.
The dining set..... has become a repository for 'stuff'.

The dining set could really go. I wasn't thinking functionality when I bought it. I thought 'dude, that's a seriously stylish and cool set' and it was mine. I didn't think about how the height of the chairs would make it uncomfortable to sit there for longer than an hour. When I lived at the apartments before the one I'm in now, I had people over for dinner all the time. I haven't done that in ages, and really, my current friends would just as soon eat sitting on the couches, laptops in our laps or knitting in hand. So I'm thinking I'll get rid of the dining set and use the money to purchase a lower table and a nice desk chair. I'm looking at Ikea stuff, so for maybe $150 I could set up an L shaped work area and have a nice chair for writing.

My problem here is that Craigslist seems to be the only really useful place for something like this, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this. I live alone. People coming over to look at my furniture makes me nervous since I no longer know my neighbors. I'm not sure how to get around this problem, but I'm thinking about it. Suggestions anyone?

I don't like to be insulted.

2011-02-17T17:10:00.000-08:00

As someone on Facebook said, this is like my cocktail party blog, and today I want to do a little venting and a little lecturing. I've had an interesting two or three weeks. This blog post isn't the response to any one instance, but many in several different situations with more than one group of people. So if you're reading this and you think I'm talking about you - I'm probably not, but your conscience is probably trying to tell you something.

Growing up, manners were imparted to me through many different avenues of experience, but none more so than my personal code of consideration. My parents taught me to be polite, say yes ma'am and no sir, get your guests a drink and never ever touch a man's hat without permission. My horses taught me to respect personal space because not everyone wants to be touched all the time. My friends taught me to share like I wanted them to share with me. And somewhere along the way my Code of Consideration was born. I realized somewhere in life that I liked when people were considerate of my feelings, wants and desires and that I should do the same in return.

However, it seems like more and more people don't even attempt to be polite. I know I'm a colorful individual, by just being myself I spark controversy with my hair, or my jewelry, or my lifestyle, or my beliefs. I accept this. I've posted before that I just can't be any other way than the way I am. I tried to be something else for a long time in life and failed.

I like who I am, and I'm offended when people think I should change something about myself because they think it should be so. Are there aspects of myself that could be changed for the better? Sure, but that doesn't mean you have to point out the fact that I am technically overweight by medical definition according to my BMI. Before you do that, would you stop to consider that I once had a very serious eating disorder?

Sometimes I'm just appalled at the things people will say to one another. I believe in being honest with my friends about things, even when I know it will hurt their feelings, but I never say those things because I want to hurt them. I say those things because I see a behavior or a problem that will hurt them. I say the tough things because I love them and I want to help them. If I think what I want to say will only hurt and will not help, I keep it to myself.

So before you unleash your opinions about another person, maybe you should stop and ask yourself if I were to say those things to you, would you want to hear them?

Thumper probably said it best when he said, "If you can't say something nice... don't say nothing at all."

Surviving Church as a Single - my score

2011-02-15T08:12:00.000-08:00

Okay, if you're single, even if you aren't a Christian, some of this will make you laugh. Micah turned me on to stuffchristianslike.com and I couldn't resist filling out the score card. I'm bolding the questions that apply to me, and adding my own answers below them. You'll figure it out. You're smart! Now, I haven't gone to church regularly for a while, so I'm basing this off of the last church I was a member of.

The Surviving Church as a Single Scorecard

1. Your church doesn’t have a singles ministry. = + 1 point

2. Your church has a singles ministry but it’s combined with the college ministry which creates opportunities for conversations like this:

Student: “My roommate bought a microwave for our dorm room. I love being a Freshman!”

Single: “My 401K is underperforming.” = +2 points

3. Your church has a singles ministry but it’s a triad that combines college, single adults and divorce recovery. = + 3 points

4. Your church has a singles ministry but it’s the dreaded quad, combining college, single adults, divorce recovery and retired widowers that refuse to move to Florida. = +4 points

The last church I was an active member of, had a huge singles ministry. The main singles events were open to anyone who was basically over the age of 18, and single. That's it. Granted, there were supplimental groups, but when you went to the meetings they covered everything from moving into your new dorm to living on your own and organizing home care.

5. Someone pays you the world’s most backhanded compliment, “I just don’t understand how someone as great as you isn’t married yet.” = +1 point

How do you reply to that? Like seriously! "Yeah, me neither." I can't count the number of times someone has said this to me. The times that really sucked - when it was a fairly nice guy friend that I could have possibly have dated, were he not affraid of me. I seem to inspire terror in the male sex.

6. Someone told you, “If you stop looking for love you’ll find it.” 2 points for each time you’ve heard that.

I didn't know I was looking for it....

7. At church, people give you weird looks if you refuse to sit in the “singles” section of the sanctuary. = +1 point

Because I can't have lots of friends, and even *gasp* ones who aren't single?

8. When people introduce you, they say, “This is Matt, my single friend.” = +2 points

"Hi, I'm Cid and make boys cry." I think that would be a much more effective way of introducing myself. I establish the fact that if you're easy to intimidate, I will scare you, and later on we could mention the fact that I'm also single!

9. When people introduce you they feel compelled to list out your accomplishments, “This is Sally, my single friend who owns her own home, drives a luxury sedan and has a very, very stable job.” = +3 points

Usually the first thing people mention is the tattoos and roller derby, then the rest...

10. Your friends that have been married for 15 minutes act like they suddenly don’t remember anything about dating and therefore can’t give you any advice. “It’s been so long since I dated, things have changed so much. I’m just out of that whole scene.” + 2 points

I don't ask for advice, so this really doesn't apply to me.

11. People are constantly volunteering you for things because, “you’re single, you’ve got so much free time.” = +1 point

I'm always - always - busy. This seems to just shock a lot of people. I don't understand this reaction.

12. People at church act a little surprised when they ask you, “How are you doing?” and you respond with, “Things are great right now. I love my life!” = +1 point

Yeah, as if my life cannot be fulfiling without a partner. I'm busy! I don't always need someone to take care of on top of what I'm doing - and having fun!

13. Married friends try to live vicariously through you, asking questions like, “What did you do this weekend? Road trip? I bet you went on some crazy cool, singles road trip, right?” = +2 points

Yeah, okay, granted I am the type who would and will take crazy road trips, but it doesn't mean it's a singles adventure. Maybe I'm going to a convention or something, huh? But there are a lot of weekends I stay at home - writing. People give me really crazy looks when I say that, but it's the truth!

14. Someone you just met for the first time said a sentence like this to you, “If you want to get married, you need to ______.” = +2 points

I was once told that if I wanted to get married, I needed to lose weight, get the tattoos removed and then I tuned them out. I was shocked. I think I wanted to do bodily harm to the person.

15. Whenever married friends call you at noon on a Saturday, they start the conversation by saying, “Did I just wake you up?” = +3 points

Okay, with this one it's my own fault. I regularly sleep late on the weekends!

16. You assume that if you don’t get engaged by final exams of your senior year in college you’ll never get married. = -2 points

I had a professor in college who told me this. I was in my senior semester, dealing with some really bad issues thanks to a guy who decided punching me in the face was a great idea, and then I heard this. For that whole last semester of college I thought about this, and I let the fear that she was right sink in. I don't believe it any more, but for a while I did.

17. You’ve secretly always wanted your own cat but are afraid that ownership of a single kitten will become some sort of gateway drug to becoming “the cat lady.” = – 2 points

18. You’ve ever given an impassioned, enraged monologue on the injustice that men who are single get to age gracefully and be considered “bachelors” while women are instantly judged as “crazy cat ladies.” = – 3 points

I think I have done this - because it's true! Men are allowed to age and stay single and noone really cares. But if a woman wants the same thing, there must be something wrong with her!

19. You’ve got a “don’t perpetuate the cat lady stereotype,” monologue locked and loaded at all times and have already stopped reading this post so you can put it in the comments section. = – 5 points

20. Someone has quoted the “it’s not good for man to be alone” Bible verse to you. = +2 points.

Are we sure that verse is talking about being married? Can't it talk about, like, walking to your car in the middle of night in downtown or something?

21. When friends invite you to their church they start the invite by listing both the quantity and hotness of the singles that go there. = +1 point

Yes, I feel sorry for the people I'm introduced because they get that deer-in-the-headlights look. Quick, your on the spot, make yourself look good!

22. That friend was named Jon Acuff and he said, “No one in Atlanta should ever involuntarily remain single with so many awesome single people at North Point Community Church.” (I’ve said this a lot. My bad.) = + 3 points

23. Your married friends tip toe around you during February because they think you’re too delicate to handle the completely made up holiday, Valentine’s Day. = +1 point

I don't usually even remember Valentine's Day exsists. Most of the time it arrives, and I'm clueless until the day of. In college I avoided going to the caffeteria on V-Day because they made such a huge deal out of it, and that was awkward, but usually I don't care!

24. You are too delicate to handle Valentine’s Day and have been known to describe it with a rich tapestry of words no Christian should even know exist, never mind actually say out loud. = + 1 point

25. The person that leads the singles ministry at your church got married in 1964. = +10 points for each decade they’ve been married.

26. Someone told you, “Maybe you need to focus on being more like a Proverbs 31 woman.” = 2 points for each time it wasn’t sincere encouragement.

To the people who have every suggested this.... HAVE YOU READ PROVERBS 31?? You can BE that person - without being married. And I think that a "Proverbs 31 Woman" is the kind who could also be very happy on her own, ya know, taking care of the 101 businesses she starts and all her crafty adventures and stuff. Just saying.

27. You didn’t know you were supposed to be unhappy as a single adult until you went to church and found the singles ministry to be akin to a support group. = +3 points

Yeah! I sort of like my single life. I can do whatever I want! Why am I supposed to be upset about this?

28. Upon hearing that you went on a first date with someone, your single friends at church stop inviting you to the single events because “you’re in a relationship already.” = +2 points

29. Upon hearing that you went on two dates, your married friends at church start telling you, “I’ll be praying that this is the one!” = + 3 points

I tend to date guys who don't fear commitment, they're also the kind of guys who state early on where they see the relationship going. I, however, like to take things easy and not too serious in the beginning. Friends, or even the guy, saying things like that - or mentioning the M or K words (Marriage, Kids) freaks me out. I feel like they're tightening the noose already. Um, do we have to already?

30. Your best friend of 15 years gets married and then suddenly acts like a magical gap has opened up between you and decides that until you get married too you can’t be close again because you just don’t understand each other anymore. = +3 points

This royally sucks. I hate that this happens. I don't understand it, especially when we were all friends before they got married, but it keeps happening.

31. To justify giving a four week marriage sermon series to a congregation that is 60% single, the pastor throws out one blanket statement like this at the beginning of the series, “And you single people listen up to this too, this well serve you well when you get married too.” = +2 points

The trick of preaching directly to one group of the congregation and hitting the othes with stuff they didn't know they need to know, only works so many times, and after a while it gets old or we resent it.

32. You set your alarm to “not going to church today” after the first week of the marriage sermon series. = – 2 points

Whoopse....

33. The only time your married friends invite you over is when they need a babysitter. = +3 points

We've already stopped hanging out because I'm single, so they don't ask me over to watch the kids.

34. Someone throws the “Paul was never married” card on you. = +2 points

Wow, REALLY? Like, never?? I NEVER heard that before!

o__o

35. Friends assume that the only qualification that matters to you when it comes to finding a date is that she’s available and set you up with people you have nothing in common with. = +2 points

The paint has been more interesting at times....

36. You’ve ever said the rhyme, “I’m a bachelor til’ the rapture.” = – 1 point

37. During a prayer at church celebrating wedding anniversaries, the person praying says a special prayer for all the people that are still single and lonely. (True story) = +1 point

*sigh* Again? Can't we just remember that I'm happy this way?

38. You have a friend that feels like creating a dating profile on eHarmony is a sign that you might not be trusting God enough to provide a soul mate. = + 1 point

Because you can ONLY meet someone at church...

39. You’ve developed highly sensitive, “They’re about to throw the bouquet” radar and know exactly when to leave a wedding. = +2 points

HAAHAA!! OMG YES!! I usually find a reason I really have to go put on more lipstick, or pee, or fluff my hair.....

40. Instead of saying that you’re “single” your friends describe you as “Not married yet.” = +2 points

Okay, most of this was for fun, but seriously - it's how it is in a lot of circles, not just Christians. My score was: 40somehing

Journey to a Nicer Smile

2011-02-13T11:19:00.000-08:00

I've twittered and facebooked about this a little, and people keep asking me what's going on - so I'm writing this blog post!

In case you didn't know, and most people don't, my front six top teeth are fake. They've been fake since I was in high school. I had braces, which straightened my teeth quite nicely, but also tore off the enamel on my teeth when they came off. I went to Russia for the summer, and came back to my teeth practically falling out of my mouth. This was not good, so they did what's called a facial composite. It's a porous kind of filling material that gave me my faux teeth. The problem is that the composite facials age, yellow, chip and wear poorly making me look like either a lifetime smoker or someone who has a coffee mug attached to my hand - and neither are true!

I have always been sensitive about my teeth, self conscious that they aren't white and that I have teeth smaller than most kids. I've always known that I would eventually have to have something else done, something more permanent.

Starting in February, we're doing a whole process of cutting and molding and implanting. This last week I had the first phase done. It was an invasive type of cleaning. I've always had sensitive gums that bleed easily. In order to get the porcaline teeth I need to get them in as good of shape as we can. So they went in and cut out two possible infection areas and then there has been between 15 and 20 very tiny antibiotic capsules injected under the surface of my gums.

It's painful. The capsules are small and designed to release antibiotics into my system slowly over two weeks time, but it still hurts and I haven't been able to eat anything but soup since Friday.

I'll be going back in six weeks to do another cleaning and evaluation of my gums. At that point we'll start thinking about taking molds of my teeth, looking at what finish to put on my porcaline teeth and working towards doing the actual impants.

So there you go! That's what I'm up to with my teeth, it's semi painful, but in the end it'll be worth it, right? I hope so!

I fail at blogging.

2011-02-09T13:15:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I'm just going to admit that I'm failing at blogging here. It's hard enough for me to keep up with writing, the review site, and my writing blog. This one is more for me to ramble on, so I'm just posting this so it's official - I may or may not post here as I so wish.

And, I moved my writing blog to another wordpress. Now it's http://cidtyer.wordpress.com/

So that's it!

Fatty Journal: back on the waggon, sort of

2011-01-03T18:31:00.000-08:00

I'm adjusting to the 1800 calories a day fairly easy. I'm losing weight, according to the scale, but slowly. It's more steady than a huge drop which is good. The only problem I'm having is that I have been hungry late, like near when I go to bed. I think I should start getting baby carrots and sugar snap peas to serve as snack foods. The only bad thing is that when I'm reading I can and will demolish a whole bag full before I realize what I've done.

Calorie / Fat Journal
[1800 calories daily / 19 grams of fat per meal ]

Breakfast

fruit pizza - 400 calories - 12 grams of fat
Total: 400 calories - 12 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1400

Lunch

Slim Sandwich from Jimmy Johns
Total: 220 calories - 19 grams of fat

(I don't know if I believe their website that it's only 220 calories...)

daily calories remaining: 1,180

Snacks

Dr Pepper - 150 calories
daily calories remaining: 1030

Dinner

Spinach gnocchi, lean ground beef and avocado pesto
Total: um, probably more than I should eat!

Fatty Journal: picking up in the new year

2011-01-03T06:27:00.000-08:00

It's 2011 and I'm getting back on track with my whole eating right thing.

The first weekend of the year has been spent - at home. I'm slightly constrained as far as cash is concerned. So, I'm focusing on doing stuff.

Saturday I spent mostly in bed. Because the new mattress, plus the bed set equals the place I want to be. Uber comfy! I did the final revisions on my novella and handed it over to my critique partners and then settled in to finish Dr Who to bring me up to pace. Yea! Now, I'm starting Torchwood, which is a spin-off of Dr Who that focuses on Captain Jack and some sort of paranormal services in the UK. I'll probably have more to say about this tomorrow when I update the blog. So, until tomorrow!

Sunday I finished Torchwood, knitted, cleaned and read Flip this Zombie and half of Frostfire - both books are out January 11th. I'll finish Frostfire as soon as I get home. :)

Saturday
Calorie / Fat Journal
[1800 calories daily / 19 grams of fat per meal ]

Breakfast

fruit pizza - 400 calories - 12 grams of fat
Total: 400 calories - 12 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1400

Lunch

slept through lunch
Total: 0 calories - 0 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1400

Snacks

3 x Dr Pepper - 550 calories
mini Reeses Peanut butter cups
daily calories remaining: 850

Dinner

Chicken sandwich

Total: 600? calories - 19? grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 250

Sunday
Calorie / Fat Journal
[1800 calories daily / 19 grams of fat per meal ]

Breakfast

fruit pizza - 400 calories - 12 grams of fat
Total: 400 calories - 12 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1400

Lunch

Chicken sandwich
Total: 600? calories - 19? grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 800

Snacks

Dr Pepper - 150 calories
daily calories remaining: 650

Dinner

Apple
Total: 120 calories - 0 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 530

2010 Wrap-Up

2011-01-01T12:02:00.000-08:00

Okay, so at the beginning of the year I was really optimistic and set myself a bunch of goals to achieve. Now, I didn't achieve all of them, but they served to really help me light a fire under my butt and think about doing things. So without further ado, here's the goals!

Random Goals

Eat more fresh produce - Apples are my new favorite go to snack item. I pretty much fail at fresh vegetables. I'm not really excited about cooking, so I stretch stuff out as long as I can make it last so I have to cook less. But, I do think about eating vegetables and fresh stuff more than I have before.

