Okay, so I'm going to get back into blogging regularly. 

I was all hooked on the Darkyn books.

Then I was doing revision-hell.

Today I submitted my short story to a publication.

Now I will hopefully resume my normal pace of life.

Unfortunatly the garden has died.

I also need to do my monthly review. 

I'll do it tomorrow.

I should go to sleep soon.

Yup.

Okay, yes, things are still sort of sucky in the Real Life front, but that's life right?

For the last few days I've been lost in Lynn Viehl's book series on the Darkyn.  I'm reading at least a book to a book and a half a day right now, and managing to write at least 1K a day.  I haven't blogged much about my writing progress on either of my blogs because - well - that would actually subtract from the reading and writing time.

If you like vampy books, I suggest the Darkyn series.  They're great!  Yes, they're probably in the romance section, but that's only a detail.  The PLOT is amazing and I love her CHARACTERS!  I've reviewed the books I've read in the series thus far on my other blog (cidwrites.com/blog) if you care to know my thoughts.  Three books to go ladies and gentlemen and then I think I'll take a reading break!   LOL

Okay, I know that all the changes Obama are making are probably good things.  Heck, we probably need the credit companies monitored and health care reformed, but right now it hurts.  It hurts bad.  The interest rate on my credit card just doubled.  Seriously.  5.9% to 13.6% - which makes me go OUCH.  I don't even want to think about health insurance.  We're probably going to enroll next week and I'll discover just how much more money I'll be paying just in case I have an accident.  Money that I would love to be able to pay on my debt so I can correct the huge monitary mistake I have made in my life.  I'm very sure that the government is not trying to make my life difficult, that everything is done for a good purpose and reason - but it's very hard to see much less understand that right now.

Ug.  So frusterated right now.  Going to explore some options and see what I can do.

In other news, Texas got snow - SNOW - on the first day of spring.  Woke up Sunday to a white-wonderland.  I stayed indoors.  One look at what should have been a beautiful sunny day during which I plated things turned into a burrowing day where I read.  I'm reading a lot of Lynn Viehl lately and I love it.  I'm not writing as much as I wold like to (what I have done I blog about at cidwrites.com/blog) but with the excessive crap that continues to happen, well, I'm just glad I'm not nosediving into depression and have maintained a fairly positive outlook.  Doesn't mean I don't feel like I'm drowning at times, but I'm managing alright.

Whoopse, time to go back to work.

When I graduated college in December of 2007, the recession was that thing in the corner we pretended we hadn't invited to the dinner party.  Of course a few intelligent people, we'll call these the Smart Industries.  Unfortunately for people like myself who started school back in 2003 and had taken an extra year to get another degree - I was just in time for all my potential career paths to wither and die right in front of me.

Depressing, isn't it?

Well, I've done alright so far.  I'm working a day job that's at least enjoyable.  I like the hours and the people.  I don't always understand it all, but what can I do?  Well, I can learn.  Which I do and supposedly quickly.  And I can also try new things.  It's not where I saw myself when I graduated high school.  I thought I'd be changing the world all on my own and doing exciting things.

And then real life happens.

I'm not anywhere I thought I would be.  These last few weeks have been very depressing; can't lie about that.  I don't see it getting immediately better.  I'm holding out hope that things will improve, but only time will tell.  I'm beginning to be a bit more proactive in thinking of ways to improve things, like should I make a career switch?  Should I do something else?  It's hard and depressing trying to figure out life right now.  I read this article on PayScale about being ready for the recession with a back-up career plan.  I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't get a second job.  If I didn't have debt hanging over my head it might free me up to take some more chances.  I don't know.  I'm sort of at a low point here and I will need to figure something out by the end of April because I think that's all the grace my parents have for me.

Strange as it is, they're very concerned - interested? Whatever.  They're taking a lot of interest in my career right now, which is new and rather unexpected.  My parents have had a rather hands off approach to my life, only stepping in when I really needed help or something was really wrong.  This has probably been their way of letting me grow up all along.  Maybe I don't realize how close to crashing and burning I really am.  Ug.  I probably need to stop thinking about this and go clean - and then write or watch a movie.  That would be far more productive!!!

