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!

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....

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.

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!

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!