Do something daily - I fluctuate on this A. Lot. I've been fairly good about using my Wii Fit, and during the summer I started taking bellydance classes. I didn't in the fall because there was just too much going on to juggle all of it, but I'll be picking it up at least once a week next weekend for a while at least. I really hate exercising; I have to convince myself to do it every single time.

Go to a parade - Yeah, didn't happen. There was talk of going to one, I was going to go, and then I can't remember what stopped me, but I couldn't get there. I was bummed - and then I didn't even think of it again, so newp, this didn't happen!

Get a family photograph - Didn't happen. I think my dad is against this.

Organize and cull closet - DONE! I culled way over 10% of the stuff in my closet and organized it. Now, I just need to organize everything else that's in there.....

Writing Goals

2010 NaNoWriMo - I kicked NaNoWriMo's butt in 2010!

The Barking Dog - I had several goals surrounding this project, but early this year I decided that it just wasn't worth messing with anymore and I let it go. Maybe at another date I will return to it, but not in the immediate future.

Research for another project - I've done a lot of research....

Outline for my Graphic Novel idea - It's outlined....

Outline for Love Unexpected - Also outlined....

Write something I believe in - I've written a lot of stuff this year..... I don't remember what I meant by this.

Complete another draft of a story - any of my ideas or something else - I've finished several first drafts. I thought I only had a few stories in me at the start of the year, and now I'm juggling how I'll manage all my revisions and writing.

Reading Goals

Read at least two writing books - Yup!

Read all the Robin McKinley books - I've read about half of them....

Read something in a genre I'm not accustomed to reading - I have read so far out of my normal comfort zone, I don't think I have a comfort zone anymore. There's tons of stuff out there I'll read now!

Act on more book suggestions; at least four - I'm at a point right now where I have far too many books because of book suggestions!

Crafty Goals

Learn three new knitting things - Yup, I knit. I knit a lot of stuff. What'cha want me to knit??

Have a successful patio garden - I tried this and it failed miserably. I'm going to be putting my patio stuff on Craigslist.

Make Presents. Yeah, I bought presents. Maybe in 2011!

Money Related Goals

Pay off Express Credit Card - DONE!!

Pay off Khols Credit Card - Will happen in 2011!!!!!

Okay, so there you are. My 2010 goals. Now what shall I accomplish in 2011??

post Christmas

2010-12-27T06:50:00.000-08:00

This year Christmas was a little different for my family. My dad had surgery a few weeks ago and wasn't up to making the trek up to my Grandmothers house for the traditional Christmas Eve celebrations. So, the circus of Christmas 2010 started with due apprehension.

Cue Friday morning.

The plan was that my mom would come to my place, we would then take my Jeep up to my Grandmother's to exchange presents and have lunch with her; just the three of us. Then we wold turn around and scurry home to spend Christmas Eve with my dad, Mamaw, sister and niece - the latter two were driving in and slated to arrive mid-afternoon.

This is what happened:

I sort of knew my mother was going to arrive between 10 & 11 am. I wanted to get up earlyish and do some revisions; time is seriously running out on me people! I woke up around 9:30, and called my mom to see where she was and how long I had to get ready. Writing was out of the question. She told me I had an hour; plenty of time to laze about for another ten minutes, luxuriate in a long shower, and then get down to the business of getting ready for the day and loading up presents.

Thirty minutes later I'm in the shower, I've just turned the water off and I hear my phone in the bedroom going off and someone knocking on my door. I have this sinking feeling my mother has just played me. I do not run to the door and throw it open - I'm more practical than that. I check the phone - yes, 5 missed calls from my mother, and only then do I open the door. By this point I know she's played me but I'm playing dumb because playing dumb is fun. She claims she didn't realize how close she was - yeah right. I get dressed and she says I need to come out and look at something on dad's truck. Right. Now I know I've been played.

So barefoot, and holding my makeup I go out to look at my dad's truck - and find the #1 present on my list this year. It's a boxspring - excuse me - foundation for my bed. I've been sleeping on just a mattress, which considering my Ikea bed means I'm sleeping about twelve inches off the floor. It's not a big deal, but I'd still like a boxspring, ya know? So there is appropriate squealing and then figuring out how to get it into my room and situating my bed so now it has this awesome foundation on it. I'm very happy with this.

Then once everything was loaded it was off to Grandma's in McKinney! We spent about an hour up there, and then motored back to my place. By this time it was raining cats and dogs; we passed about four or six wrecks on the way to my apartment alone. It was crazy!

We made it back to my parent's place around 4, I barely beat my mom which was good since my dad had finally managed to find a dog that fit what my mom wanted and had it delivered. His name is Matt and he's a Australian Sheppard. My mom's old dog was a Boarder Collie/Australian Sheppard mix with a half black half white face - Matt has that same half and half face, but he's much smaller.

Christmas Eve was spent with the family, or at least most of it was. My sister and niece haven't been to a Christmas with us in ages and my niece is now 16 after we had dinner - neither of us was very interested in hanging around and watching bad tv. So I kidnapped my niece and we went to go see Prince Caspian! That was cool.

Christmas Day started at 8am for me. I hate 8am. I'm still a little bitter that I had to get up at 8am. But getting up at 8am was what happened! The morning was pretty typical; breakfast, presents, everyone going their own way with their presents. During this time Meka (my niece) and I stole the tv remote and turned on The Nightmare Before Christmas; I knitted and she crocheted. It was nice.

There was a big lunch, during which I ate hardly anything at all. I'm not a big fan of traditional Christmas foods. But I do love turkey legs!

The afternoon was spent playing Chickenfoot (a domino game) and then Monopoly. I hate Monopoly, can I just say that? It's a measure of how much I love my family that I played at all. I did get an exit strategy plotted out when my best friend, Zibby, proposed a trip to the theater to see Tangled. It was salvation. Except - when I got home they wanted to pick back up where we left off. Ug. We played until I was really done - and then I drove home to sleep on my comfy new bed in peace and quiet. I love my family, but I'm glad Christmas is over. Next holiday please!

Fatty Journal: dangit, i've lost count

2010-12-23T06:15:00.000-08:00

Not even going to lie. Yesterday was a display in failure. I decided against going grocery shopping on Sunday because someone gave me an unreleased book I just had to read the instant it hit my in-box (oh how I love my ereader!). So that left me sans food for lunch and breakfast and pretty much dinner too. So yesterday I had triscuits and a granola bar for lunch, the appetizer to the dinner I had to go buy at the grocery store was a sausage biscuit, but dinner was my prescribed plan fitting sandwich and my late night snack I shouldn't have had was apples. Today I will be better! Why? Um, because I went grocery shopping, that's why.

Last night I *started* wrapping presents. I hate wrapping. I've decided that next year, everyone will be getting either one HUGE box with everything tossed in it, or I'm going to spend a small fortune on bags. Wrapping is a pain in the butt when you have to sit on the floor and do it! The things I wish I would have known before I bought a fashionably different dining set. Ah well.

Calorie / Fat Journal
[1800 calories daily / 19 grams of fat per meal ]

Breakfast

cinnamon roll oatmeal - 160 calories - 2 grams of fat
Total: 160 calories - 2 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1640

Lunch

sandwich

honey wheat bread - 140 calories - 1 gram of fat
muenster cheese - 80 calories - 6 grams of fat
thin shaved salami - 111 calories - 9 grams of fat

apple slices - 80 calories - 0 grams of fat
Total: 411 calories - 16 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1229

Snacks

Dr Pepper - 150 calories
Yogurt - 100 calories - unknown fat content
daily calories remaining: 1079

Dinner

sandwich

honey wheat bread - 140 calories - 1 gram of fat
muenster cheese - 80 calories - 6 grams of fat
thin shaved salami - 111 calories - 9 grams of fat

Total: 411 calories - 16 grams of fat
daily calories remaining:668

Calorie / Fat Journal
[1800 calories daily / 19 grams of fat per meal ]

Breakfast

cinnamon roll oatmeal - 160 calories - 2 grams of fat
Total: 160 calories - 2 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1640

Lunch

sandwich

honey wheat bread - 140 calories - 1 gram of fat
muenster cheese - 80 calories - 6 grams of fat
thin shaved salami - 111 calories - 9 grams of fat

apple slices - 80 calories - 0 grams of fat
Total: 411 calories - 16 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1229

Snacks

Dr Pepper - 150 calories
Apples - lots of them - 240 calories
daily calories remaining:839

Dinner

sandwich

honey wheat bread - 140 calories - 1 gram of fat
muenster cheese - 80 calories - 6 grams of fat
thin shaved salami - 111 calories - 9 grams of fat

Total: 411 calories - 16 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 428

things on the radio that bother me

2010-12-21T15:53:00.000-08:00

I have a radio alarm clock that goes off in the morning. I don't usually really listen to it, it's just background noise but over the last week there's been this bit that has caught my attention, and not in a good way. One of the DJs has gone to some length to propagate the rumor that he was involved in a rather high profile divorce. I was shocked that the DJ was proud of this rumor he's encouraged. Why would you want to be the source of someone's divorce? I don't understand why this would be cool or encouraging or whatever. I just don't get why this person would want to exploit someone elses pain.

The other thing that has happened on this particular radio show was a segment done about missed love connections, when you knew there was someone you should be with but aren't. Everyone they talked to was married or in an established, long term relationship with feelings for someone else. They discussed how to cheat, or if they person on the phone should break up their relationship or the one that the other person was in.

Why is it okay to break apart someone else's relationship? I know right now I'm sensitive about this because someone who is like family is going through a tougher than shit kind of time. I take stuff personally, I know but oh well.

Okay, that's it. I'm ticked about stupid stuff and yeah. I'm off to go do Christmas stuff.

Fatty Journal: Day 5 & 6

2010-12-19T21:20:00.000-08:00

Today is going to be a sucktascular day for watching those calories/fat grams. First, I'm out of appropriate breakfasty items - but I'm not really hungry anyways and it's almost lunch time. Second, I'm going shopping for more presents and then there's a party tonight so I very much doubt I'll be in the know of everything I eat or drink. But you know what? Days like this are okay. No one can keep to a strict regime every single day of their lives; it would get uber boring! I'm going to try to keep track of at least how much I eat, make smart choices, and eat things in moderation. I can always be good tomorrow. :D

What I'm finding really helpful are the number of places that have their nutritional information up on websites. I've been able to rule out going to Pot Belly's for my skinny Italian sandwich because 32 grams of fat? Um, no! But! My favorite sandwich at Quiznoes is exactly in my plan.

Okay, the only thing that went 'right' Saturday as far as my eating habits went was Quiznos.

Saturday
Calorie / Fat Journal
[1800 calories daily / 19 grams of fat per meal ]

Breakfast

Nothing
daily calories remaining: 1800

Lunch

Quiznoes Chicken Carbonara regular on wheat - 350 calories - 12 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1450

Snacks

Dr Pepper - 150 calories
Pomegranate drink - 130 calories
daily calories remaining:1170

Dinner

snack foods @ Dakota's place - God only knows how many calories!
2 Dr Peppers - 300 calories
Total: who knows? calories - who knows? grams of fat
daily calories remaining:

Sunday
Calorie / Fat Journal
[1800 calories daily / 19 grams of fat per meal ]

Breakfast

Nothing
daily calories remaining: 1800

Lunch

Frozen pizza - calories - 20 grams of fat
daily calories remaining:

Snacks

Reeses Mini Peanut Butter Cups - 220 calories - 13 grams of fat
daily calories remaining:1170

Dinner

Frozen pizza - calories - 20 grams of fat
Total: who knows? calories - who knows? grams of fat
daily calories remaining:

Dr Who & Angels

2010-12-18T08:37:00.000-08:00

OMG! Who else watches Dr Who?

((Note, if you haven't seen Dr Who or are not into season 5 right now, I'm not responsible for possible spoilers below. <3 ))

Have you seen THE ANGEL episodes? I'm just now watching season 5 and OMG!! I made the mistake of watching Those Episodes right before I was planning on going to sleep. Um, newp. No sleeping happened. I wound up watching like another hour of tv and knitting because it was too freaking creepy. Who would ever have guessed that angel statues could be creeeeeeeepppppyyyyyyy? It's amazing how something as innocent as statuary can now be defined as creepy. I will never, ever look at an angel statue the same ever again.

I mean really, how could this pretty, poignant statue of a crying angel be scary?

When it looks at you like this!!

Okay. I'm done now. Just wanted to say that ANGEL STATUES ARE CREEPY!!!!!

Fatty Journal: Day 4

2010-12-17T18:15:00.000-08:00

Okay, so today was a day about refusing temptation - and choosing wisely. I could have had pizza for lunch. PIZZA! But I said no, I ate my sammitch for lunch. I've taken to drinking my Dr Pepper in the middle of the afternoon, which has been working well. Serves as kind of an afternoon pick-me-up.

What I found mildly exciting this evening was that according to my scale I'm 4 pounds lighter than I was four days ago. It's not something I'm going to hold onto. I think that in a week if I'm still missing this 4 pounds then I'll accept it as fact. Not until them really.

I did decide that since it's Friday night, and I've been such a 'good girl' I would indulge in some Chickfila. The nuggets fit in fine with my plan, but it's the fries that just kill things. I got the "small" combo and I'm drinking more water and tea than Dr Pepper. It's all about making smart choices, right?

Next up - Dr Who and knitting!!!!!

Calorie / Fat Journal
[1800 calories daily / 19 grams of fat per meal ]

Breakfast

cinnamon roll oatmeal - 160 calories - 2 grams of fat
Total: 160 calories - 2 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1640

Lunch

sandwich

honey wheat bread - 140 calories - 1 gram of fat
muenster cheese - 80 calories - 6 grams of fat
thin shaved salami - 111 calories - 9 grams of fat

apple slices - 80 calories - 0 grams of fat
Total: 411 calories - 16 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1229

Snacks

Dr Pepper - 150 calories
daily calories remaining: 1079

Dinner

chickfila

nuggets - 270 calories - 12 grams of fat
waffle fries (small) - 290 calories - 16 grams of fat

Total: 560 calories - 28 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 519

Fatty Journal: Day 3

2010-12-16T21:12:00.000-08:00

Is it too early to say that I'm proud of myself for lasting three full days?

Calorie / Fat Journal
[1800 calories daily / 19 grams of fat per meal ]

Breakfast

maple brown sugar oatmeal - 160 calories - 2 grams of fat
Total: 160 calories - 2 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1640

Lunch

sandwich

honey wheat bread - 140 calories - 1 gram of fat
muenster cheese - 80 calories - 6 grams of fat
thin shaved salami - 111 calories - 9 grams of fat

apple slices - 80 calories - 0 grams of fat
Total: 411 calories - 16 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1229

Snacks

Dr Pepper - 150 calories
daily calories remaining: 1079

Dinner

sandwich

chicken - 120 calories - 5 grams of fat
muenster cheese - 80 calories - 6 grams of fat
honey wheat bread - 140 calories - 1 gram of fat

Total: 340 calories - 12 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 739 calories

Fatty Journal Day 2

2010-12-15T18:44:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I uber failed this morning on remembering to take supplements. I completely forgot. But, the food eating is okay. I'm hungry, like wow hungry, but lunch is in an hour and a half so, here's hoping I last that long! :)

So far my biggest want is Dr Pepper. It's almost 9pm and OMG I WANT A FRIGGEN DR PEPPER! I might cave.

The thing that I have problems remembering is to take my supplements. It's almost 9pm and I have yet to take one. Ug. Maybe I'll remember better tomorrow?

Good news, I did go to bellydancing class tonight!

Calorie / Fat Journal
[1800 calories daily / 19 grams of fat per meal ]

Breakfast

maple brown sugar oatmeal - 160 calories - 2 grams of fat
Total: 160 calories - 2 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1640

Lunch

sandwich

honey wheat bread - 140 calories - 1 gram of fat
muenster cheese - 80 calories - 6 grams of fat
thin shaved salami - 111 calories - 9 grams of fat

apple slices - 80 calories - 0 grams of fat
Total: 411 calories - 16 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1229

Snacks

Triscuits - 65 calories - 3 grams of fat
Dr Pepper - 150 calories
daily calories remaining: 1014

Dinner

sandwich

chicken - 120 calories - 5 grams of fat
muenster cheese - 80 calories - 6 grams of fat
honey wheat bread - 140 calories - 1 gram of fat

Total: 340 calories - 12 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 674 calories

Fatty Journal: Day 1

2010-12-14T21:57:00.000-08:00

First off, if me referring to this as my 'Fatty Journal' offends you, I apologize. I don't mean to be offensive, but it helps me to handle difficult things by making light of them. Thus, why this is my Fatty Journey.

This morning began with a well intentioned 6am alarm to get myself up and exercising for a bit before the day really began. I failed. Miserably. I pressed snooze for an hour at least and then had to scramble to get ready and count out my calories. Today I made the effort to dress 'cute'. I've been feeling far from cute lately and I decided that I need to put the effort out there to dress up my appearance. If I dress like I want to feel, it will make a difference, right?

So calorie counting. I had a heartbreaking realization when I was figuring out my calorie/fat allowance. My favorite winter breakfast item, the sausage biscuit, is way over my calorie/fat daily intake allowance. By like, a lot! I had a few moments to lament the loss. Maybe on the weekends I'll do a little splurge and treat myself to one, but as a daily thing I have to drop it. And then I had to juggle my lunch because based on my mealtime fat allowance I was over. It was an easy fix; drop back to one piece of cheese from two, but it took actually looking at it. Counting calories and fat grams, this is work. This is going to be tough, but hopefully keeping myself accountable by blogging will help me remember to keep track.

Dr Pepper is one of my big weaknesses. I'm going to try to cut back; I know that I can't quit drinking them, at least not cold turkey and I don't really want to. Moderation is the key I think. Maybe I'll try to relegate Dr Pepper to special reward status or something instead of a lunch time staple.