Okay, so yesterday I was uber, uber, uber productive - and I got pictures of the Chinnies!

You have NO idea how hard it was to get these pictures!  They dart around and try to investigate the camera and are just generally uncooperative when cameras appear.  That's always the exact moment they MUST bounce around the cage.

Speaking of the cage, the chins spent a good deal of time sitting on the patio last night while I scrubbed at their drop tray and cleaned it uber good and sprayed it with cleaners and scrubbed it again.  Hopefully that faint, strange odor I smell will leave.  No one else smells it, they just smell their hay, but I can smell some other dirty-cage smell and it drives me nuts!

The plants, which I meant to take pictures of, are shooting up and up and up.  The beans are the worst ones - as far as shooting UP goes.  I'm thinking I might plant some this weekend, the others will probably be kept in the little green house a while longer.  If the beans weren't so much farther along I would still have the cover on the greenhouse but the beans were getting tall enough they were growing sideways by several inches.

Righteo, headed to critique group tonight and I'm taking my new, shiny "short" story.  :D

Okay, so this has been a very bad week.  Thus the no blogging because I didn't really want to talk about all this depressing stuff via the blogsphere and some of it is work-related - which is off limits.  Today, however, I have a ton of pictures to share.  The first is one of me this morning.  Just look at that mop on my head! Some days it just looks awesome, LoL, and while *I* don't look all that great, my hair is so much freaking fun I had to put that up.  Plus it shows off just how drastic the front really is.  And I'm loving the headband.  When I get some time I need to go button shopping so it's not being held together by a safety-pin.

So Tuesday I went to the eyedoctor.  Good news: My eyes aren't that much worse for wear.  Badish news: we're switching me over to a hydrogen peroxide based eye solution to soak my contacts in.  Now, the bad part of this is that if I forget it's hydrogen peroxide and wash the contact in it and stick it back in my eye, or let the contact soak for less than six hours - it's like insta-pain-please-kill-me-now!  It's sort of cool because of how the contacts are soaked. I took pictures because I think it's super nifty.  The contact vial is different than what I'm used to, each lense has it's own "cage" and it's submerged in the solution and the gray ring on the bottom of the cage-thinggie reacts to the solution and it purifies my lenses... Yeah, just look at the pictures already!

Yup, I find it totally interesting.  I do understand if you do not.

My little sprouts are shooting up!  I'm taking the cover off today because several are hitting the top of the cover and starting to grow bent.  There were also two who were just sitting on the top of the pallet, growing roots out but not putting them into the peat, so I manually planted those, LoL.  I have one pea plant that suddenly has a covering of silvery fuzz and I need to research and see what that is and if I need to remove it or kill it or something.  Any ideas?

I was going to show off some individual views, but they all look over-exposed and not all that great, so you get this.  I'm guessing I'll be planting them next week and then hopefully start a smaller tray of just veggies.

Last night was like... knitting night.  I tried and failed the fingerless gloves pattern I was irate at earlier this week.

There wasn't enough increase for it to go around my actual hand.  I'm bummed, but I went off pattern so I'm not all that surprised.  I couldn't figure out what it wanted me to do for the bow so I skipped it.  Bad idea, huh?  So I started on another piece, which was mostly me just figuring out how to read graph patterns, which I think I sort of do now, which is exciting.

I'm sortof not sure what I'm going to do with this.  It curls up on it's self really bad, but I'm thinking if I continue the stripes up a ways, I could make a dish towel or a small purse with a flap.  I don't know... Suggestions?  I think that, even though I tried not to, the yarn got pulled too tight in the back in places  :-/  Oh well, for my first try I'm happy!  I only missed one color change spot and you can't see it and it's so small you can't tell.  The picture looks a little warped, which is a bummer  :-/

And that's it!

Now for the weekend: I need to get up and get to cleaning and then write, write, write! 

Okay, so I hate the captha thing, but I'm going to have to turn it on because I'm getting an increasing number of spam comments.  Sorry for the inconvenience, but I want to keep things 'clean'.  Facebook people, ignore this!

