Memorial Day

The Veterans' Memorial in Utah - March 2004

If you can, take a moment to remember the soldiers who fought - and are still fighting today - in the name of freedom.  Without them, I wouldn't want to think of where the free world would be.

Picture Pause

Direct from my new camera...  Okay, so I edited the pictures for size.  I'm still learning about the camera, so these pics were like 2meg each.  Not blog friendly, lemme tell ya.  Rather than talk your ears off, here's a couple new pics...

The above wasn't quite what I was going for, but I ran out of memory on the new camera.  (More about that another time.)  And then I switched to the old camera and fell on my hiney.  C'est la vie.  It's still a pretty nice shot, even if it's not perfection. 

This was taken just outside of town.  The full size version is more awesome, but with blogs, I'll take what I can get.

I also took some good pictures of Daughter, but she'd kill me if I posted them here.  She already has to deal with the fact that I emailed them to my mother - who will share them with the rest of the family.  And of course, she took some pics of me.  (Note new profile pic.  Yeah, it's still grayscale, but I think I look better without color.)

Did I mention how much I love MS Office 2007?  It has this Picture Manager program that's perfect for tweaking photos for the web.   

Enjoy your holiday weekend, y'all.  I'll still be around, but if I don't see you, Happy Memorial Day. 

A Fun Little Quiz

Hi all.  I was just checking out blogs of my newest followers and saw this neat link to a sort of 'which Harry Potter character are you?' quiz.  Here are my results:




Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

Pretty neat, but I don't think I'm as much like Hermione as they think. Although when I take the Briggs-Meyers test, I do usually end up as either an ISTJ or an INTJ.  Personally, if I had to chose, I'd probably want to be Professor McGonagall.  I'd love to be able to say I have excellent organizational skills.  Well, I think I do have skills, but my problem is I never use them.  ;o)

Thanks to Faith Hough for stopping by and for a little mid-afternoon fun.  (After washing the car and mowing the lawn, I don't have energy for anything else.  LOL)

What HP character did the quiz say you are?

Intentions are for Sheet

Heh, I was just looking at yesterday's post where I gave five things on my to-do list for the day.  I didn't do anything I intended to do.  But as my father always said "Intentions are for shit".  Like Yoda's 'there is no try, only do.'  Except for Dad, it wasn't wisdom if swearing wasn't involved.  ;o)

First off, it didn't rain and I still didn't water the lawn.  I meant to write, but I didn't.  Then I decided we were going to spent the day driving - which meant no laundry - except just as we were leaving the house, the air conditioner repair guy showed up.  It's not broken - it's just old and dirty.  It took him a couple hours to clean it, which shot the morning all to hell.  And I forgot to start the laundry. 

Later, I had every intention of downloading both cameras.  Really I did.  Except the software for my older camera wasn't Windows 7 compatible.  :shrug:  No worries.  I had the same problem with my printer, but I just downloaded new drivers from the Lexmark website and the problem was solved.  I went to HP's site.  No new drivers for Windows 7.  So, I thought: "I'll just call them and have them email me a file or send me a CD or something.  No problem." 

OMG was I wrong.  By the end of the phone call, I was shouting at the guy.  (And opposed to popular blogiverse belief, I'm not a shouter.)  Turns out the camera I bought new within the last 18 months has been out of warranty since 2007 (??? - must've been a retrograde warranty) and I couldn't even get a frickin' driver from the 'friendly folks' at HP without purchasing a new warranty.  What a racket.  Anyway, did I mention how much more I like Lexmark now?

So, by the end of that half-hour phone call, I had a massive headache and wasn't in the mood to do anything but rip the heads off stuffed animals.  (Okay, not really.)  Instead, I drove to Dairy Queen and drowned my anger in a mocha shake.  After I got home, I set the software up on Daughter's computer and downloaded the damn pictures, but what a pain in the heiny.  Needless to say, even after I calmed down, I didn't feel like reading or writing or cleaning.  I just wanted to sit on the couch and forget that anything outside my little area even existed.  That, I accomplished.  Yay me.  (Note sarcasm.)

Anyway, the point I was leading up to.  I had most of a whole day to get five little goals accomplished, and didn't do anything because I allowed things that were outside my control affect me.  I know better.  Sitting here this morning looking back, I realize I shouldn't have let the repair guy or the customer anti-service rep derail me.  I should've powered ahead. 

But sometimes the best of intentions don't end up turning into anything but wishful thinking.

What did you accomplish yesterday?  Ever have one of those days where you don't get any of the things you wanted to accomplish done? 