I'm updating this blog through the day. Mostly it gives me a place to vent and worry and whine. Like right now - for the last fifteen minutes I've been trying to figure out if I'm hungry, or if I just want to be hungry. Being hungry would give me an excuse to go raid the kitchen, but I don't really think I'm hungry. At least I don't really need to eat anything. I think I just want an excuse to get away from my desk.

FYI I lasted until all of 2pm without a Dr Pepper. Also, building Christmas party was too tempting to pass up. I got a little square thinggy of cake and retreated to my ivory tower office without any more damage done.

Dinner was hard. I wasn't hungry in the slightest, so I picked up my stuff and ran with it. We had a book signing to attend tonight (tons of fun, book-addicts.com update to come!) and dinner didn't happen until around 10pm at IHOP. I resisted the call of pancakes in favor of a 'smart choices' grilled chicken sandwich. Go me.

Calorie / Fat Journal
[1800 calories daily / 19 grams of fat per meal ]

Breakfast

maple brown sugar oatmeal - 160 calories - 2 grams of fat
vanilla creamer x 2 - 60 calories - 3 grams of fat
Total: 220 calories - 5 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1580

Lunch

sandwich

honey wheat bread - 140 calories - 1 gram of fat
muenster cheese - 80 calories - 6 grams of fat
thin shaved salami - 111 calories - 9 grams of fat

apple slices - 80 calories - 0 grams of fat
Total: 411 calories - 16 grams of fat
daily calories remaining: 1169

Snacks

Dr Pepper - 150 calories
Cake Square Thing - Assuming 100 calories
Izzy - 90 calories
daily calories remaining: 829 calories

Dinner

chicken sandwich, IHOP - 600 calories
daily calories remaining: 229

Go me!

a wake up call

2010-12-13T20:33:00.000-08:00

Recently I've come to realize how much weight I've gained in the last two years. It's substantial. Enough that I'm often just uncomfortable because of my weight. So, tonight after stepping on the scale and having a few moments where I hyperventilated and freaked out, I decided that I needed to do something about this. It's within my power to do stuff; I can change what I eat, make time to work out and I should do that now when I'm in my 20's instead of ten, twenty years down the line when my heath is poor and I'm miserable.

So, I'm going to be making an effort to eat healthier - which means no burgers, fries, and especially chickfila. I'm cutting down on my Dr Pepper; I'm going to make an effort to drink more water. I'm going to look into what it costs to join the gym in the building where I work. I'm going back to bellydance classes.

I can do this, I just have to remember that I want to.

i'd tell myself it's because of the holidays but i know i'm always this busy

2010-12-12T20:26:00.000-08:00

Seriously. I'm pretty much always on the go. How do I ever manage to get anything done?

It's been a full weekend, that it has been.

Friday things got derailed from our intended Dr Who and knitting marathon so instead I spent Friday night reading the brand new Dakota Cassidy book, You Dropped a Blonde on Me. It's awesome because it's her humor and the story of someone learning how to deal with life after a crazy turn of events. I know I don't understand the whole dynamic of divorce and being remarried, but from the angle of just wanting an entertaining book - it delivers.

Saturday I told myself I was going to knock out a bunch of Christmas shopping. I'm all done as far as my mom is concerned, but she's the easiest person to buy for, so that's not saying a whole lot. I still need to buy my dad's presents for her, but he gave me a list and I'll work off of that. I still need to buy for my grandmothers, sister, niece and my family pick person - who I don't know yet. Great! I have begun to buy at least one book for each family member and I've got that item knocked off, so that's the most important shopping all tied up and taken care of as far as I'm concerned. I'll work on the rest later.

Saturday night was my cousin's wedding. I haven't seen him or his family in close to six or eight years, and my mother whined about going until I almost let her off the hook, but we still went! And I was really glad we went. All of her brothers and sisters save for one attended. They never get together any more. And, my mom's stepmother was there. There's a whole pile of family "stuff" in that situation I won't even touch, but it was a pleasant reunion to see her. The wedding was small and intimate and a lot of fun. They had a guitarist that did all requests, and did Glee like mash ups. It was a fantastic time, and my mom was really glad I dragged her along.

Today I woke up way early; like 8am, which for me on a weekend is stinking early! I did all kinds of responsible things; I started laundry, did the dishes, went grocery shopping and bought stuff for the Chin Children. And then - I did revisions. I'll be talking about that in a few days over at cidwrites, but today was a big day as far as going through the draft and making changes.

Tonight was my Uncle D's Christmas party. He used to have a family get together every year for a while until he moved, but my family has stopped going. This year, however, I got an invitation so it didn't matter if my stick in the mud parents (love you mom and dad!) weren't going, I was going! I also dragged Suzan along and made her go make nice with my family. There were the most amazing, squishy chocolate covered gingerbread cookies! And I got to see some more family and chitchat with other people I don't really know that well.

All in all - a very productive, fun weekend.

This week is going to be more of the busy, busy, busy. Tomorrow night I need to do more Christmas shopping, Tuesday night we're going to a Richelle Mead book signing, Wednesday I know I have something, Thursday is #writersdatenight and I might be free on Friday before the crazy starts all over again. So - there 'ya go! Lots happening. Time for me to go to sleeeeeeep!!

so i'm going to ramble about being sick and the need to go christmas shopping.... GO!

2010-12-09T11:01:00.000-08:00

Ohmigawd I felt craptastic last night! Fer serials. I went to bed a little later than I intended to, half because the last Blades of the Rose book is ginormous and half because I haven't been sleeping through the night. I've been waking up too early and then laying there far too awake and without the umph to get up and out of bed. In theory it was a good idea, but I was just so sicky feeling and uncomfortable I barely slept. I meant to take some of that night time cold medicine that knocks you out, but I forgot and then woke up in the early hours too cautious to take any for fear that I wouldn't wake up.

As exciting as it was to wake up with cops, moms, and apartment office people hanging around my bed, it's not an experience I want to relive any time soon! So I suffered through the night. This morning I felt icky still, but as the day has gone by I'm feeling better. I've only supped on two Sucrets, which is a big improvement over the 8 I had yesterday. Yeah. 8. I had a timer going to count down the minutes and seconds until I could have another. Today is infinatley better, made so by copious amounts of warm tea and the thought that tonight - tonight I get soup!

Sometime this weekend I have got to start thinking about Christmas presents. I'm buying for: mom, dad, sister, niece, grandma, grandmother, and family pick. Each year on Christmas Eve we all draw one name - someone in the family who we buy one present for. This way we don't have to buy presents for everyone, and everyone gets two presents on Christmas Eve; one from their family pick, and one from Grandma who runs the Christmas Eve party.

Well. Lunch is now officially over, I've read through most of it, so I must scuttle off to do work things!

(Aren't you proud that I'm blogging again???)

what's today's date again?

2010-12-08T09:06:00.000-08:00

I have Blink 182's old song, What's my age again?, running through my head, only it's, What's today again?

For some reason I can't keep the days and dates straight in my head. I don't know if I should blame it on taking so much time off of work and focusing on writing to the exclusion of piddly things like dates and days or if it's something to do with this achy cold I have going on.

Today for instance; I woke up this morning thinking I didn't have to go to work. Um, yeah keep dreaming!

I should probably pull out my planner and jot down things with a bit more zeal so I make sure to keep track of this stuff and jog my memory. So that's it.

the birthday weekend of awesome (part II)

2010-12-06T09:51:00.000-08:00

Well, everything can't always go according to plan, right?

Sunday was a study in what happens when nothing is planned! I woke up fairly early and did my annual Birthday Shopping Spree. This mostly consisted of work appropriate clothing; two pairs of slacks, one pair of jeans, a few shirts, and three pairs of shoes. All in all, I spent relatively little thanks to good sales. The shopping has become an almost unintentional tradition.

The afternoon was spent attending the Ft Worth TGIO which was the epitome of last-minute-planning, but I got to eat awesome biscuits and gravey, so who cares? There was a little crafty shopping and then I went home and watched Dr Who stuff and The Secret of Kells and fought with knitting....

At least until the angry policeman arrived and accused me of listening to bass bust'en hip hop and playing video games way too loud. Now, I am the first person to admit that I like listening and watching stuff on the loud side, but I wasn't last night. I didn't really appreciate the angry cop routine since I wasn't doing anything wrong except maybe not having cake. Yeah, I realized today that there was no cake involved at any point in time over the weekend. How much suck is that?

the birthday weekend of awesome (probably part I)

2010-12-04T23:38:00.000-08:00

This has been a nutty weekend so far. It's almost 1:30am on Sunday morning and for some reason I'm still awake. I guess I keep thinking if I hang around long enough something uber cool will happen - but I could be sleeping....

So instead I'm going to blog about this weekend. Since my friend Suzan and I have back to back birthdays we decided we would do an extended weekend of awesome to celebrate.

Friday night - we went to Pete's Dueling Piano Bar. Incase you aren't familiar with this, it's a bar with pianos and people who play and sing requests of stuff. They can play just about anything, as long as they know it, and it's a great time to sing along, drink, dance, whatever. But of course I can't go anywhere without something happening. As soon as we got there we had a run in with this guy in a wheelchair who is like haunting the place or something. He came up to Suzan and I thought she knew him, but aparently he just wanted to tell her she was very pretty. I almost think he followed us to this corner we staked out for a bit because he wheels up to me and even though I'm singing and watching the act he wheels up and stares at me. Yes, I know I'm too nice to just tell someone to scamper off, so I get dragged into this very awkward conversation with him. I'm really not sure if he was really not all there or if he was just using the chair and this almost drunken voice to pick up girls, but it was weird and uncomfortable. He even stood up (um, so why the wheelchair?) and hugged me. And tried to pull my clothes around to see my tattoos. Yeah, wasn't thrilled.

After that experience most of the rest of the night was a lot of fun. Suz and I got pulled up on stage to do the chicken dance and make fools of ourselves since we were celebrating birthdays. There was a diminutive older guy who was rather drunk that decided to booty dance at our table - not us, the table. Pete's also must have a hotness test for the bouncers. And we did tons of singing. It was a great night.

Today, Saturday, I had the Dallas TGIO for NaNoWriMo. It was kinda a train wreck since the planning ML got sick and there was a schedule conflict for the space and we got bumped to another room, but everything worked out.

Tonight we went to a Brahmas hockey game - it's a minor league hockey thing. The game was loads of fun and we sat right on the glass. The fights were awesome, the game really good once they got warmed up, and I think we're looking to go more often to those games.

Plans for tomorrow have kinda fallen through, so I'll be winging it on my actual birthday. I'm thinking shopping and then the Ft Worth TGIO and maybe go see a movie if I can find anyone who is interested.

Okay, going to convince myself that sleep is the best bet right now.

not a particularly driven morning

2010-12-02T06:27:00.000-08:00

My brother came to visit me yesterday.

Maybe that doesn't sound strange to you, but up until a week ago he was living in Florida. I knew he was going to be back in Texas - but in Longview, now exactly a distance to just drop by for a chat. We sat around for like two hours chatting and laughing and talking. It was really nice, especially after NaNo. We did talk some shop on books and writing but he's a casual reader only so it was more be gabbing and then moving on to other topics. It was really cool, and it was nice to not feel harried during a conversation because I need to get back to writing like - RIGHT NOW!

I have yet to make it back to the kitchen to start post-NaNo cooking, but that has more to do with my own laziness than anything else. I have two awesome steaks thawing right now that will be fantastic when I cook them on Friday, or maybe tonight if we don't do our #writersdatenight celebration meet up.

Sometime this weekend I want to get back on the knitting train. I need to make one book cozy for a word war winner in Atlanta and then do some work on a scarf I've promised a friend of mine come January for her birthday. I also want to knit this awesome ereader cozy I found on the Lion's Brand Yarn site. It calls for crocheted button holes. I'm hoping I can either ignore that part or hand that bit off to one of my crocheting friends to finish for me.

Last night I did manage to get cleaning done in the apartment. All my furniture is back where it belongs, but there's still stuff where it doesn't belong and I really need to take out the trash and do this last load of Thanksgiving dishes. All in all, things are coming together, so it's nice.

At some point I'm going to get down and dirty with the Christmas shopping. Maybe this weekend I'll head up to Kohls or something and start in seriously. Or maybe not. I'm not particularly driven this morning - and now it's time to go to work!

brain bleed - or something like that

2010-12-01T15:38:00.000-08:00

My brain feels like it's mush. Which means that NaNoWriMo is over! Yup. In case you haven't heard, I was an ML for this thing called NaNoWriMo - think like a big club and me being one of the co-presidents. Anyways, I wrote over 200,000 words in one month. My brain hurts. So I've been reading! It's awesome and makes me happy.

But I really don't want to talk about NaNo. In fact, I want to talk about anything BUT that. So - what am I going to do now that NaNo is over with?

I'm going to blog.
I'm going to read.
I'm going to knit.
I'm going to watch movies.
I'm going to hang out with people.
I'm going to watch hockey.
And much, much more.

Mostly I'm probably going to be reading. I've read one book today, and I'll probably read more of another - and clean. Dear lord my apartment is a pit of ick. It wasn't that bad - not until this weekend when I had tons of people over and things just kinda got more and more messy. I still need to clean up the kitchen and put my living room back in order. Yup. Super exciting, huh? So I'm going to go do that now.

things i'm going to do as soon as nano is over...

2010-11-17T17:00:00.000-08:00

i'm going to cook.

i haven't been cooking because i was lazy, and then i was busy, and now i have nano. i've been going out to eat mostly, and when i'm not out eating at a write-in, i've been eating left overs or microwave meals. they're not bad, and honestly probably better than something i would cook, but i feel icky eating all of this food that's been packaged and processed and preserved.

i'm not sure what i'll cook when nano is over, but it'll probably be something i shouldn't.

ooooh, i forgot about the steaks in my freezer. i got them a few weeks ago with the intent to cook them, but then stuff happened and nano started. i'm thinking a bag of red potatoes, sliced and buttered and baked into tender perfection and steak marinated in something decident. and then i can cook chicken and fish and everything else and maybe i'll feel like working out again.

heck, maybe i'll have TIME to work out again.

holidays are here!

2010-11-05T23:48:00.000-07:00

Okay, so hate me if you wanna, but the holiday season has infected me. For me the holidays start with Halloween - because you get to dress up and it's super fun, and it means that it's time to start NaNoWriMo. If you don't do NaNoWriMo November is all about Turkey - but if you do NaNoWriMo it's a big deal. It consumes a large part of your life and is like a license to be certifiably crazy and indulge your creative side. Of course there's Thanksgiving, my dad's birthday, my birthday, Christmas and New Years. Yeah, this is kinda a big part of the year where lots of exciting things happen.

I went to Kohls to buy my dad's birthday present on Wednesday and they already have Christmas music playing, trees and decorations everywhere - it's like a big dose of Holiday Spirit. This morning I wanted to start playing Christmas music but I didn't because I didn't want to get out of bed. Yeah.

This is going to be a crazy two months, because in addition to all of the above, my dad is having surgery and I'm an ML and all the rest of it that come with it. Anyways, that's it. I'm busy writing and doing stuff, so there.

emotional infidelity

2010-10-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm reading a certain book where some cheating happens - characters that I have been in literary love with cheated, like wow cheated. I finished the book and was so angry I wanted to punch kittens - and I still do. I'm going to be doing a Book-Addicts.com blog about emotionally charged reactions to books, but stemming from this book I've had a few conversations and an eye opening situation happen. So I thought I'd tackle my thoughts on emotional infidelity.

Cheating. I hate cheaters. There's a lot in the world I'm willing to forgive - cheating is something very difficult for me to forgive. It's a complete stripping of trust, no matter if it's someone I'm dating or if my best friend’s boyfriend cheats on her or if I'm best friends with the cheater; to me it says something about their character and as a default - I become wary of trust. There are always extraneous situations, and I won't even begin to claim that I react this way to every situation, but there is always a moment when I utterly question the trust and faith I have in that person.

So what is cheating? What's your definition of cheating? Is cheating a physical action? Or are thoughts enough? Would stolen time or warm-fuzzy-feelings for someone else constitute cheating?

There are a lot of options to consider when labeling someone a cheater. The most obvious is the physical act of cheating on a significant other. You can't deny what happened, maybe the circumstances, but the act happened. But what about emotional infidelity? Cheating that happens in the mind and heart; is that wrong?

I can't help but think about that infamous SmartBitches post recently where a boyfriend questioned his girlfriend’s stash of romance books. The blog is about another avenue, but it proves a point; some people will claim that romance books and porn are cheating because the mind and emotions are elsewhere, not on the significant other. There are people who ascribe to the ideology that thinking about another woman with interest of any sort - is cheating.

That's an extreme side - I sort of wanted to point out the obvious and the extreme, so now I'll hit the middle road which is where most of my questions and thoughts are centered.

In high school I often found myself in the role of "the best friend" the "girl who was one of the guys". Do you know how much that sucks? Thank GOD I woke up and got out of that rut when I hit college; yes, I had guy friends but I was no longer friends with them for the wrong reasons, and I didn't allow them to think of me as one of the guys unless that was the friendship I wanted. Unrequited love is brutal.

You know why I think a lot of those guys considered me part of their "best friend" tribe back then? Because looking back there was something missing with their significant other that I provided. It was high school and most of it was dumb, but it's the illustration I have on hand at the moment. The boys physically dated someone else, but when they wanted to talk about stuff or go do stupid stuff their girlfriends wouldn't do - they called me. And silly me went along with it because one day they'd wake up and realize just how awesome I was. (They never did, and I probably wasn't all that awesome if that was how I was pining after them.)