The roaches are back.  Well, a single roach was seen last night and promptly attacked with all the viciousness it deserved for invading my domain.   At least I've progressed from screaming and running away, but these aren't the hissers, these are just the creepy big waterbug ones that fly.  My skin crawls just thinking about that.  I have yet to see another one, but now that I've seen one, I'm watching for the others.  I'm not stupid, I know they're out there - waiting for me to let my guard down just a bit.  That's when they'll really attack; but I'm ready.

This week is going better than last week.  It would be hard to be worse than last week, and thankfully this one is not trying to run that contest.  I'm still struggling with the previously mentioned knitting pattern, but I didn't get to mess with it today because I read Boneshaker by Cherie Priest.  I have also written this week - where I didn't read at all last week.

The plants are shooting upwards.  I'm going to have to pull the top off soon - I think.  I'm a little unsure of what constitutes as leaves.  I'm really surprised because the Bluebonnets are blooming; Bluebonnets usually take a year to plant and bloom.  I'm hoping to get a few viable seedlings; that would be fantastic.  I should have taken pictures....

I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but I'm not going to my mom's race this weekend; I'll be staying home, waiting for twitter updates on my mom's progress.  Instead I will probably do some much over-due cleaning, writing and knitting.  I'm poking people to let them know it's an open invite to come over and hang out because I don't have a plan to go out. 

And, tomorrow night is the 10th anniversary of Boondock Saints.  If you're a fan, go look at the Fathom Events for locations and tickets.  Boondock Saints II came out Tuesday but I haven't had the chance to go get it -- yet.  Okay, I'm tired and the Chinchillas are begging, for something.  As always, I'm not sure what.

I don't understand you.

Casting on in the middle of a row?  What?  I seriously tried, and thank goodness I've gotten good at ripping out lines and not loosing stitches.  Headband, I can thank you for that!

Yarn Panda, you are amazing for your knitting all-knowing-power.

I'm rather pleased with how much I did tonight in an hour and a half - especially since I unraveled my first few tries....

Yours truely,
Cid

For visual proof I'm not crazy:

[Edit] Incase someone sees this and knows the pattern.  I'm trying to knit the stripy, bow fingerless gloves from the I Love Knitting book by Rachel Henderson.  The pattern has me knitting and purling 20 stitches and the bit I'm having problems with is this:

Using B, knit 12, turn, cast on 12 stitches, turn, knit to end of row. (32 stitches)

Casting on in the middle of the row?  I can understand - sort of - from the picture how it makes the bow, but I'm not really getting the hang of how to do it, or what exactly 'turn' means - when you're casting on....

((For some reason this blog is not showing up right for me. Hopefully it's just a problem on my end....))
Well this weekend was a bunch of well-I-didn't-expect-that's.  But ya know what?  It was still fun.

Friday I obviously stayed home and gardened, which I will digress immediatly into more gardening ramble....now.  OMG I had no idea things would sprout so quick! I thought it would take another day or two before I saw anything that really looked like it would make a plant.  It's been a while since I grew anything from seeds.  Anyways, several of my sugar snap peas are throwing out roots and that first little tale-tell leafy thing. I have a Sunflower that's really adamant about I-want-to-grow-NOW. I think the other ones are Johnny Jump Ups that look promising as well as several of the herbs that look like they're doing really well, but it's harder to tell with them because their seeds are so tiny so the resulting plant bits are equally as tiny.  Anyways, here are some really crappy pictures!!

Saturday was supposed to be my research day.  I posted about my like of research and how the research actually went via my other blog.  It didn't go as planned, I can say that much.  I stopped by Half Priced Books on my way home (bad idea, I know!) and sort of hit a gold mine.  I found several volumes I had been thinking about buying after at the library and two others that just looked promising.  I also bought two knitting books.  Yes!  Me - bought knitting books!  One focuses on using colors and patterns which I would like to learn.  I had sort of decided to spend the rest of a failing Saturday knitting, but a friend of mine wanted to go see Alice in Wonderland.  Long story made short, I drove all the way to Arlington - like south-west corner, lol - only to find out that the movie was sold out. Awwee!  So we saw Book of Eli instead!