Oomph She Got Me

LOL, I'm hit!  This morning Natalie tagged me for a little meme. Looks like five questions, with five answers each.  I'm up for it.  Are you?  ;o)

Here goes...

Question 1: Where were you five years ago?
- About a half mile from here.
- Finding out we had to move because our landlady sold the house we were living in.
- Enjoying the start of my second year of married life.
- Angsting about writing my second book.
- Getting started homeschooling for the second time.  (We homeschooled for a little of 4th grade in FL - until we had to move to UT.)

Question 2: Where would you like to be five years from now?
- Agented
- Published
- Living in OK, MO, AK or TX with my retired husband
- Writing to a contract
- At least ten pounds lighter

Question 3: What is (was) on your to do list today?
- Watering the lawn was on my list, but I woke up to big grey clouds and the smell of rain
- Write at least 1500 words
- It's Wednesday, so that means... Laundry!
- Finish the book I'm reading - Gena Showalter's latest Lords of the Underworld
- Download the pics from my new camera, and install the software for my old camera so I can download those, too

Question 4: What five snacks do you enjoy?
- Ice cream
- Baked Ruffles
- Homemade trail mix (almonds, cashews, peanuts, dried berries, and white chocolate chips)
- Cheese
- Anything chocolate

Question 5: What would you do if you were a billionaire?
- After my husband quits his job, I'd buy an island for us to live on.
- Outfit said island home with all the latest technology
- Adopt as many animals as I could reasonably care for and love - even if I have to hire someone to help.
- Send Daughter to the best business university in the country (Right now, Virginia for undergrad, and then Harvard for graduate studies.)
- Keep writing - and if no one offers me a contract, I'll just buy a publishing company and have them print my books for me.  (Hey, it's a fantasy world.  I can buy whatever I want.)

I guess at this point, I'm supposed to tag five other people.  I'm not much on tagging, but if you want, feel free to play along.  Just make sure you say so in the comments, so everyone knows how to find your answers.

Thank again, Natalie.  This was fun.

Randomosity

Borrowing a word and stealing an idea from Jennifer Lyon today, I thought I'd devote a post to Randomosity.  (A word my spellchecker is having trouble with, but screw it.)

Today's randomosity...

Yesterday afternoon, we had a wind storm.  It beat holy hell out of my irises, dumped leaves and tree seeds all over my yard, and ravaged the tree across the street.  I spent a chunk of the morning cleaning up only to be told the wind is making an encore appearance this afternoon.  Bleh.

Speaking of irises, I had to go screaming chicken (or as Daughter calls it - psycho middle-aged mom) on some boys the other day.  They were walking down the sidewalk in front of my house and for some reason decided it would be fun to beat on my beautiful irises.  I heard them out there and tore out the front door.  Sure enough, I had petals and blooms all over my driveway.  So, of course, I cracked and started shouting at them. I've been nursing those damn things for weeks and they were just perfect.  (And yes, these are the same flowers I hurt myself trying to take a photo of.)  Between the kids and the wind, they just look like shit now.

Daughter took her practice ACT for English yesterday and got a 36 on the reading portion!  She did miss one question, but that's a perfect score.  I'm so totally proud of her.  She also improved her grammar and mechanics score by one point from the last practice test she took.  What a kid.  :beams:  Now we just have to see where she's at with Math and Science. 

Join me in wishing her success for her actual test on June 12th.

So, do you have anything to contribute to today's Randomosity?  Go ahead.  You know you wanna.  =o)

ETA: She finished the rest of the practice test and came up with a composite of 30.  Just over two weeks until the real deal.  She's hoping to bring the score up to at least a 32.

Series Worries

I knew when I started DLN that it was probably going to be the first book in a series.  The more I wrote, the more that word 'probably' went away.  I mean, this is such a rich world to play in.  I mean, come on... they're genies.  How could I not have multiple ideas already in the hopper?  In fact, I already have several general plot lines for the next few books.

And therein lies the rub.

I have to write this first book first.  It has to stand alone while still leaving a few threads dangling free - just in case this sucker gets picked up by an agent and then gets a contract.  (If If If)  In my first run through of DLN, I left too much out there for the subsequent stories to nibble off.  So much that the story itself wasn't doing what I needed it to do.  Stand alone.

Now I'm rewriting the whole damn thing pretty much, and I'm left wondering whether I'm walking that thin line well enough.  How much information is too much?  Am I leaving too much out?

Or am I just going through my regularly scheduled bout of self-doubt?  (aka The Bitch is Back)  I tell ya.  This writing thing can be tough.

:shrug:  Tough or not, there's still nothing I'd rather do.

 *All images deleted to avoid any chance of copyright infringement*