Later on in life, I found myself in a very odd love-square. I was friends with people who were dating other people, heck - I was dating someone else, and yet emotionally I connected on a level with someone who was not my boyfriend to such a degree that I knew it was wrong to be dating one person but harboring feelings for another.

Feelings happen. We're going to feel things for people who are not our significant other; it's how you handle it that matters. But is there a line of right and wrong? How do you know where that is? You can't really tick off emotional boxes looking at someone - only the person feeling can do that and even then we get our own synapses so crossed and rewired we confuse ourselves. If you've ever seen He's Just Not That Into You, there's a story arc of a married man who has a friendship develop with a woman who is not his wife; there's a point in the movie where he pulls back and says something to the affect, 'This is wrong'. The woman questions him about having female friends - are they wrong? But the friendship wasn't the issue - they both knew the issue was with how they were feeling about each other. By spending time with the other woman and developing feelings for her the character was cheating. Okay, other stuff happens but that's later on.

Drawing the line around emotions is hard. It's very subjective and murky. What I think of as cheating emotionally won't be the same for someone else - and that's where it gets hard to handle, to understand and deal with.

I don't think I answered, explained or stated any questions very well, but I put ideas down and right now that's what matters.

the life, post-novel

2010-10-19T07:32:00.000-07:00

Sunday I finished a first draft of a novel I started last month. It was a very exciting moment, but I knew I was going to finish it during the weekend. Heck, I'd planned it that way - because I need two weeks to get ready for NaNoWriMo - and clean my apartment!

So what does life look like post-novel? Messy. I'm starting a cleaning schedule. First everything will be tidied up, mostly put into place so my apartment is presentable - and then I start the deep clean. I'm going to try to borrow or rent a carpet cleaner I think, and a vaccume - or maybe just buy a new one. My mom visted me this last weekend and remarked about how dirty my apartment is. It irked me because it was a little messy around the edges but for the most part it was clean!

I think I got the cleaning bug from my mom - but only after I moved away. Before I did everything possible to not clean, but now all I want is for everything to have a place and a spot.

Oh my, I'm becoming my mother....

beliefs.

2010-10-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

I was driving Saturday when I had a very philisophical conversation with myself about beliefs and what I believe.

I've always been very forthcoming with what I believe; I'm a Christian, that's just how it is. I'm probably more liberal than others, and much more accepting, but I believe in a God, a risen Savior and the presence of the Holy Spirit. I'm not going to spoon feed you my kool-aid, and I respect the right to believe differently - but I don't shy away from talking about it - if it comes up.

So while driving I started thinking about beliefs in an arm's length kind of way. Stepping back and looking at the trappings and rules - and you know what? It's hard to believe in something. I have faith because I just do, I can't explain my faith to someone who doesn't want faith, and that's difficult to deal with on the best of days. It would be so much easier to believe that this life ends with your last breath, the last beat of your heart; you're time's up, you've had a great run of things - and now it's over. Like the wind-up toy that no longer windes, you're done. That would simply life so much; there wouldn't be any teetering on the precipice of right and wrong - there would just exsist a state of being, answerable to only yourself.

I've always needed rules or guidelines in my life. I need to know where the line is because I've always struggled with balance in my life; I tend to throw myself into something and do too much of it, or consume all of it. Books? I read them in one sitting, and that's kind of how I treat a lot of things in my life. I give myself over to it wholly, I want to read the finish line, have an end product, reap the rewards of having completed that task, etc.

I know I should be a 'better Christian'. I don't go to church as much as I should. The fact that it's hard for me to find a place where people don't stare at me and wonder what my real reason for being around is, or where people are friendly and open enough to let you into the click, or any number of other social situations. It's not God in the church that keeps me out, it's the people. That's a terrible mindset; we're Christians, we're not supposed to live solitary lives, but for me it's easier 'being on my own' than around others. And that's not really a good mindset - but I also know that I'm playing with a specific hand of cards that you, my reader, probably don't know so don't judge me too harshly because you don't know the whole story.

And this leads me to the question - what makes a 'good' Christian? I believe. I try not to sin. I'm not as good about reading my Bible or praying as I should be. I'm not affraid to talk to people about what I believe, but I don't initiate that conversation very much (Okay, that's not true, I have the prophet Hosea tattoo'd on my arm and THAT gets a lot of attention and starts the conversation - so maybe I am guilty of starting the conversation....). It would be easier for my off-balance life if I had a few simple guidelines to tell me when enough is enough, because I constantly feel like a failure because I'm not burning the candle at both ends where my faith and beliefs are concerned - and I don't know if that's a right or wrong sentiment. I just don't know, and worrying about it makes me not want to even think about it - and then I wonder if believing in nothing at all would be better, but that's not true, because my beliefs are integral to who I am and are part of me.

I'm not looking for an answer, I'm just wanting to express this knot of thought inside my head; believing is harder that not believing at all, but without my beliefs I'm denied hope in something bigger and better than myself, so it's okay that things are a little hard sometime. I'll figure out a balance, life will make sense, and maybe I'll realize that it's okay that I live in America, working a regular job, doing my own things - and not something more dedicated. Sometimes I feel like a failure because I didn't try harder to be a missionary when working in a church became impossible, but I can't change the past and I can only move forward - and for now forward is right where I am headed.

Dr Who

2010-10-11T07:27:00.000-07:00

Anyone else watch it?

I have a lot of friends who do, and I had no idea what they were talking about when they started spouting off about TARDIS and sonic screwdrivers - most of the time I just smiled, nodded and acted like everything made perfect sense. Sounds like a good plan, huh? And it was! At least until I decided to dip my toes int he pond and see what it's all about.

And ya know what? I'm loving it. I'm almost through season 2 of Dr Who, trying to convince myself to stretch it out instead of jamming it all in one weekend, but it's not working out so well. I've been knitting and watching it a lot. Yup - so far I have a new hat and I'm almost done with a book cozy. Made my wristies watching a big chunk of it too. Now if only I could finish those scarves.... if only I could remember where they are.

So anyways, I'm watching Dr Who, and it's fun. I should post pictures of my knitting, but it's all up on Ravelry if you belong to that fun little cult.

NaNo stuff has and hasn't picked up. There's plenty of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that takes up time, and we're planning stuff and doing preparations, but nothing that's huge - at least not until this weekend.

I need to finish the book I'm working on now so I can focus on my November projects, which I blogged about over on cidwrites.com - yes, I'm blogging more! Be impressed.

Okay, off to get a snack and do stuff.

2010 Halloween Costume

2010-10-10T11:58:00.000-07:00

Okay, so yes, I've been a sucky blogger so to get me back to talking about stuff, since it's October, I'll talk about my Halloween costume. I knew after reading Feed by Mira Grant that I wanted to be Urban Survival Barbie, sort of like Alice from Resident Evil, but with glam. I debated for a long time if I wanted to do it glitzy like, or do more of an urban feel. I couldn't decide, but I thought that Barbie would have to be pink - so I went on a search for something that would work, and last weekend I found the perfect Barbie zombie fighting dress.

There's still important parts that I need. I'm going to look into getting a pagent style sash this next week, like Miss America style, but with hot pink letters saying Urban Survival Barbie, and I'll probably make a patch for the back of it that says, Rise up while you still can. I found the company that makes the Miss America and Universe sashes, I'd like to see the faces on the people when they get the order. It's going to be funny.

Oh, I also have these killer boots that also came from Ross. Yeah, Ross is a great place.

So, once I have the sash, now that I have the dress and the boots, I need those fancy, jewel hose, I'm going to try to find a mini-black leather jacket, a blonde wig is a necessity, and also a bedazzled machete. Yup, I'm going to bedazzle me some metal. It's going to be great.

Now, where will I be wearing this, you ask?

Two places. First, on the 31st to the NaNo midnight write in. It will be great fun. Then, the second is to the Readers'n'Ritas costume ball in November.

So yeah, I'm going to be Barbie.

I feel guilty that I'm not blogging more, so I keep not blogging.

2010-10-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

I should blog more. I keep meaning to, but then I feel guilty that I haven't been blogging, so I keep not blogging. Yes, that makes a lot of sense, I know.

So what have I been doing?

Not a lot, really. Mostly reading, writing and knitting. I started back up with belly dance classes, so that's a good thing. I've started a new novel and I'm 75% of the way through writing the first draft. I'm knitting my first ever hat - and Alice gave me these super awesome stitch markers that have pretty beads on them. I've also knitted fingerless gloves based on a Dr Horrible Wristies pattern. And I'm reading a lot. So far the best new releases I've read in the last few weeks are Bayou Moon by Ilona Andrews (I've read it four times now) and The Iron Duke by Meljean Brooks (read it twice, it came out on Tuesday, like two days ago).

And, I'm getting ready for NaNoWriMo. I'm an ML so things are going to be busy, but I'm excited.

Yup, time for me to go to bed. Night!

Gaining traction, or at least plotting out the best route....

2010-09-22T07:05:00.000-07:00

I don't think my lack-of-motivation streak is at an end. In fact, I think it's dug in hard and doesn't wan to leave, but I'm tired of my apartment looking a bit cluttered and messy. I don't think my friends really mind, I mean they come over willingly enough, but it's bothering me. I didn't get any of the desired cleaning done yesterday because I got frusterated with my other website and started hand updating files. It took two hours and it didn't fix the problem I was having. I think I'm at the point where I'm just going to pay someone to fix it.

But! But I have been successful about getting some things done. I've written a lot recently, in fact more consistently and with more gusto than I have since I finished Abs. That is encouraging!

So, I'm going to look for small steps this week. I want to tidy up the apartment and go to bellydancing on Saturday morning. I've been putting off going back to classes for, well, I don't know why, but I have and I will be going Saturday because I just will! I think I'm going to only go once a month until I'm back into a routine and then kick it up to twice a week again.

I'm going to try to keep my dishes under control, and be a bit more tidy with my laundry. Those are my goals for the forseeable future. Start small, right? Well this is small enough. Little steps create habits, and making them good habits is kind of the focus I need right now, so there you go.

Tonight I really need to take out the trash and clean the Chinchilla cage and go grocery shopping. I'm going out to lunch because I didn't have anything else to bring with me to work to eat - even for breakfast. If I can squeeze in putting away my laundry I'll be thrilled and try to tackle the clutter in the livingroom tomorrow.

I'm hoping to start using the WiiFit again as I watch back seasons of Dr Who since it's on the Netflix Watch Instantly.

All in all, it's a start!

Got Motivation?

2010-09-21T07:18:00.000-07:00

I'm making up my own knitting pattern. Yes, you heard me right, I'm coming up with my own set of stitches. I think I've figured out what I want to do with it so far, so now it's just a matter of knitting it to length, but I'm hopeful. Thankfully the point of the pattern is to be rather holey and messy and not quite perfect; it's a very forgiving pattern so far. When I have more than a few inches to show for it I will post some pictures, but for now it looks like a black rectangle with stylized holes in it. Not much to look at.

So it seems I'm having an issue with lack of discipline. Not surprising; I was never very disciplined before I went to college and it took me a year or so to figure out how to not drown in my classes, but then I cracked the whip and got through it. Somewhere in the last year my discipline has crumbled. I stay up late, I skid into work just in time, I put off finishing my laudry or dishes, and I really would rather not clean. I'm lazy - which has always been one of my biggest vices - but mostly I've been able to hem myself in. Lately I've lost even that ability.

If it didn't affect my life - like the things I want to be able to do - I doubt I would be upset about it. But I can't really write or knit much when I'm exhausted from having stayed up two nights in a row until the wee hours of the morning because I didn't feel like going to bed just quite yet. I'm not sure what I need to do to motivate myself more, but it needs to happen.

Mostly because I want to finish my Dr Horrible Wristies and finish writing this book, but getting other stuff done too would be nice.

Knitting Frenzy

2010-09-19T12:28:00.000-07:00

Okay, so Alice and I have been hitting the idea back and forth like a never-ending game of ping pong about how we needed to get together and knit - and then there was the other conversation about doing a Harry Potter marathon since I've seen only a few of the movies in their entirety and another one in bits and pieces. Well, yesterday was devoted to knitting - and Harry Potter. Yup.

My goal for a while has been to knit a pair of fingerless gloves. I want a pair. I want to make a pair. So after lots of digging around, Alice found this pair of wristies that were inspired by Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog. They used to be up on Ravelry and on Knerdy Knitting, but the site went down or expired. Through some very impressive creative thinking on a friend of ours, we discovered that we could access the pattern through google's chache. So, if you're interested, h e r e is a link to that pattern.

The wristies I made are a little different. For one, my thumb hole isn't comfortable at all. If I make another pair of these I'll have to experiment. I also made the button track wider, and after I discovered I had no idea how to actually make the button holes, I just knitted a solid track and sewed the wristies together and will add buttons once I find some better suited to the jewel tone colors. I have one almost completed wristie that's just missing buttons.

I've also completed another book cozie. This one was going to be for me, but I ended up hating the way the self-striping yarn patterend on the book, so I'll be giving it away with a future book giveaway on Book Addicts. Stay tuned!

This morning I started experimenting with an idea I hatched for a pattern for fingerless gloves, so I'll have to report back on how that's working, but later - because I need to do a lot of writing since I took yesterday off to watch Harry Potter and knit.

Hmm, I'm kinda tardy.

2010-09-12T20:55:00.001-07:00

I swear I'm going to blog more this week.....

Staycation Update

2010-09-04T15:52:00.000-07:00

So I'm sitting in a Starbucks in Longview, out in east Texas, just hanging out until a reasonable time for me to head over to the country club for my brothers wedding. This is day three of my staycation - no I don't care that it's a Saturday!

So far it's been all about the reading and revisions. Thursday I think I finished reading Married with Zombies, did a bunch of writing and revising, read an ebook called Until Emie and read Blameless. Yeah, I read a lot!! Friday I got up and finished reading Never Trust a Rogue before putting in some serious revision time on MPG and then heading off for a quick B&N trip before the Writer's Date Night. We're trying it out on Friday nights for a few weeks, but I don't think it's going to work. There just isn't a night for everyone to get together that doesn't conflict with anything else, so we're going to have to make a group decision about what we want to do. It's going to suck because any way we hatch this egg someone is going to get left out. Boo.

Today I slept in on accident and missed dance class - again. I haven't been in like two or three weeks. Ug. I'm a dance failure!!! Hopefully after this weekend and the whole crazy trip for the wedding I'll be back on track and doing stuff normal like.

And my brother just surprised me at Starbucks. Awe. I'm supposed to meet everyone over at the country club in like half an hour. I'll get snazzied up over there and meet everyone. Tonight promises to be really interesting.

End of August Check-In!

2010-09-02T08:07:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm a *little* late with this - gimme a break!!!

Random Goals

Eat more fresh produce - um, I really try to eat apple slices, but this goal is becoming more and more impossible. *sigh*

Do something daily - I've been pretty good about this during August. Between dancing twice a week and using the Wii while I watch tv, I'm not just sitting around all day.

Reading Goals

Read all the Robin McKinley books - I reread Deerskin this month and remembered all of the reasons why that was such an awesome book.

Read something in a genre I'm not accustomed to reading - I read my first erotic romance book this month. It was purely by accident. All I knew was that there were dragon shape shifters in it, so I thought: why the heck not? Four chapters in I was all: What the heck am I reading? It was unfortunately a book I spent the whole time laughing at....

Act on more book suggestions; at least four - I've blown this out of the water.

Crafty Goals

Learn three new knitting things - I've been making book cozies.... Speaking of, I probably need to start a new one!

So, okay not a whole lot to say for myself this month. I've been reading - a lot - and getting ready for the convention that was this past weekend. This next month will be all about revising and hammering out world building issues on MPG. Also, really starting to look forward to NaNoWriMo 2010!!!!!!

looking forward to the staycation......

2010-08-31T19:12:00.000-07:00

So after Armadillo*Con and an impressive book release day today, I really need to think about more space for my books. I have a very large entertainment center that I got because I liked the way it looked, the style was something I really thought was nifty and there were matching bookcases. I haven't put books on the entertainment center. However, with the rate of my buying right now, I need more shelf space so I'm hoping to take some time during my staycation to do some serious organization.

That, and I think I'm going to get rid of my physical cd's. I can't remember the last time I bought one or changed out the discs in my CD player. I don't even listen to them. They're just in there. Doing that will give me three cubbies, combining my Wii stuff will give me one, getting rid of the VHS tapes I can't watch anyways will give me two. Putting knicknack stuff in other places will give me two. So, as you can see, that will add up! And, I want to take my photo albums out of the shelves and put the "office" suppies somewhere else as well as the random compilation of binders.

Other random things I plan on doing during my staycation? Um..... Write. Read. Clean up my bedroom as usual. Clean the patio. But mostly read and write. I know, thrillingly exciting, huh?

In other news, I posted a recap of Armadillo*Con on my writers blog, and uploaded pictures to Facebook. I need to Flickr them, but I'm going to bed early tonight. Or, I'm going to bed early if I can after having read a quarter of Married with Zombies. I love zombie books, but they do horrible things to my over-active imagination!

so much to talk about, no time to do it

2010-08-31T07:58:00.000-07:00

There's so much to update on, I just haven't had time to do it. So here's a stupid picture of me at Armadillo*Con.

I've never been good at that fitting in thing

2010-08-24T19:14:00.000-07:00

Today I was glancing through a friends Facebook pictures; not always an enjoyable experience when you turn up in them as the 14 yr old version of yourself, lol. No, I'm not linking. And it got me thinking about how I've always felt a little obtuse or abnormal in a group of people.

Tons of people go out of their way to dress or act in a way that attracts attention because they want it or they need it to compensate for something. There was a short time in and around Jr High when I did that, but it was just too much work, and I went back to being - me. I don't know what it is about just being myself, but I always seem to be the odd one out.