Book of Eli...  Okay, so you know going into this movie that it's probably some sort of post-apocalyptic, religious  movie.  After seeing Legion I was skeptical about this one, but I had heard a few good things so I still wanted to see it - and Denzel Washington does a lot of good movies so I decided to be hopeful.  The setting was sort of Resident Evil meets I Am Legend.  It was sort of believable from what you are led to understand.  The characters were ... interesting.  You really only get inside four characters through the movie, Eli, the girl I sort of intentionally ignored, the bad guy, and the girls mom.  Can you tell I don't pay attention to names well?  Anyways, they were all pretty much okay.  The plot is that Eli is taking what is the only copy of the Bible left on earth,  west, where God told him it will be safe.  Okay, I can believe that; a hard sell to non-Christian or religious audiences but I can get that.  The really hard bit for me to accept came at the end where they do the big reveal.  I've decided to not say what it is...  I don't really think the big reveal is all that believable because he was too aware of things through the movie for that thing to be true -- though if you ignored the plausibility of it, it was a dang good kick to the evil guy.  I liked the movie.  I really did, and that surprised me.  I was pleasantly surprised.

Sunday I had decided to go to church, take the chins out to the patio and scrub their drop try.  I apparently did not set my alarm, and it was raining.  Neither of those things happened.  I did, however, get some knitting done. Here are the pictures of my headband!  Which I finished while watching Ponyo, but I'll talk about that in a moment.
So the yarn is really great and soft.  I need to get a button to sew on to really finish it, but you get the idea.  It's a headband, super fun and comfy.  Of course it's done now, when it's too warm to really wear it anymore!  Oh well, next winter, right?  I'm really proud of this!!



Right, anyways, Ponyo!  I'd posted via twitter that I had it coming in on my Netflix and a friend of mine responded that she wanted to watch it so we deiced to get together and watch it.  Now if you know anything about Miyazaki's films, they're generally a bit abstract or weird, but usually really cool!  I have heard some not-so-great opinions about it so I was ready.  However, I don't know that I was really ready for this.  Ponyo is sort of a take on The Little Mermaid, where Ponyo is the daughter of... well... I'm not quite sure what he was, but he had magic and lived under the ocean and yeah...  So Ponyo has a brush with a human and decides that she wants to be human too!  And she sort of becomes this human-chicken thing.  It was strange.  And then she becomes a human and she gets utterly obnoxious.  I think we commented more on how crazy everything was and how irresponsible the parents were and just how nutty it was and how all the characters just accepted that crazy, silly stuff was going on all around them.  I can say that Ponyo is not my favorite Miyazaki film.


We proceeded to watch bad TV that I think was Legend of the Seeker -- based off of books I hated.  Eventually - thankfully - the Oscars came on.  We were both struggling to write and outline and be productive during all of this.  The best part of the Oscar's might have been Neil Patrick Harris doing the opener.  After that I officially didn't care as much about the awards.  Now, Ben Stiller coming out as a Na'vi was awesome and I still want to know if the fishing pole bit was planned...  I will have to say, after watching the Oscars I now need to see: The Hurt Locker, The Blind Side, and The Secret of Kells.  The fun part about watching award shows, all the movies you decide that you might as well watch.


Okay, so that was my long-winded weekend that was apparently all about movies....and gardening......and knitting......and not as much about writing and books as I intended.

Okay, so lets talk about gardening! The last few days have been so very near spring like it's glorious! Of course I have been stuck in doors.  The weather has been so crazy lately I haven't dared to even look at my patio.  I have, however, found this strange little plastic, miniature greenhouse thing.  I'm thinking that if I can start it indoors, maybe by the time the weather has mellowed out just a bit I can move everything into pots and out on the patio.

So the first thing you do is - submerge the whole thing in water and let the little peat pallets expand.  Once they've expanded -- which happened SO fast I really was surprised at how quickly they were ready.  The instructions say to pour off water, but I didn't have any to pour off.  I was a bit confused on the following instructions.  I thought you should pull the netting off of the pallets, and did that to two of them - which was kind of a disaster.

