Sunday Update - Week 23

Hey there, hi there, ho there.  It's time to wrap this past week up.  

I only wrote on one day this past week, but I laid down about a thousand new words and found a place for a scene I'd written a while back, giving me a net gain of about 2700 words.  On SCUI4.  :shrug:  Gotta go where the inspiration strikes these days.

Perhaps inspiration struck on that because I actually did some marketing.  I posted on Thursday night/Friday morning about Dying Embers being only 99c and sold 3 books.  One each of the series, so yay.  I need to slap some more posts out there.  

In reading news, I only finished one book, but it was a good one.  I also started reading a suspense yesterday.  So far, so good.

On the baking front, I made carrot cake!  I'd never made one before, but I got the idea that I wanted to make one, so I went looking for recipes.  And the ones I found that I liked called for way more carrots than I had in the house.  So, when I went shopping on Thursday the idea was to buy another bag or two.  The little bags looked piddlin' and doing a cost comparison, it just made more sense to pick up the big bag.  The FIVE POUND bag.  I already had a pound of carrots - I didn't realize the little bags had 16 oz - so 6 pounds of carrots total.  I spent yesterday morning cleaning and shredding carrots.  One big carrot yielded 1 cup of shredded.  One carrot.  I cleaned probably 10-12 carrots to start and still had about 3/4 of the 5 lb bag untouched.  Anyway, I got my 4 cups of shredded carrot.  Plus two quart baggies of carrot sticks.  Then I made the cake.  It turned out amazing, by the way.  Recipe below.

I'm still falling down on the activity thing.  Only one day wherein I walked the loop.  So 1.1 miles added to the total.  19.3 miles for the year.  That's kind of pitiful.  :shrug:  I did finally weigh myself and I'm holding steady, though.  Weight: 181.6.  Unfortunately, not moving is making me squonky.  Not that I didn't get a boatload of upper body exercise grating those carrots, but that's not quite the cardio I'm going for.  

I did something else this week that I've been thinking about for a while now.  I'm not ready to talk about it and nothing may come of it anyway.  No, it's not anything bad or medical.  Or relationship related.  Okay, fine.  I applied for a job.  The right job came along and I had to go for it.  If anything, I'm overqualified for it and my resume will probably freak the people out.  But it's like 2 miles from here and it utilizes my office skills with some new stuff thrown in to make it interesting.  And hey, it might even help add a new flavor element to my writing.  :shrug:  Like I said, nothing may come of it.  If something does come of it, I'll let you know because changes will have to be made.  Anyway, I'm kind of excited.  

Speaking of excitement, we found a big ol' rat snake in the garage this week.  He was probably 5-6'.  There were some comical elements to his removal, but we finally got him outside.  Hubs then proceeded to spray the area to deter the snake from coming back.  

Also, exciting... we have a fawn!  And it's Lumpy's!  Yay!  

Okay, that's more than enough out of me this morning.  Thanks for reading all the way down to here and I hope you have an awesome day.  How was your week?

Recipe:

Best Ever Carrot Cake

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 1/3 cup vegetable oil

4 cups grated carrots

3/4 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 350F.  Coat bottom of 9x13" pan with cooking spray.  Plump raisins, drain, and set aside.  In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.  Set aside.  In a large bowl, beat eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.  Beat in oil.  By thirds, stir in dry ingredient mixture.  Fold in carrots and raisins until just combined.  Spread evenly into prepared pan.  Bake for 40-45 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.  Cool completely and frost with cream cheese frosting.