I'm loud and opinionated. That makes me stick out a lot of the time. I like and have tattoos; that gets me all sorts of attention - but I didn't get the tattoos for attention. I got them because I wanted them. Do they make me look kinda bad ass? Well, yeah. Suz said last week that if the hotel was mean to us she'd sick me on them because I'm scary and have tattoos, lol.

But what I'm talking about is that I've always been sort of the odd one out. It's just who I am. I remember in high school really badly just wanting to fit in somewhere, even if it was with the odd kids, I just wanted people who liked me. Maybe if I could change who I was I could have, but I've never once considered being anything but what I am. I've always liked me, with my oddities and quirks, I've never once thought that the way I am naturally - loud, obnoxious, tattooed, creative - was something that needed to change or was abnormal.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say, I guess I'm just articulating observations about myself. I'm aware that I stick out like a sore thumb. No, I don't do it intentionally. Yes, this is who I really am. It's too much of an effort to hide behind a fancy facade; I'm l-a-z-y.

So that's it. Be who you are because it's what's most truthful. Yes, it's nice to fit in sometimes, but at what cost?

shopping is an addiction now, right?

2010-08-22T19:04:00.000-07:00

So this was the tax free weekend here in Texas. As in, the one weekend where you're totally okay spending way too much money because that 5% or whatever sales tax usually is, isn't there! While it was a little crazy dodging people and finding the right size, I was sad that there weren't more people out shopping. I know the economy is on a slow crawl up hill, but I'd hoped that there would be more people out taking advantage of the weekend and showing that the economy isn't all that bad.

Oh well. It didn't stop me from having a good time.

To get the day started off 'right' I got my hair done. I'd been holding off so that it was right before the conference. It's not that much different from how I had it cut last time, I just had blonde and some splashes of red added. You'd think with how little hair I have that it wouldn't take that long to do, right? Um, wrong. I was in the stylists chair from 9am until about 2:30pm. That's a lot of fussing over my hair!! We did the blonde, and then decided there wasn't enough of it and did a second round of bleach foils. The red didn't come out with as much of a *pop* as we'd hoped. But all in all it looks really good. And the stylist had a great time figuring out how to do a fauxhawk since I said she could. Will I be sporting the fauxhawk? Probably not very often, but it was a fun style.

That said, it was off for shopping with Suzan and The Monsters! It was a lot of fun; we hit up Old Navy, the Mall and Kohls and did some serious money damage. The boys were fun, and bless their hearts they put up with us an awful lot! I got two complete outfits which I'll be sporting at the conference next weekend and a few other pieces that will be good for work. I really like shopping....

And just to prove how hardcore of a shopper I can be, I shopped until my foot literally bled! LoL, something got in my shoe and I have a little cut on the very bottom, on the inner part of the ball of my foot so I've been walking softly all day.

The rest of the week will be spent taking care of work stuff and prepping for the weekend. I'm getting my nails done on Tuesday and will be stressing over choreography for dance class I still don't know all that well and convincing myself to do laundry - again - before we go. :D

The Power of Choice

2010-08-19T16:37:00.000-07:00

So last year sometime I did the Strengths Finder 2.0 exam. If you're unfamiliar with the book, it's the culmination of a decades worth of study on positive traits. We have so many ways to describe what we cannot do well and how people are in a negative light; there's not anywhere near as much emphasis put on what we can do well, or where we excell. It's an interesting book; you must purchase it new, the access code in the back is good for only one exam, and you must take the exam in one sitting. It's timed, and there is no Go Back option.

One of my top five qualities was positivity.

Yesterday was really hard for me. I'm hard on myself because who else will be? I went to bed bummed out and feeling depressed. Now, today isn't all sunshine and roses, but I made the choice this morning to attempt to be happier, to attempt to not allow my mistakes to drag me down into a bog. I'm still bummed out about my short comings, but I'm much happier than I was yesterday - because I chose to be. My problems haven't been solved, and right now I don't think they will be for another day or two, but I can't controll everything.

I can control how I react. I can control how I conduct myself. I can control my choices. And I chose to make the attempt at having a good day, and find joy in the small things. Like Dr Pepper and the zombie book Suzan pointed out to me that will be out in a few weeks. Bonus points because it looks fan-frikken-hilarious.

i want to be in a snit.

2010-08-18T20:19:00.000-07:00

Today has just been one crappy thing after the other. But because it's mostly involving Things I Don't Blog About and my dad's health, there's really no point in blogging about it - other than I want to tell you, I want to be in a snit. I really do. All of the issues of today can't be pointed at just one person, it's a lot of that, 'none of us were paying attention like we should' and things fell through the crack and you know me; if it's not perfect, if I messed up, I'm crushed.

I wish I could just brush off the mistakes; yes, we all make them but when I make them I often feel as if it is the end of the world. I try to not act out after a mistake, I try to rein in my, 'woe is me! doom! doom! doom!', faze and move on with it. But just because I don't act that way doesn't mean I don't feel it. So the latter half of tonight has been me kicking myself while I'm down, pointing out everything I really could do better if I would just open my eyes and try a bit more.

No, I am not perfect.
Yes, I tend towards lazy.
No, it is not the end of the world.
Yes, I wish the ground would open up and swallow me now for my lack of perfection.

And then I talked to my mom. We both got to complain to each other, and wonderful mother that she is, she wholeheartedly tries to make everything better. I need to be a better daughter and call more often, but when I do call I learn everything my dad won't tell me about his health and then I recall why we haven't talked as much recently and of course my mom has to start in on my weight. Because ya know what? I'm fat. And no man will love a fat girl, and I will feel better about myself skinny. Sheesh. I love, love, love my mom, but skinniness does not equate happiness. Explaining that to her was a run on the never ending wheel of, 'yeah but-'. I would do better to go unloved by another human being than have that love hinged on my waistline.

Anyways, I think I should shower, curl up in bed with Face Off and sleep this out. Tomorrow will be a better day. It's Thursday after all, and that means #writersdatenight!

my love of lists

2010-08-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

i think my teen years would have gone a lot better if i would have realized at that point in time my love of lists. lists - as i discovered in college - are the best thing to motivate me. take today for example, i got up, utterly listless (double note - the lack of capitalization. that would require far too much effort for today). i would have been completely happy turning on movies and vegging all. day. long. can i afford that kind of laziness? no. so last night i made a brainstorm list of the things i really should get done. i got up today, looked my laziness in the face - and made The Uber List.

for someone like me who is goal oriented, lists work like artificial motivation. i want that sense of accomplishment crossing something off the list gives me. do i feel like doing all that stuff? uh - no friggen way. but i need to continue to catalog my books, figure out what i'm reading and what i have. i need to clean my apartment. i need to realize that i need to not buy any yarn until i've used what i currently own.

but yes, i use my tumblr account strictly for my love of lists. i make them every day, and sometimes several a day. that's one reason why i went digital; i used to write everything down on scraps of paper, and then they would get lost or i would forget to throw them away and i would have a ball of paper in the washing machine. the tumblr website is awesome because i can get it to work on my cell phone. great for shopping lists! they are the secret behind much of my success. there. now you know.

Scott Pilgrim, I want my money back

2010-08-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

Really. I'm not kidding.

I willingly went to this movie. Even though I don't like Michael Cera; he's sort of like Reeves, who just plays himself in a movie. But - I was hopeful. What I'd heard from the geek crew sounded like fun; fighting the league of evil x's for the girl of his dreams? Sounds dreamy, right?

Except that Scott Pilgrim is just another rather spineless jerk. He cheats on his girlfriend. He doesn't have the nerve to just break up with the fore mentioned girlfriend even though he's making progress with the girl from his dreams (hereafter referred to as gfhd). The fights with the evil x's were awesome, though at one point I swear I was watching an episode of Double Dragon. Come on, you remember that right? The evil fighting karate twins with the power of the dragon? Yeah.

Gthd wasn't without her own issues, but at least she was upfront and all - "I have issues." "I'm leaving you for that dude." "Okay, so I'm a bitch."

The supporting characters were what rocked. The gay roommate and the drummer girl were my favorites.

Rent it. Unless you're a fan of the comics or something, but don't go expecting it to be *jazz hands* Awesome! *end jazz hands* It had potential - had he not been so spineless. The premise was cool, but the execution just... sucked.

August Push

2010-08-09T10:03:00.000-07:00

I keep three calendars. One is a moleskin monthly calendar that I carry with me. Snapshop of the whole month, it gets pretty crowded and technicolor what with all of the highlighter and colored ink. I have two on my desk at work. One is a month view that I scribble work stuff down on and will notate personal stuff that's going on. Why? Because if something happens to me there's a physical copy of what my plans are lying around somewhere that's not my home. The last calendar is a new addition and I keep it at work because it's just easy. It's a week view calendar that I rip the top sheet off every Monday and figure out my week.

This morning before work I realized that I have only one 'social engagement' that is not writing related this coming week. This is good. I'm coming down to three weeks before Armadillo*Con, this writing convention in Austin. I'm accepting that I probably will not be able to go to the DFW Writer's Convention this year because they raised the cost. I don't really understand the hike to $300. It's a rough economy and asking more money from people who probably won't break even on what they spend to write any time soon seems like a silly idea. Publishing is hard right now. The Convention sold out last year - probably because it was so affordable. Anyways, since the DFW Con is pretty much out, I need Armadillo*Con to count. Means, I need to have as much on the table as possible.

What I have yet to say is that I'm going to be very unsocial in the coming weeks so that I can recoup on the writing time I've lost from spending so much hanging out with people. Yes, I adore my friends and I like doing stuff with them but I want to do well in Austin since it's just that much more important for me.

DFW Con isn't 100% out, but with it costing that much more, and earlier in the year it's harder to make happen. Last year it was late Spring so you had time after Christmas to take a breath and then pinch for the con cost. This year it's more expensive and in February. I think I paid $185 last year. It's almost $300 this year. That really sucks because there were a lot of agents and authors scheduled to be there I wanted to meet, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Maybe the next year, huh?

The big point is that I'm going to be less social, more writerly. At least until the end of August!

irrational fears

2010-08-07T20:26:00.000-07:00

So once upon a time someone told me that if you talk about the dark things in your life it makes it easier to deal with them. Not sure if that's true, but I'm going to blog about my silly, irrational fears.

Ready to laugh at me? Good. Because don't you dare do it to my face! Okay, you probably could but I'd feel silly and probably say something dumb.

The thing that's always been hard for me to do is going to sleep. Why? Because growing up traveling I shared a bed with my mother. That was security. I knew that if anything happened she was right there and could protect me. When she stopped performing and we had a 'normal' life we lived in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere. Do you have any idea how freaky that is when your imagination runs wild? I have always needed an hour to talk myself into sleeping. It's gotten worse living alone because I lay in bed and watch the way the shadows play on the windows for a while until I'm satisfied they're normal. I'll lay a certain way for a while and make sure the light from my laptop screen isn't messed up - as in, no one's come out of the washer closet and is creeping around my apartment. Then there's the really irrational things that my mind processes before I go to sleep; like things that could be in my closet or have been crammed under my very low bed.

Are these things irrational? Yes. I know they are. It makes no sense for someone to break into my apartment. I live surrounded by people, there's not much of a reason to break into my apartment unless you want at my books.

Also, I think part of the reason I have the irrational fear of someone being outside of my bedroom window is that it's happened before. When I was in high school, a person who will not be named (if you knew me in high school he was a plague on us all and I'm soooo sorry), wrote me lots of dark poetry. He was one of those types that no one wants to be friends with, he made the choice to be a sort of pained soul. I took pity on him and tried to be a friend because people didn't want anything to do with him. He told me he loved me, but I wouldn't date him because while part of him was dark and mysterious high school boy sexy, he was also 100% bad news and part of me knew it. One morning I woke up and somehow he'd gotten hold of a car and drove out to my house. On the outside of my bedroom window were like 100 yellow sticky notes with "I Love You" written on everyone. I remember running outside in shorts and barefoot to rip them off before my parents saw. There was also a poem involved but I forget where it was.

This is a caviate, but I think that all my worst stories with guys involve one I tried to help because they were that stereotype loner. The one no one wanted to be friends with because they were too weird or too this or too that. The guy above, the guy who beat me up... yeah, that whole thing where people tell you to be friends with the loners because they need friends too? Total lies. They could have friends if they wanted to! (Note: I don't mean that whole don't-be-friends-with-them-thing. There are people who are just shy or need to be understood, just be careful. Broken noses are not fun.)

And no, I am not afraid of guys. Am I slow to trust? Yes.

So now it's time for my latest, really irrational fear. Cockroaches. Cockroaches everywhere. It's a recent thing, like one year ago when I moved into this apartment and there was that one on my pillow. I've never had an issue with bugs. Heck, I ate crickets in Thailand! But every time there is another one in my apartment the more my skin crawls at the sight of them. First thing I do when I wake up and shamble out of my bedroom? I flip on the lights for my kitchen and dining area and take a good, long hard look around to see if there's a culprit. I have this image of cockroaches crawling in the cups I drink out of. It freaks me out.

Okay, that's all I can think of for now. If I can think of any other self-deprecating stories I'll share later!

i need a vacation from my life

2010-08-05T06:38:00.000-07:00

So we got some sad news this week. The biggest indi bookstore in the DFW area is closing down. They opened when the recession was just hitting and have held out for eighteen glorious months. It's a super cool place and I wish I could share it with everyone. I'm going to miss them. Hopefully all of the authors who supported the bookstore find other boolalicious homes for their signings and events and stuff.

As usual I'm staying plenty busy!

This last weekend I went to my best friends, little sisters wedding in Oklahoma - I just wished someone would have told me where in Oklahoma it was before we started driving. We assumed the wedding was in Oklahoma City - but in actuality it was in Ada, Oklahoma. Yeah. Making that U-Turn was not fun. The wedding was very pretty and the couple were very happy. I also got to see the fore mentioned best friend and her family and that's always special. I road-tripped it with an old college friend, lots of fun talking about school, our lives now - and books!

Sunday was the official Book Addicts kick off, so several of us went over to Suz's house and camped out to write all day. I learned something very important about myself. Sitting at a kitchen table I will stare at the cursor mocking me and maybe dredge out 500 or 1,000 words. If I move to the couch - BAM - thousands of words! Yeah, after learning that I parked it across the room on the couch and pounded out words; lots of words. It's a little disheartening because the weekends are turning into my writing time; I'm getting so busy on the weekdays it's almost impossible.

Like Monday - I did do revisions, but I also had to balance cooking, grocery shopping, cleaning, and everything else I missed out on doing this weekend because I just wasn't at home! Tuesday was the book club up at Legacy and that's always a full evening of shopping and talking. Wednesday I had an accident and didn't go to dance class, but I still had stuff to do for people!

Tonight is supposed to be Harem Night; I'm thinking I'm not going to go because my weekend is already full and I need time at home to clean and knit and wash clothes and do stuff for meeeeeeee.

Friday we're going up to Legacy probably to say our goodbye to the store and attend the Rachel Caine book signing. Saturday is dance class and I got roped into going to my friend's cooking demonstration class, and I might possibly have a movie outing if we get out early enough. Sunday we're discussing another possible writing day... And then it starts over again! @__@ I need a vacation from my life, lol.

wants...

2010-08-04T21:03:00.001-07:00

i wanted to blog tonight - but nothing went according to plan tonight.

End of July in Check-In!

2010-08-02T20:35:00.000-07:00

Random Goals

Do something daily - Okay, so on top of doing belly dance twice a week, I'm using the Wii more. July overall was a month that I didn't do too well on a lot of things, but I was at least more active.

Organize and cull closet - This is done! I think I've already said that, but it's done and my closet has been culled! Not that you can tell - unless you saw the before and after....

Crafty Goals

Learn three new knitting things - I sort of took a break from my knitting for most of July, but the last two weeks I've started back up - mostly presents and book cozies for the website.

Make Presents. - I'm working on Christmas presents as of now!! I'm excited about this. Granted it's just scarves right now, but it's a step in that direction!

Yeah, yeah, yeah - I don't have a lot to say about July. The whole month just sort of got away from me. It started off with a sort of sickening thud and then went on. I've sort of been thinking that at any moment I was going to catch a break and July could actually get on a roll. Well guess what - it's August and I'm finally on a roll! I do have to say that July was a good month for socializing. I got out more, did more things with friends and had a lot of fun. This was to the detriment of my writing, but I can't just live in my writing - I have a real life too.

Book Addicts!

2010-08-01T21:22:00.000-07:00

Today is the debut of Book Addicts.

To celebrate I'm giving away a copy of Feed by Mira Grant. Go enter!

Oh wait, it's about ME!

2010-07-29T07:24:00.000-07:00

I know, I'm supposed to do a Girl Talk Thursday blog today, but I haven't blogged about me in over a week so I might as well. I've been busy, I have a lot to say. Like - how I need to really keep my camera on me. I really should take more pictures. I'm bummed because we had a baby shower on Saturday - and did I think to take any pictures? Nope. I really would have liked to.

So, my sort of goal now is to take more pictures. More memories. I want new pictures to hang on my walls at home and fill those gaping places. I should get the chance this weekend; I'm going to my best friends, little sisters wedding - in Oklahoma. It's love to go to Oklahoma, let me tell you.

And what have I been up to the last two weeks since I haven't really been blogging? I've been catching up with my friends. Doing things. Watching movies mostly. Knitting. Ooooh! I knitted a book cozy. It's going to go with my first Book-Addicts.com giveaway and it's super nifty. I need to make one for me so that I protect the books I thoughtlessly toss into my purse all the time. I also need to take a picture and update my Ravelry and just show it off. The next one I make will have a few changes, like a ribbed edge instead of just a k&p every other row kind of plan.