No, I am not blogging much right now.  The dreaded Other-Stuff (generally speaking work things) leave me with little other to say.  Today has been a "special" day already.  I forgot to make tea last night, so I have no tea to drink today at work so I will be drinking Dr Pepper - all day.  I left my apartment this morning - and started driving towards my friend's house - NOT work.  And there was one other uber special thing I did but I can't remember what it was...  Apparently my body also hates me.  I have slept very funny on my right arm and it hurts.  Now, I know I sleep funny when I curl my arms up and under my head. Why?  Well because a few years ago I decided it would be a great idea to get Industrial Barbells through BOTH of my ears IN the SAME WEEK.  This was not smart.  For almost a year I couldn't put my head against anything.  So I slept with my head on my arm, but with my arm making a triangle so my ear could be suspended in the open space and Not. Touch. Anything.  It's habit now.  I think maybe my computer bag has irritated this.  I also have sore spots on my outer leg/thigh - and I have no idea why!  Okay, that's all I have to write about I think.

Oh no, I bought another Beauty and the Beast book, called Beastly, and finished it yesterday.  Yes, I am terrible about this.  The review is on my other blog connected to my CidWrites.com site.  I'm working on a new skin that will hopefully rock.  Hopefully.

Now, for the real reason I prodded myself into writing this blog...  Yes, there was a purpose!

My awesomely, adorable friend Alice, even in the midst of her impending wedding is hosting a knitting book giveaway via her knitting blog/website.  The book is Knits Three Ways, and you can see her blog and the instructions for entering here.  I'm totally already guilty of retweeting and now blogging - but I was already a facebook fan.  I attribute any ability I have to read knitting patterns to the Yarn Panda.  She is amazing and ever so patient. GO ENTER NOW!!!

Knitting ~ so I'm doing this headband.  Tuesday I took it with me to critique to knit before and between our critiques.  I was too busy trying to talk, follow the pattern and k, p, yo, k2tog to notice I inverted the pattern and had done a good two inches - wrong.  I've ripped out those two inches and got back on track, and put it down.  I obviously cannot do anything complicated while something else is going on around me.  LoL.

I have just said for more than I thought was in me.  I haven't done much this week.  I haven't written anything, I read Beastly, and that's about it other than the normal weekly activities; critique group and church.  This coming weekend will be dedicated to research... Yes. Research.  SAGU I'm coming to visit your library.  Please let me in, okay?

[Edit]
I had NO idea March was National Craft Month!  Well, in the spirit I guess I'll break out my pottery wheel in a few weeks and try some pottery.  In the meantime my knitting and repainting of flower buckets will have to suffice.

Okay, so there's lots of new stuff up and going on.  I've made my own website!  Nothing too fancy, but it's up and it's mine and I'm working on a customized layout/design all my own.  It's been a pain learning all this but I'm really glad now.  If you know anything about making websites or FTP servers (which is the next thing I need to learn) please, please, please feel free to email (cid@cidwrites.com), twitter(@cidwrites), or IM(aim-spazticstarfish, msn-slippersarecool, skype-cid.tyer) me.  The website is www.cidwrites.com This will change how I blog a bit.  I will very much limit how much I blog about writing and books here and save that for my website blog.  Why?  Because should I make the decision to peruse something different in the future, it would be wise to have some content and history already established.  Now what will I be perusing?  Well that's my secret.

Right now there is a lot that is rocky, and since it pertains to work and other delicate matters - I can't blog about what has me seriously stressed, so excuse me if my blogs are scattered and sparce for the next few days to months as things are sorted out.

Um, on to something more interesting!  In the wake of these stressful events, I gave myself the night off to do - whatever.  I have knitted more on the headband I showed off last night.  It's not as far along as I would like but I would imagine it will be finished by the end of the week and I will be making a decision about making another one or trying something else.  I also watched Angels and Demons, which I was really apprehensive about watching.  I think knitting while "watching" it helped a lot.  I anticipated it being a lot slower and - well - boring.  I've heard that said a lot in reference to both book and movie, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.  It makes me want to reread my church history books.  The Catholic church has such a vast, complicated and interesting history.  Now, I don't believe in the myths brought up by the books, but it is interesting and I have to applaud how the fact and fiction is interwoven.

Okay, so I am putting this plug in here because a) it's my friend and b) the more plugs I stick in the more times I'm put in to win the book, soooo... A good friend of mine over at Ninja vs Pirate Book Reviews did a recent interview with new author Patrick Doud.  You can read the interview here. There is also a book give-away which I will be shamelessly entering.  Good luck!