I've been knitting a lot more. I think it has something to do with that whole wanting to make Christmas presents thing going on in the back of my brain. I'm working on an adorable pink and blue stripped scarf. It rolls in on its self, so it would be a really good accessory, but not very functional. I'm thinking I'll give it to one of my younger nieces and do scarves for the whole brood. That's five kids. Just so you know. That's a lot of knitting - but I wanna do it!

The writing and revising has been going very slowly. I'm up to the third chapter on the new WIP called My Personal God. I've cut about 7K from Sing Softly - and that hurts. Like OUCH! My goal with Sing Softly is to just get the plot in place and the manuscript readable and get someone to just read through it; probably the #writersdatenight girls because they're all bugging me about it. After that I'm thinking I'll shelf it and n-e-v-e-r work on it again.

I wound up dancing at Stratos for the oil spill fund raiser last week. It was random and happened at like 4pm - and silly me - I thought there would be more than just one other person and myself doing it. I'm so silly! Over all dance has gotten much more challenging. Myself and three others were bumped up to the intermediate class, which is also intro to zills. Uh, I can't even move my body in all the ways they're telling me to, and now I'm supposed to zill? For me it's the body moving that's harder. Zilling? Pft - I was in marching band, yeah my right hand is a little dysfunctional; I played French Horn. But zills and moving and playing doesn't bother me. Yes, I do get off rhythm easily, but I've always had issues with my internal metronome not functioning properly.

Oh, and I had my first ever experience at a gaming place with a friend for her hubby's birthday. Yeah, I so don't have a nerd/geek card. Race? Class? What? *plays with Killer Bunnies* Yeah, I have never felt so normal in my whole life.

What else? This weekend is the wedding and the kick off for Book-Addicts.com - so go enter my friggen contest Saturday! Fer serials people. I'm going to be giving away a copy of Feed. You don't know just how awesome this book is. It's very much a rock-your-socks-off book.

And while we're talking about books, my awesome, funny, talented, mommy-amazing friend Erinn is celebrating her blogging success with a mystery box giveaway of books! G-o E-n-t-e-r N-o-w !-!-!-!

Right. So that's all the interesting stuff I've been doing for now.

#SeekritProject

2010-07-23T06:32:00.000-07:00

So, people who talk to me, twitter with me, or read my blogs might have heard me mention the #SeekritProject I've been working on with some friends. Well, in a week and some change on August 1st we, Alice, Linda, Suzan and myself are going to debut our book review website, Book-Addicts.com.

*insert a balloon drop, some confetti and cheering*

I just posted our very first post on the blog, so go by and leave comments, show us some love and all that jazz. We're going to be doing a lot of giveaways and stuff these first two weeks, so watch twitter for updates and plugs for contests and reviews. I'm really excited about this project; reading is something I really enjoy and I think it'll be fun to share this with other people.

Because what addict wants to be alone?

Girl Talk Thursday: If you could be famous for anything, what would it be?

2010-07-22T07:17:00.000-07:00

Hmm, I'm going to forgo the obvious answer of writer in favor of something - well - silly.

If I were going to be famous for anything - other than writing - I would want to be, are you ready for it?

You sure you're ready?

Because if you aren't, I'll wait for you to get safely buckled in with all the appropriate protection because this is going to be a bumpy ride.

Okay. Here goes.

I would be

The Roach Hunter

Please note the very heroic stance and the cape. All very important for being a famous roach hunter.

I think that my unique experiences with a wide variety of cockroaches invading my personal space, makes me specially equipped to hunt them under extraordinary circumstances and in creative, new ways. Now, my default fall back is always a full can of Raid - but do you know the athletic ability it takes to leap coffee tables and move furnature to get to your prey? It's a lot of work! I'd reason to believe that my Roach Hunting is as exciting as crab fishing in the artic. Fer serials, it gets that real.

And when I'm without my trusty can'o'Raid, I'm not affraid to go a little old school.

I've used flipflops to stun my prey and dispose of them.

Not unheard of is the instance where I used a steak knife to defend myself against a flying cockroach that attempted to steal my dinner. This is one lesson those roaches should learn and learn well; don't mess with my Dr Pepper - or my food. Because I will cut you.

I'm not even against using house hold appliances. When I was beset with the six inch hissing cockroaches I was involved in a high speed chase where the suspect took refuge in the drain of the kitchen sink. Unfortunately the suspect didn't heed the garbage disposal sign. Yeah. And you just thought shot glasses were the only unfortunate mishaps involved with the dishwasher!

Also, there have been a few instances when the roaches decided to scale the wall or sneak attack me from the ceiling. All of these have lead to me honing my skills and instincts to a fine point so that at any hour or day I am prepared to take up the great hunt for my prey.

They only thought I was sleeping!!!!

So you see, I think that this skill has plenty of potential for pop entertainment. Who wouldn't want to watch a little cockroach squishing action?

50 Yard Dash!

2010-07-20T07:28:00.000-07:00

I'm doing better at blogging, aren't I? Yes? Please just say yes.

Thank you!

Things are still busy, but it's a fun, good busy.

The weekend was full. I went and saw The Sorcerers Apprentice on Friday. I went in with mediocre expectations and I was entertained. It's a Disney movie, about sorcerers, and Nicholas Cage is in it. I like Nick Cage - don't ask me why, I. Just. Do. It probably has something to do with my persisting like of The Rock and ConAir. "Put down the bunny." Now, the movie is fun, the affects are good, but it's total cheese - like you leave the movie theater constipated from the Cheese Factor. It's cute. It's interesting. I was entertained, but I could have Netflixed it and not missed anything.

Saturday was a total race against time! I woke up early and got writing done before dance class. It was only a few hundred words, but it got the gears turning and I liked what I had going on. I think I was off kilter for class because I was letting the cogs spin about the novel and not really on beat with the class. I think I bruised my foot when we were doing floor work; seriously! Bruised the top of my foot!!

The rest of Saturday was spent at the monthly RA meeting, where I returned to what I'd been working on earlier and really pounded out some good stuff. RA always has a lot of chitchat going on, but we did focus on writing for a good chunk of it. There was a craft store run, where I bought yarn for Christmas presents. I've made myself knit more recently - because I like it and I want to get better and do stuff!! I'm excited about some of the projects I'm going to do; mostly scarves because lets face it: they're easy! But there are two projects I want to do that will be fancier takes on scarves.

We watched Predator that evening. Now, I have a deep residing love of the Predator movies. Predator 1 & 2, and also Aliens vs Predator - love them! Something about the Predators just makes me cheer. I was told it was a good movie; I hadn't remembered that Adrian Brody was in it, but he does a great job. I think he's an amazing actor that I wish did more movies. If you like action movies, Go. See. Predator. You'll like it. You'll cheer. You'll leave wanting more.

Sunday I spent cleaning. Like deep, scrub the floors clean. I haven't seen my kitchen table since December! I have a kitchen table again! It's not without purpose that I'm doing all this cleaning; this weekend we're having a baby shower for a very awesome lady at my apartment - and Crafty Day is this weekend. Yeah, it sort of slams me, but it's all in one place so that's at least nice for my poor nerves. LoL. So I cleaned and scrubbed and I'm feeling uber good about my place. I want to attack the shelves with my swiffer duster and do some moving around of books, but the living room/kitchen is looking good for this weekend.

Oh! And I watched this movie called Daybreakers. It's a semi-horror movie about a world where most of the population has become vampires and are facing a blood shortage. It's a really awesome, non-sparkling vampy movie if you're into horror-vampire-gore movies. I slept with a light on in the living room. Not so much because of the vampires, but because of these other things that were in the movie. Made me shudder.

Now, last night! It was the fundraiser for the oil spill rehab at Stratos, the Greek place we go to and dance and hang out at. I was supposed to just go and watch, hang out with friends, etc - but at like 4pm one of the girls texts me and asks me if I'll do the routine we did for Harem Night with her. Uh - sure, why not? I didn't realize it was just going to be the two of us. Greeaatt. I'm a team player and since a few people who were supposed to perform didn't show up, I did it. I also got pulled up to dance with a few other things. It was cool and also kinda made my skin crawl because I'm not that good. All in all - I had fun, my friends had fun, and we raised money for a good cause. I just didn't expect to be on the performing side of it, lol.

Okay, so off for a busy week!

Girl Talk Thursday: Dumb things you’ve done

2010-07-15T09:24:00.000-07:00

Oh man.... We're just going to go into list fashion for this one....

Allowing a possibly high person to tattoo me. This was later remedied and the tattoo looks awesome.
Getting industrial barbells put in both ears - on the same night.
Having half of my arm tattooed in one sitting.
Going bowling the next day.
Having a serious injury at a concert where I was rendered unconscious, woke up on stage being cradled by the lead singer - and still did not go to the hospital. Hey, we were roadies (not groupies!) for the tour. I wasn't going to miss that!
Being a Spice Girl for Halloween.
Watched my boyfriend light himself on fire in a tent.
Put the ceramic pot of the crockpot on a hot burner.
Played roller derby with a broken hand.
Attempted to write 150,000 words in a month.
Gone two weeks without showering - while camping.
Assumed friend 1 knew friend A liked them - and then proceeded to tell 1 all about everything A ever said - only to them realize this was all news to 1.
Got ran off the road by a bus, popping two tires and bending two rims.
Stood up in front of a crowd of 50+ IT Professionals and proceed to speak - without any preparation or notes. It was a disaster.
Started reading a book at 11pm - finished at 3am - and was at work by 8am.
Allowed friend-of-friend on IM to assume I was a drag queen.
Let high school friend make people think I was in a car wreck - fooled even the theater teacher. I got called to the counselors office.
Went camping in a gully. Tent flooded by water up to my knees.
One winter I went snowbladding (think mini skis) , in a two piece bathing suit.
Allowed my 18 year old boyfriend to think I was older than 13.
Went hitchhiking in Thailand.
Accosted a man in Russia and made him take me to a spot on the map.
Crewed a three day bicycle race for my mom, where I had to grease her shorts. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm not telling you.
Blew a snot bubble while crying on the shoulder of Mr Hottness. He laughed. We're friends. Just friends.
Ran through the sprinklers in 30 degree weather.
Sent a text message about a guy, to the guy.
Assuming what person A said about person B was true, and then trying to have a conversation about what person 1 did with person B - only to find out person B lied to person A and person 1 never did any of the things with person B.
Sharing a hotel room with four other people and leaving them the room keys and going out to get tipsy.
Sending a co-worker the first draft of a chapter instead of the work report. She said she liked the story.

And I'm sure there are many more dumb things I've done - which were good and funny at the time....

An Update of the Crazy

2010-07-13T11:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I was chatty, then silent, then chatty - dramatic! - and then silent again. I'm sorry, very sorry - last week was just a lot to handle. No, my father's health isn't great - and I'm not supposed to know anything so I'm not going to talk publicly about what I'm not supposed to know. There has been Other Family Drama, resulting in me turning rather anti-social. I think after a few crazy weeks I need some down time, without the crazies or the distractions to sort of recharge.

There is a huge surprise buried in this post, but you'll have to read through it to find it.

But wait! This is me we're talking about - I hardly know how to do nothing, ya know? Last week was almost an experiment in just that. Oh wait - no it wasn't!

Monday I did spend solo, warding off the world, cleaning, doing grocery shopping, etc.

Tuesday was Cover Girls, a monthly book club up in Plano my friends and I trek up to attend because it's just awesome. I made cake-pops, which there are pictures of them in my Flickr. I also made some book-pops with Dakota Cassidy's new book My Way To Hell done as a flag. Super cute. Check out my bakery success, fer serials. Somehow, I'm not quite sure, but I wound up as the Teachers Pet at this event, lol. The organizer, who turns to my friends and says, "I don't remember names, I'm sorry," proceeds to call me out of around 60 women for opinions and things. It was funny and Certain People poked and prodded at me all night, but we were all laughing about it and really I didn't care. Hey, it's flattering to get noticed! You're lying if you disagree!

Wednesday was dance - but sort of a big night. My dance school was featured by Groupon.com and Wednesday was the first night people could redeem their class voucher. 400 people signed up for the class! 400 people! There are now two beginner classes on Wednesday. I'm getting kicked up to the Intermediate Class that meets afterwards. Sunday instead of just having Aliki's class, there will be two additional beginner classes taught by Neenah. That's a lot of additional classes! That's a lot of people!!

Thursday - Writers Date Night - and Cid forgetting the power supply. It was a very beneficial night as I plotted out a new WIP and worked on some additional writing stuff I'm doing.

Friday - I think, don't quote me on this because I cannot for the life of me remember - I spent alone! ALONE! HURRAY FOR ALONE TIME!

Saturday was dance class again - this one seriously kicked my butt. We worked on floor work, and how to gracefully get onto the floor while dancing. It's freaking Wednesday and my whole body still hurts. The worst move we did was getting down on the floor, sitting on your legs. Raise your butt up off of your legs just enough to clear your heels, and then move hips in a circular fashion while making your arms look pretty. There are all sorts of directional changes and other things to do. It also hurts like hell after not using those muscles seriously for a year! We also did fifteen minutes of arm drills. I didn't think this would be that bad. Arms? Pshaw! O. M. G. The rest of the day I spent groaning every time I got in and out of my friend's car. We went shopping in the pm for clothes. I lurv shopping, and I lurv making people be my personal barbie dolls - because I never really played with them as a kid I guess I just like reliving that portion of my life now, right? Did lots of great shopping, had dinner with some other friends and hung out for ages talking and whatnot so I got home uber late. Now, I cannot just get home and go to bed, I have to like, unwinde and stuff, so I check my email and - So a few months ago I wrote lots of short stories and submitted them. Haven't heard anything so I just accepted the silent rejections and moved on with my life. Waiting in my inbox was a contract for a short story I'd written and submitted. A contract to be published - and paid!!!! I text'd tons of people, heck, you probably already know yourself but it's still fun to blog about!

Sunday was all about being at home and writing and reading and knitting and watching movies. Really productive in some areas, I will say. Started a new knitting project I'm excited about and will probably share pictures of later.

And this brings us to Monday - which was a random celebration of my impending published status and going out with the belly dancers to support Aliki dancing at Stratos. Stratos is probably becoming my new, favorite restaurant, sorry McAllisters! It's just a fun place. Dance floor where the dancers dance every so often. Amazing Greek food; I ate flaming cheese! The waiters are almost all super cute. And you get to dance! Even on the tables! Aliki got a bunch of us up to do a Shakira routine with her that we pretty much improved. We did Greek dancing and some other line dancing - the only thing we didn't do this time - dance on the tables, lol.

So now we're at today - and today is another shutting the world out day, but only because there are books coming in on order today I'm crazy about and Must. Read. The rest of the week is dance, writers date night and RA, so my live moves on in an ever persistent pendulum of crazy!

Blue Fire! Because blue is awesome.

2010-07-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

I'm in a contest for an ARC of Blue Fire for Janice Hardy. You should really go check it out and enter, also go read her book Shifter. I did a review of Shifter some time ago on my writer blog. It's a delightful book, and I'm very excited about Blue Fire. Janice Hardy is also in an anthology called Eight Against Reality, and I can't remember if I've seen this already on a shelf somewhere or if I saw it on another blog, where someone clearly had to be talking about how awesome it must be. It's being published by Panverse, a new publication as far as I can tell. Panverse is also doing a kickstart program to raise money to do more printing. I feel like my next paycheck is slipping away from me, lol!

Explosions in the Forecast

2010-07-04T20:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm not going to go into the details because everything is very sketchy right now, but there are some issues with my father's health. I'm sort of on the verge of exploding in anger and frustration - and then behaving like any girl faced with the mortality of her bigger-than-life daddy. Blogging will be sketchy because I don't really want to talk about this. Just not ready to yet.

In other news, starting back on the critiquing/revising wagon.

And now I'm going to bed.

Talk about EVENTFUL Weeks!

2010-07-02T06:47:00.000-07:00

I knew going into this last week that there was going to be a lot going on. It was compounded by the things going on at work - but I'm me and I manage pretty well under stressful situations, I think....

Well, besides that - there were other random things that happened this week that I want to blog about - so here goes!

Killer Kitty

(note, a little graphic - squeamish people skip this paragraph)

Monday I was really annoyed because my apartment smelled like Death when I got home. It wasn't really time to clean the Chinchilla cage but I did so in the hopes that it would clear the odor. I also took out both trash cans and cleaned the fridge. I'm pretty sure I even bought a new Febreeze air freshener. Did any of this do me any good? Nope. Frustrated, I opened the blinds to my patio to enjoy the rain and pout over the odor. No sooner than the blinds being opened and a fur ball launched at the glass doors, hissing, clawing and spitting. Yeah, crazy! Well, I realize that it's a momma cat with two or three kittens who have taken up shelter on my patio because of the rain... But that's when I see their leftovers! There was something very dead and in such a stage of having-been-eaten I couldn't identify what it had been; I'm thinking tail because there looked to be five, long appendages. Well, I live in apartment so I can have someone else take care of problems like this so at 5:25 I jogged over to the management office and was at least able to tell them about the situation - with a straight face. Seriously, only me will have an attack kitty and dead things. They sent over a maintenance man and together, armed with brooms, we were able to beat the kitties back and he removed the Dead Thing. I have seen the cats since, but I've been trying to scare them away from my patio.

Abs

Tuesday I was able to close another book. I wrote another whole book! I talk about it on my website of writerly things if you're interested in hearing more about it.

Bandwaggoning!

I think it was Monday that a friend of mine (who we will call C) mentioned she was going to Austin for a writer's workshop and convention, but another friend of hers was no longer going. She was bummed to be going alone. The whole ticket to get in was only $50. I totally bandwaggoned and invited myself. Another friend jumped in (who will be called Z) and before C had an opportunity to say no, we had the whole trip planned out. Thankfully C is excited about Z and I attending with her; or at least she claims she is. ~__^ The heart-attack moment came when I realized that I had to send in a chapter to use for the workshop; it had to be Fantasy, Sci-Fi, or Horror. I don't have a completed project of any of these three that would - in my mind - fit. So I decided I would break out a short story that I have been itching to expand into it's own, full length story, and embellished on what I had. I wound up with a kick arse first chapter! I waffled because I will admit, the first chapter is shocking and I was and am a little uncomfortable that strangers will be reading this and then sitting down with me to talk about it. They won't know I've never written anything like this before and that I'm trying something new. I waffled over what to send until yesterday and just sucked it up and sent it off. I have since brainstormed and plotted the whole thing and I'm pretty excited about it!

Harem Night

So I did mention that Harem Night was this week, right? It was last night. Three of the girls in our routine dropped out so it was just the five of us, which was cool, but that threw off some of the girls and we had a lack of formation for the whole performance. I totally got part of it wrong but had such a big smile on my face that it really didn't matter! Pictures I believe are forthcoming... And a huge thank you to all my wonderful friends who came out to support me! It was really cool to have so many people there, and I am so lucky to have such a great group of friends. You guys make my heart go all warm and squishy!

Last Airbender

After Harem Night an abbreviated group of us went to go see Shammy's rip off of a great cartoon series. I went with low expectations and would advise you do so as well if you choose to see it. I was entertained - bur for probably the wrong reasons. Watch the cartoon, you'll be less confused and more entertained.

Okay, so that was this week! This weekend I have a wedding, fireworks, more dancing and I need to bust a move on the editing train so yet more me - not being all that entertaining I guess.

Girl Talk Thursday: Pets

2010-07-01T11:07:00.000-07:00

So I really wish I had thought about this blog post last night, because I would have taken a smattering of new pictures of Polly and Molly. As it is, I'll just talk about my Chinchillas.

I grew up with animals - all over the place. Horses. Cows. Dogs. Cats. Snakes. Birds. Hermit crabs. Turtles. Chickens. Goats. Sheep. Buffalo. I feel like at some point in time, we've had every animal known to man. And you know what? They all need to be taken care of. I'll never forget moving out and thinking - FREEDOM! Finally! I don't have to take care of the friggen animals anymore!

A year living alone and that 'freedom' turned into loneliness. Now pet rent where I was living at the time was astronomically high and I just couldn't bring myself to pay that much to have an animal. But - caged animals are pet-rent-free. So I did a little research - looking for an animal that was fine being on it's own, yet social. Somehow I arrived at a chinchilla. I did some more research and found the Sharp Chinchilla Farm. Farm I think is really an incorrect term; they do not breed chinchillas for their coats or anything of that nature.

Well, after a very short time I decided I would adopt the adult pair of Polly and Molly, mother and daughter. Polly is an older chinchilla and suffers from separation anxiety. Which is why Molly had to come with her. Polly is a sweet heart and I lurv lurv lurv her! Molly is a little snot, but I still lurv her too.

A year later, lots of learning experiences and warm cuddly moments learning about the joys of having a miniature chinchilla herd, and we're still a happy family.

End of June 2010 Check-In

2010-06-30T19:49:00.000-07:00

I don't think I've done a whole lot on my goals the last two months. I've really slacked off, some have been made obselete, but what can you do? I think I'm going to pick one area or another and focus on that for the following month. Like in July, I think my big goal is to push myself to do stuff. Like exercising. Going to a parade or a meuseum or something. So yeah!

Random Goals
Eat more fresh produce - Was eating a lot of fruit at the beginning of the month. This goal is just really hard.

Do something daily -Since starting dance, this has become a much easier to accomplish. Not only do I practice dancing, but I use my Wii more.

Go to a parade - I'm thinking about going to the 4th of July parade this Saturday!

Get a family photograph - This has proven very difficult.

Organize and cull closet - YES! COMPLETED!

Reading Goals

There's something in store that includes these goals. I'm going to hold off talking about this until later.

Crafty Goals

I haven't really done a whole lot of knitting this month. In the last week I've picked up a scarf project, but nothing more.

Money Related Goals

Pay off Khols Credit Card - I made the mistake of using this card. I'm kicking myself for it, but will have to pick up the slack and push myself to Get. It. Done.

S-e-v-e-n Days

2010-06-28T06:13:00.000-07:00

Okay, breaking a little rule here.

I'm going to talk about work, but mostly so I can explain my soon-to-be craziness. This week, and Tuesday of next week, I will be filling in for a co-worker; I'm her back-up when she takes vacation. She's never taken a whole week off before and her job is very large within the company. I will be filling in for her. For a week. I expect my normally relaxed lunches to be me huddled in a corner staring out of the window willing my mind to do nothing more than contemplate the shapes of clouds.

Apart from work, I have three days to go until my personal deadline for finishing a novel. Three days. Lots of plot. OMG! If only I hadn't hit this wonky slump that took me so long to get out of. If only I were doing regular 5K days. If only so many other things had fallen into place I'd probably already be done with it. As it stands - I'm not and I'm so far behind on things I said I'd do for others I'm also shoveling the guilt on top of my own shortcomings.

In short - I don't expect a whole lot of blogging/socializing to be happening. I have my harem night this week and I'll probably post something about that and GTT, but not a whole lot else. I think that the 4th of July weekend will be a nice recovery time for me. So here's hoping that in seven days I'll be a much happier person!

Yes, I was stone-cold-sober.

2010-06-25T08:51:00.000-07:00

Well, like I said, this was bound to be an interesting week! Thankfully the low point of the week was dealing with my exhaustion post-Tremors marathon. The rest of the week has been a lot of fun, stuff is going on, I'm happy, blahblahblah.

I think I've read like - four books this week. Highway to Hell, Mage in Black, Stormwalker, and Over My Dead Body.... wow, yeah, I've read four books this week! I looked it up on Goodreads and thus far this year I've read about 59 books. The one I'm reading now will be the 60th. I took Kori's challenge to read 100 in a year and even if I cake walk the rest of the year I'll still make that - but I bet I blow 100 books out of the water - easy peasy. I can't talk about why I say this with confidence, just rest assured you'll know when the time's right and everything is a well oiled machine!

Other than reading, I had a bit of a writing slump, which I discussed in todays WIP update. I'll refrain from double posting about it, but suffice it to say - I felt uber dumb.

Because June is a five-Wednesday month, we skip one Wednesday and go without dance class. Yes, very sad, very nervous about the upcoming harem night - but whatev, right? I can't change it - oh well. On the up side, girls from my class decided to pop over to Strato's where the harem night is taking place next week, and hang out for Greek Night. I hauled a friend with me because that's the kind of person I am; if I'm going down I'm taking you with me! I had no idea my Saturday instructor was performing; that was loads of fun!

It was kinda a bummer cuz the restaurant was mostly empty, but our table was loud and cheered a lot. At one point we got involved in one of her routines - and in short - I wound up on tables with two of my class mates - dancing. Yes, I was dancing on a table, stone cold sober. There are pictures, and I trust those that have them to use discretion - because I had this pained look on my face. The three of us had no idea what was going on, so we mostly floundered around and had fun.

The biggest kicker was that our sub instructor decided we would do our routine - sans the two girls that didn't come with us - right then and there. I learned a few very important things: I don't know the ending as well as I thought (and neither does anyone else!). My jeans are really too big. And I step on my own jeans. I need to just not dance in jeans - so I will be finding appropriate dancing pants this weekend most likely. All in all, Wednesday was a load of fun, I'm sure pictures will be forthcoming eventually.

This weekend should be an interesting juggling of events. I'm trying to finish my novel by the 30th, but I'm still going to a theater event on Saturday night, Sunday is Crafty Day, and next week is it's own beast.

Now if I could only convince myself to not stay up all night reading a book - I think I could tackle the day a bit better!

Girl Talk Thursday: $100 Internet Shopping Spree

2010-06-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

So for this week's GTT we're going on a shopping spree. With only $100. I think I could sneeze and spend that. Yes, I am aware of the fact that I like to spend money - and that's not really a good thing. Right now, for an internet shopping spree, I think I would have to start off with a few purchases for my current extra curricular activity: dancing. For those of you who don't know, I started taking bellydance classes a little over a month ago. It's lots of fun, and accessorizing with fun hip scarves is super fun.

Unfortunately it's not so easy to find different styles of hip scarves. I have a beautiful light blue with silver coin scarf my amazing friend bought for me because I couldn't go to the fair with them. Ebay has become my favorite place for trolling for scarves. So lets see how much I'd rack up if I did a little accessorizing....

First up is this hipscarf from Australia. I'm so close to clicking the Buy Now button it's not even funny!

It's different from what I see a lot of girls wearing - which means I sort of want it for that reason. But if no one else is wearing it.... Does that mean it's not a good buy? I'm torn. I also really like the white - but it's WHITE! There are other colors, but I thought that the beading and detail work showed up best on white.

I'm rounding up, but it's about $10 to purchase it and then about $7 to ship it, for a total of $17.

I still have $83 to spend on my online shopping adventure... More scarves!

Okay, so this one comes in lots of different colors. Some versions have sequins up on the top of the belt, but I'm not totally in love with that. The other versions also have pearl detailing that I like better - but this black version looks like it has more coins - which means more jangle - which means more movement...

My hips will shake louder than your hips!

Again, rounding up - the scarf costs about $5 and shipping is $10. $10 shipping! For a total of $15.

I still have $68 to spend on my online shopping adventure. I think I need one more hipscarf.

Yes, red. I like red.

I'm also really digging the different ways the coins hang. I think that's pretty cool. I'm really into all of the scarves having a different look, can you tell?

Currently bids on this start at $.98, and the shipping is about $17 - which until I realized this was in China, seemed a bit much. However, I could go to their store and do a Buy Now option for $23. The person inside of me that wants instant gratification would do that.

I still have $45 to spend on my online shopping adventure. I think four scarves is plenty - so what else would I want to shop for online? I don't buy clothes online. I don't really like shopping online anymore. But I do like books. And I like shopping for books. I have a B & N card, so I get free shipping on things delivered to the store. I also get like 10% off my purchases so I'm dropping change unless it's an online special. So, were I to preorder books today, I would purchase the following titles:

Go, Mutants! by Larry Doyle ~ $13
Gamer Girl by Mari Mancusi ~ $3.99 (online special!)
Red Hot Fury by Kasey Mackenzie ~ $7
Night Myst by Yasmine Galenorn ~ $7
From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming ~ $10

Leaving me with $4...

Well, now I really want to go shopping!

Playing in La-La-Land

2010-06-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

Okay, so things went from, totally not busy at all, to wow.my.god.too.much.to.do!

I'm currently at that state where I'm so busy I don't want to look at email, twitter or facebook because I'll remember yet again something else I'm supposed to do, have done, be doing - that I'm not. And won't happen. It's frustrating and makes me easily bummed.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of really good stuff happening in my life - which a good chunk of it I can't/won't blog about/yet. And that stuff takes time, accordingly, and I know this, but I like to pretend I'm Super Woman! I can do anything!

This last weekend saw little to no writing done. I did, however, get most of my bedroom, you know that Epic Closet Cull 2010 thing? It's practically done, I just need to haul off the clothes I don't want. I discovered that I'm not a big skirt person. Or I just don't own many?

As much as I'm trying to make this week productive, I feel like I'm already failing. Last night I marathoned Tremors 2-4, which resulted in me staying up far too late with my company over and now facing today practically main-lining Dr Pepper to stay awake. Not that great, right? I'm hoping to go home and take a quick nap after work and then get up and proceed to be super amazing. I want to do things like, dishes, tidying up a bit, and writing.

As for the rest of the week, it's something like this:

Wednesday - Strattos for Greek Night
Thursday - Writers Date Night
Friday - .....I don't think I'm doing anything......
Saturday - possibly the RA meeting, but we're fer serials going to see Beauty and the Beast
Sunday - Crafty Day

Well, at least I can't say I'm bored!

Gril Talk Thursday: Do you friend your exes on Facebook/Twitter/My Space? Why?

2010-06-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, so yes, I'm doing my GTT post on Friday because Thursday was a blur of work activity and it didn't occur to me to do this post earlier in the week when I had more time, so oh well!

Do I friend my exes on social media sites? Hmm, well, lets define 'exes'. I'm thinking of this as two categories, friends and boyfriends.

First and foremost, I'm totally guilty of not turning down anyone I remotely know. Why? Well because if we don't click or if I really don't want them to see my stuff anymore, I can and will delete them at will. Granted, I think it's stupid that I have like 300 facebook friends. Myspace I went through ages ago and only kept about 50 of 700 people that I really knew - but it's not like I actually use Myspace anymore; my twitter updates it and that's fine for me. My facebook I used to keep to just super close friends, but I don't really care anymore. Maybe I should?

There are friends I was once close with that I am facebook friends with. I can't think of anyone I've unfriended or not accepted - unless I just didn't know them at all. I won't lie, there are some people I would like to delete because we aren't friends, I'm not sure if we were ever real friends, and they still rub a raw spot on me. Why don't I delete them? Well on facebook it's much easier to hide their updates than unfriend them, and I seriously doubt they pay a whole lot of attention to me anyways.

Ex-boyfriends. I don't have a lot of these. While my breakups have never been anything short of catastrophic, I have, in each and every situation, found it in myself to forgive and get over what happened. That doesn't mean I want to be chummy friends with them, but 'unfriending' them seems childish to me. In a few years we everything could turn around and we could be friends again (I can't think of anyone I've dated that I would give a second chance at dating again.) I think I am still friends with two exes, but that would mean I would have to actually go and extend the effort to find them and - that's too much work.

I think the biggest reason I never unfriended them was that in each circumstance I moved on. I picked up with my life, and didn't linger over the sad, pathetic leavings of what had been a one sided relationship. I stuck a bandaid on my booboo and went on with life. Time heals all wounds, right? And I love living life. Maybe some super mean, horrible part of me wanted to let those people know that they didn't keep me down. They might have fooled me for a long time, but I wasn't about to hole up at home and be miserable because of them. I was still going to go to shows, hang out with friends, see movies, do everything I wanted to do - regardless of the lack of their presence.

I tend to be very open about a lot of things; my Twitter is a public feed and updates my Facebook, Myspace and blogs so it's not like I hide a whole lot. Okay, I am very private about my feelings but that's about it; other than my feelings I'm very open and public about the rest of my life - because why try to hide stuff? Again, too much effort. So if those people who have kicked me to the curb want to keep tabs on me, go ahead - bring it - you'll see that you'll never keep me down.

Saying everything but what I really mean.

2010-06-16T12:38:00.000-07:00

It's another uber busy day!

I know I can't really talk about the Seekrit Project that we met about last night, but lets just suffice to say that the morale is high and we're all hopeful and excited. We also had lots of fun just hanging out and talking; we're girls. We're into that sort of thing.

Tonight is dance; which is code for not gonna get a whole lot done today. I'm hoping to get the dishes and a load of laundry going before I head out with a friend to go do some girly stuff. aka - waxing our eyebrows. It's a necessary evil because I hate using tweezers; they're like specialized instruments of torchure. Oh yes, you could have all the pain at once, in one quick burst, or in smaller incriminates a hundred times over in five minutes. Hmm, I'll go with the wax thank you very much.

I'm also in a world of trouble. I haven't practiced the harem routine anywhere near enough. If there's time between waxing and dance I should really practice so learning the last half of the dance doesn't fry my brain. This means I'll more than likely be eating Chickfila tonight.... Yummy chicken!

All of this is me talking about everything except what I want to talk about - because I refuse to blog about what's really on my mind right now but suffice it to say that something is annoying me but I can't talk about it because when I started blogging I decided there were some subjects I just wasn't going to touch. *sigh* I should just drink a Dr Pepper and stick a smile on my face and everything will be uber good again. :D

Busy, Flaky, Funny, Jangly, Honesty

2010-06-15T10:01:00.000-07:00

I probably shouldn't blog - because I'm uber tired, but it's my lunch break and I'm too tired to write or revise credibly and my eyeballs feel like falling out of my face so reading is out *gasp* so OMG I'm going to blog!

This week sees me as being uber busy - which isn't really that unusual, just not really at a point that I wanted to be busy. I have things that I've promised people I would do and because stuff happens I'm sort of a flake. I hate flakes. I'm pissed at myself for being flaky. Flakyness is a sore subject right now; because of flake behavior my bestfriend and I haven't seen or really spoken to each other in months. I just got tired to being flaked on and just decided there was no point in getting upset about stuff and said something polite and all - well, when you want to hang out, call me. We haven't spoken. I'm not upset at her, but I'm upset that everything has unraveled like it has. I try very hard to be dependable and come through on stuff, because I know how much it sucks to not be able to depend on people - and I've been a wonderful flake recently.

Goal for the next week: improve on the flaky behavior.

So what am I busy with this week?

Well, last night I went to see Iron Man 2 with guy-friend (I have to come up with a better way to name people for privacy's sake). I have to say, I think Pepper is a freaking bimbo; she should have left that job 5 minutes into the first movie. She's stupid for sticking around. That's my opinion! The movie was entertaining - and guy-friend and I are um, we're movie-talkers. If you're familiar with Mystery Science Theater, that's kinda what it's like sitting through a movie with us. We talk, laugh uber loud, and follow tangents. This is why he's currently my fav movie buddy. It's a rare person who doesn't mind my endless chatter. The really funny thing was after the movie we decided it was a GREAT idea to go back to my place and watch Inglorious Bastards, which I've had from netflix for like two weeks, maybe more. Yeah, I had no idea it was full of subtitles. My contacts were trying to peel themselves off of my eyeballs by the end of the movie.

Tonight is uber seekrit project meeting. I'm thinking it'll include lots of tangents, talking, and possibly some productivity. I can't say any more or else the other co-conspirators might ambush me for my snack money. (Not really. I could tak'em.)

Practicing for harem night hasn't happened a whole lot. I have hardly any room to practice in my apartment. I think that I'm just going to take my hip scarf with me tonight and make everyone learn the routine so I can practice in an open space. I have got to figure out what to do with my hands. They're totally out of control, lol. So yes, dance class is tomorrow night, it'll be lots of fun and I'm really liking it.

Friday is yet up in the air as far as what's going on, as well as Saturday - though there was discussion of going to the derby game - I should probably poke people about that, shouldn't I?

And Sunday is Father's Day! I need to do something special for him. I think he's hit a streak of blue days. His health is good, but he's getting older and I think that's hard on him right now, and with my mom always gone on her bike he's left alone and lonely a lot. I need to be a better daughter and call him more often. I suck at phone calls. If my dad would only learn how to text.... Well, then we'd never STOP talking and he'd probably know far more about my life than he wants to - because anyone who text's with me generally ends up that way.

So I had someone ask me: Don't you ever regret your tattoos?

Honestly? Nope. I mean, there have been times that I've stopped and realized that life would be easier were I not a tattoo'd person. I've realized that a guy didn't like me because of my ink. I've realized some girls are scared of me/won't talk to me because of my skin color. But you know what? It's like a litmus test for people; the ones who really are cool enough to be in my life pass it with the physical. So if you think for an instant I regret or wish I would have done something differently, please stop. I'm happy with who I am. Okay, I'd like to loose like 50 pounds and I'd like it if my hair were longer, but really - those aren't that big. So I'm happy with me, so you should be happy for me.

And really cold Dr Pepper burns going down and is a great way to really wake yourself up! Back to work I go.

Blogging for the Sake of Blogging

2010-06-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

I don't have a lot to say but i feel bad about neglecting this blog, my other blog, and reading hardly any blogs. I gave up reading blogs about a month ago to get myself to be more productive ~ and had the most productive month evah as far as writing goes. which means there's not a lot else that I've really been doing.

And I get to finish season 3 of Dexter tonight, which is awesome. I haven't watched much tv or many movies. In fact, I think the last movie I went to see was How to Train Your Dragon... And that was a while ago.

Some friends and I are working on an uber seekrit book related project we can't talk about ~ but really excited about what's in store.

My parents are doing well. Mom's cycling, dad's hanging out, so nothing big or life changing there.

Dance class is going awesome. I have a recital at the end of the month ~ yes, that means I'm performing. Dancing. In front of people. It's fun and something interesting to throw into my week.

Oh, and I've decided I should grow my hair out longer, something niceish looking.

I'm also going to own up to the harsh reality that I hate housework. I need to take a whole day and just clean. My bedroom. The kitchen. Floors. Carpets. The whole nine yards. But have I? No. Do I plan to anytime soon? Not really. But do I need to? Yes.

Okay, that's me rambling about nothing at all to ease my conscience about my lack of blogging. There.

Girl Talk Thursday: Favorite Children’s Books

2010-06-10T07:54:00.000-07:00

As a kid I didn't get as much of an opportunity to read as other kids. What I do remember vividly reading when I was a kid was a graphic novel/bound comic book of Scheherazade and the 101 Nights. It came with a tape and I swear I listened/read that thing over and over and over again sitting on the bed in the motor home as a kid. I got $.50 comics at truck stops and read those, but mostly I wrote my own stuff. Occasionally I would come across a book or someone would give me one they didn't want anymore but these were few and far between. When I mean I wrote my own stories as a kid, I mean I did it out of sheer boredom. I do recall that the first chapter book I read was about a pig, though other than that I'm not altogether certain.

When we stopped traveling and I could read actual books, I read anything and everything horse related. I recall having a very deep need to identify with my parents livelihoods, horses, and if I was obsessed with horses then it was a connection to them. I read all of the Black Stallion books, Brumby books, Black Beauty, anything that featured people and horses, though I wasn't always keen on westerns.

I honestly can't recall ever reading that many children's books that were kid-geared, probably because it was a fruitless endeavor to keep me in books since we traveled so much. I don't have a reason to read kid's books now, the closest I get are some middle grade and YA books - like the Percy Jackson books.

Yup, probably not all that enlightening this time.

Girl Talk Thursday: Home Projects

2010-06-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

I live in a one bedroom apartment so there's not a whole lot I can do as far as remodeling or renovating. I do, however, like to be crafty and creative about my space. I'm nowhere near as imaginative about my current apartment, which is kind of a bummer. The issue is that my living room space is taken up by overstuffed, large, leather furniture. I adore my leather couches, got them off of Craigs List for like $150 for both of them. They're great! But, they fill everything up to the point that I don't have space for a desk. My second problem with my living room: no light. Seriously. There is no lighting besides an accent light above the entertainment set. Ikea was my savior here. I took two lampshades and bought two hanging light fixtures and created my own ambient lighting. It works and it's bright and solves all my problems!

I'm currently struggling for desk space and trying to figure out a solution to my problems. My grandmother bought me a rolling desk from WalMart for Christmas, something I could sit in say, a normal table chair and use - except I don't have any normal chairs. I have two couches and then pub type chairs for my pub style dining room set. The table's turned into a roving side table. I'd really like to be able to figure out something that maybe. There's one option I found at Ikea that looks interesting. It's a wall unit that supports the laptop and provides some cubby space, but I question how well it would hold up on drywall in an apartment.

Other than that, I'm really happy with my living space, considering I live in an apartment and can't change anything really! LoL.

Adventures with Hair

2010-05-31T08:43:00.000-07:00

Yes, hair, I said hair, I'm having more hair drama - not that there's a whole lot left to have drama with, but um, you'll understand.

So I wasn't looking for anything drastic; a trim. I wanted my hair trimmed and the overall look shaped because lets face it: the last girl who cut my hair had no idea what she was doing and didn't take anywhere near enough off so it's looked like a mess for several weeks now. Like last time we made a group appointment at Ogle but because of things out of our hands, it was just me who showed up Saturday morning.

First mistake: Not bringing a book.

Yes, I went sans book because I was going to go by BnN afterwords and pick up several books I'd ordered and didn't feel like starting a book I'd rush through to get to one of the shiny new ones. Bad choice. Why? Because the computer system was down and no one had any idea who was scheduled to have their hair did by who. I got there at 8:50 for a 9:00 appointment, and was 9:30 or 9:40 getting seated with the lovely Holly. I like Holly; in a few weeks I'm going back and we're going to experiment with colors. However, Holly took one look at the example picture I used way back in like February and called her instructor over. Won't lie, I cringed when the instructor came over because she was a much older woman who looked like she'd have the style sense of my grandmother and even less interest in what kind of haircut I wanted. I like my A-symetricalness! It totally goes against my OCD symmetrical behavior and I LOVE it.

Second mistake: Thinking granny couldn't bring it.

Granny brought it. Big time. She made me their classroom focus project. About ten beauty school students crowd around me for the entire process; shampooing, cutting the guides, all of it. Ten people asking about my hair, putting their hands in my hair, craning their heads around to look at my hair, and all of us making hilarious small talk. None of the above bothered me; in fact I was mostly entertained by this whole fiasco. It was a lot of fun; can't lie! There were many funny conversations flying around as Granny hacked and razored and cut my hair down, and down, and down, and down.....

Third mistake: Not realizing how short it got.

When I first cut my hair like this, it was just long enough in the back to fluff. I couldn't spike it. I used a volumizing mouse and some wax/putty stuff to achieve this super funky fun look. Ladies and gentlemen, I can now spike my hair. The haircut is awesome. It's super well done, fun, everything that it should be - heck, it was done by an instructor. But I just didn't realize how much the lady was pulling it up in the back, how short it was. I was mostly in shock Saturday but yesterday I sat back and realized just how short it is. I still like it, but I'll like it better in two weeks when it's grown out just a bit.

So here's some pictures of my hair:

The attitude pose, done in Picnik with a few filters.

Are my eyes really that color?

I don't think so.....

ZITS!

2010-05-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, I don't know about you but growing up I lived under some very incorrect assumption that once I reached adulthood I would no longer have acne. What gave me this impression? I have no idea! Okay, I'm not a pizza face subscriber anymore; lots of drugs got rid of that mess.

However, it's times like this past week when I have one that won't go away that I wonder when I'll ever reach that magical, perfect age when zits don't worry me anymore and shaving isn't even in my vocabulary.

I remember being in junior high and taking a general antibiotic that got rid of most of my acne and using very expensive products on my face. I haven't taken the drugs in ages, and I really should be better at washing my face. I have one of these Dove exfoliation guns (not really a gun but a battery operated exfoliation thinggie) and it's amazing - if I ever remember to buy extra bateries or more of the little skin rubby pads. I'm sort of forgetful....

Moisturizer is probably one thing I don't skrimp on. I like moisturizer. Moisturizer makes my face feel nice.

The things they never told you about growing up: zits never go away.

Girl Talk Thursday: Do you make time to read?

2010-05-27T20:22:00.000-07:00

I fell off the GTT wagon the last two weeks, mostly due to things directly pertaining to the subject of this week's GTT. I've been so busy reading and writing that I haven't been blogging much, but I really had to pause and answer this question:

Do you make time to read?

Why, yes, yes I do. In fact, I have a website/blog devoted to my reading and writing habits.

www.CidWrites.com

Books have always had a fond place in my heart. They're a way to escape. To pass a long day. To learn something. To give my mind new things to ponder. Books are very, very important to me. I currently have about thirty books on my to-read shelf, and I can confirm that I've read 43 books this year alone - which I think is a bit low, but I'm not going to complain. I buy lots of books too. I plan on buying six books in the next week; four are ordered and will be waiting on Saturday, two are new releases coming out on Tuesday.

As a writer books are important because it's knowing the lay of the land. Being aware of what people are buying or talking about makes it easier and better for me to have a feel on the pulse of the reader. I have no illusions of being published anytime soon but someday I'd like to say: I'm published.

Finding time to read can be difficult. I often read in splurges; it's very hard for me to drag reading a book out over days. Most I pick up and read a chapter or two before work, read during lunch, and then marathon the book after work. I tend to have a good idea of what I will and will not like so it's very rare a book will take me more than two days to read; the exception being very large books or busy times for myself. There are even times when I've sacrificed sleep to read an entire book all night - um, last week actually.

So yes, the answer to the question is, yes.

[[ if you would like to peek at the books I've read you can check out my website or even find me on goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/cidreads ]]

like a fish out of water

2010-05-26T20:40:00.000-07:00

So another week of dance classes, and I have to say that I think at times I look more like a fish floundering on land than an actual dancer. Tonight one of the ladies in my class and I spent half the time looking at each other with very lost looks on our faces and laughing with one another. The thing is that the usual instructor was there this week - where last week we had a substitute. 6:45 rolled around, the music went on and she started a sink-or-swim session. I think I succeed in moving in the right direction, but there's no way I'm doing this stuff right; we won't even discuss what I look like doing it. But it's fun! And my arms and all sorts of me hurt.

If you're into comics, the Boondock Saints comics are out. I'm subscribed to them via Heavy Ink. Comics are a very recent addition to my reading library.

Right now I'm reading an amazing Zombie book called Feed; I'm sort of anticipating being up later on tonight with nightmares, so I'm half tempted to draft this blog and publish it after that wake-up, but tomorrow is Thursday and I should be a good girl and do my Girl Talk Thursday since I've missed the last two Thursdays!

I'm constantly entertained by things that happen on Twitter. Like, the random stuff I say that complete strangers pick up on and reply to. It's funny to me. For instance, I twittered something to the affect of, I have a Dr Pepper. What do you have?, and got like 50 replies with what other random people had.

Today I realized I haven't picked up knitting needles in weeks. Going to try to fix that on Sunday, since, wow, Sunday's Crafty Day. I totally forgot! Oopse.

And it's a holiday weekend! That's uber exciting. And I might have plans for Monday, so that's a step up from my current habit. Oh, and I'm getting my hair cut this weekend. Finally!

Jangly Hips

2010-05-24T13:27:00.000-07:00

I won stuff! I won a companion to the Dexter tv show from Grasping for the Wind. Super excited.

I've read several books. Still needing to write outstanding book reviews on my other blog.

Writing - a lot.

Having friends over at various points for movies.

And oh yeah! Belly dance!

So I'll talk about my belly dance class I went to. It was super fun, and I felt kind of silly, but that's expected when your body isn't used to moving in certain ways. I think I'm really going to like it. I mean, by the end of the class my arms hurt, I could feel the burn in my thighs and I felt the workout through my upper body and abs. I need to practice at home, which I've been bad about because of my fanatical writing, but I will get better. I even bought belly dance music and one of my writer-friends-who-shares-my-brain bought me a hip scarf at the ren fair this weekend. I'll now have jangly hips. I may or may not post a picture of me wearing said hip scarf. There will be no video of me dancing. None.

Got to see The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus this weekend which was sort of sad to see Heath Ledger's last film. There's a really ominous moment early on in the movie where it kind of hits you: he's dead. The movie was really nifty. I'm supposed to watch it tonight again.

Also saw two movies I didn't care for: Nine (the musical) and Defendor. Both were very disappointing. Nine I knew was the story of a filmmaker, but it was just downright depressing at times. I re-watched it yesterday and became even less impressed with the music. Defendor was just all round depressing, though I love Woody Harrelson after Zombieland, I wish I would have passed on this movie. It wasn't funny, it was depressing and sad.

Yup. This week should be lots of writing because I'm wanting to finish one novel this week and I have a lot to accomplish. Though next week should be more interesting as far as social interaction goes.

hey lookie! i'm not dead!

2010-05-19T06:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks to those who have contacted me willing to help with research. I appreciate it!

I've gone from being an every-day blogger to a, you-might-think-I've-fallen-off-the-edge-of-the-world blogger. *sigh* I'm sorry! There's either nothing going on or I can't possibly think of anything interesting to say that's not something like, 'I'm writing.' or 'I just wrote this really cool scene where so-and-so does THIS and whats-his-face does THAT! It's awesome!' Because as much as I know it excites me, I don't even pretend to think that anyone wants to hear a minute by minute replay of my writing.

What is new is that tonight I start dance classes. Yes, dance classes. I'm taking a belly-dance class this month, well, for the next four weeks. After tonight I'll know if I'm a once-a-weeker or a twice-a-weeker; I'm thinking twice a week, honestly. I'm already looking at hip scarves. I'm not too excited about the whole belly-dance costume, but the hip scarves are super nifty. I'm sure I'll have all sorts of interesting bits to say tomorrow about my dancing experience; heck, I might even surprise you and double blog!

Besides the dance class, I've been thinking heavily about tattoos. For several years now I've had standing plans for a full sleeve on my left arm. I love the memory-tree idea and in my head it looks uber cool. However, now that I'm in a professional environment - I have learned how much I hate wearing longed sleeves. Plus, it's Texas and Texas is freaking HOT in case you don't already know. I'm toying with the idea of cutting the tattoo down to a half sleeve, get it designed to look like a stained glass window and just have multicolored stars hanging from it so it mirrors the stained glass window on my right arm. I'm not sold on the idea at all, which is why I must now begin the stewing process. This probably also means I most likely will not get a tattoo in 2010.

I'm also still in limbo about my two submissions for press; I have 12 days left until no response means no acceptance. I'd really prefer a rejection letter, personally, but understand that not everyone has time for those types of things.

My family is doing well. Dad is of course experiencing some changes to the way he does things but he's coping and things are good.

Hmmm ~ Oh! I finished Avatar: The Last Airbender and recently came to understand that the movie will really be three movies. I sort of died a little on the inside when I heard that. I don't have much faith in Shammy, can you tell? I could stomach one movie, but three is trying my patience. I should be open minded, I know, but I like the series.

And I got a new phone. I think that's the end of my exciting news.

Wanna help me with some research?

2010-05-16T09:56:00.000-07:00

I'm posting this here because I think the people I need to poke for brainstorming read this blog rather than my writer's blog.

In June I'm going to be starting work on a new young adult novel; the particulars I'm not discussing in type, but will if you want to know more. It deals with religion, beliefs, the issue of free will, and the normal gamete of teen issues. I'm interested in collecting personal stories that can inspire things that happen in the novel. Funny, gritty, difficult - all of it. I'm also interested in the really hard questions teenagers have about religion, beliefs, etc - and not just Christianity; please don't assume that the novel just deals with one belief. The idea is satirical, think Lamb, and I want to address hard problems. No, I don't want to answer everything, in fact I'd rather bring up issues and have the characters stumble through them and not always make the best choices - because hey - people mess up.

Anyways, if you want to contribute to my "research", comment here. If you'd rather not comment publicly, you can email me at my writerly email address: Cid AT CidWrites DOT com

Appreciate all the help!

Random, yeah I know.

2010-05-08T23:45:00.000-07:00

I'm having a wonderfully boring weekend. Well, except with these pictures not printing out well, but other than that I've gone shopping and written and watching Burn Notice. I'll probably finish season 2 tomorrow and then pick up season 3 of Dexter. I need to poke people to see if they want to watch season 3.... but that goes on the to-do list.

On of my fav authors, Robin McKinley, is doing a giveaway of arcs for her new book. I'm uber excited, but also uber tired so I'll have to work on my entries tomorrow.

I'm drinking far more Dr Pepper than is probably healthy

Wrote a very promising short story.

And this is turning into a list of items.

I'm reading a book about pirates. It's pretty neat.