Tag: Blather

Oh crikey

I just looked at the date of my last post here and felt an immediate sense of guilt. Sheesh 🙁

What’s happened since I got to hear my awesome daughter sing? Probably the biggest thing is I wrote a book. Yup! Years and years of wishful novel-writing and I finally stopped talking about it and did it, with the help of NaNoWriMo. Turns out third time was the charm! I tried in 2004, and then again in 2005. Both really weak-ass attempts. Then several years of whinging about how I want to be a writer but not actually doing much about it, until I found Ficlets. Bippity-boppity-boo, 2009 I won NaNoWriMo and I’m going to self-publish this sucker as soon as I edit it a few times 🙂

Got a couple of freelance gigs I’m excited about. One for an annual festival the city holds and the other for a tile company. The extra money certainly comes in handy in this, the year of two paycuts.

The kidlet is doing well at college. She enjoys it I think. I still miss her terribly when she’s away but I’m getting used to it. She lucked out and had a roomie who moved out soon after the term began and they never found her another one, so she’s had a room to herself which she enjoys. I’d like her to have the roommate experience though. Everyone I know is after her to have the “College Experience” which I assume means going to parties and doing silly college things. She doesn’t really go out much that I know of, but I know she’s got several friends there, so in my book, if she’s happy doing her thing, then that’s cool.

Let’s see, this is taking on the feel of one of those funky ‘Here’s what my family’s done this year’ letters 🙂 I actually like those. My Aunt Jo writes the best ones (Hi Jo!) because she makes them fun and funky 🙂

Right now I’m in the midst of some Christmas shopping so I’d better keep perusing the web, hehe 🙂 I should shop local, I know. I will, I promise. But the big wide interwebz has so much cool stuff!

That’s all for now! Will try to do better about blogging again now that the book is done (I have always wanted to say that!)

Tidying up the mess :)

Going to be reworking this blog a bit. It was time to update the header and I might redo the columns a little. I think I went widget-happy 🙂

Believe it or not, this is relaxing for me, mucking about in code and photoshop, throwing things in a figurative bucket and seeing what comes out. Work’s a bit… tightly wound right now with a big redesign due in less than 2 weeks and xmas stress (everyone else is stressing. Not me. Xmas is gonna be soooo mellow this year, I can’t wait.)

Anyway can’t write much atm, but cross your fingers for decent weather Saturday so we can go to Lincs and see Jo and fam. last time we attempted it this time of year, we spent some quality time in a ditch just outside of town 🙂 If it wasn’t frowned upon these days, I would so buy a little SUV that can handle it around here. Ah well.

Sundays

I’m sitting in Galaxy laundry on a Sunday morning doing a hated chore but it must be done because I’m out of knickers 🙂

Life is a funny thing really. A neverending tumult of experiences and joys. Enormous highs and terrible lows and I seem to have encountered it all in the past few weeks alone. I wouldn’t trade any of it for mundanity (not sure that’s actually a word, hehe.)

I see a former coworker putting her stuff in the dryer. She was a victim of layoffs. I didn’t know her, but still, awkward.

Damn forgot to put fabric softener in.

Well it’s on final spin, so signing off.

Nice weekend. Crazy week.

Last week at work was completely crazy and exciting and fun, and is the reason I’m happy to be working in the news biz. My town gets a big story, one that went national, and my newsroom just mobilizes and gets good quality coverage. Even I got to be a part of it, working with the desks to get information out to the people using Twitter and liveblogging, and well, the regulaar website 🙂

It was immensely satisfying.

Of course, I was also told during a meeting last week that I haven’t been in the biz long enough to become cynical and jaded. I hope that never happens.

(And not to stray way off topic but I’m going to answer my Aunty’s comment from the last post and say that Tom’s fix didn’t last and the old pair were held together with duct tape and happy thoughts.)

What else… Ah yes the college fair. I had to miss going to the free showing of Walk the Line (the paper sponsored it as a fitting end to our Music Madness tournament) in order to go to a college fair, and I’m glad I did. Discovered that everyone was right. Shannon’s awesome score on ACT test will be very beneficial for getting much financial aid so she can go to Uni after high school instead of having to do the cheaper route of 2 years at a junior college first. Not that there’s anything wrong with that 🙂 But if she can swing it, and we can work the scholarship mojo, she can go where she wants now.

In other news, we’re still going to the Y 🙂 Trying to find a routine time for us to go is a bit of a challenge. So far it’s pretty much just been going when we can fit it in. So far we’ve played racquetball (Shannon would rather duck and cover when the ball comes her way, and I’m actually not too bad at it. It’s rather like Calvinball if you don’t bother with the rules. Who knew that it would be so much fun to hit the ball off of every available surface?), done the treadmills, and we’ve been in the pool just once. Need to rectify that because I have dreams of a brisk uphill walk on the treads, working up a good sweat, followed by a delicious dunk in the pool to cool off.

I’m discovering that I’m still a bit shy about exercising in front of people. I couldn’t bring myself to walk into the weight room area when it was full of young studly types, and the reason we played racquetball the other day was because the cardio room (with the treads/ellipticals/etc.) was busy with people who can use those suckers for hours on end. I’m slowly trying to get into shape, and while I know we’re all there to do the same thing, it’s hard to go at my own pace in a room full of exercise nuts. Gotta work on this issue of mine. But I am enjoying the Y membership.

In less than two weeks I will be jetting off to foggy Monterey, Cali to see my baby sister get hitched. I can’t believe it’s almost time to go. I’m so looking forward to this. I know Kelly is too. She’s not a nervous bride at all either, which is cool. I think all the details are sussed out and now it’s just a matter of getting there and doing it. I’m looking forward to that, and to maximum beach time.

Still debating on whether to bring my laptop. I have not traveled by plane since before 9/11. I have yet to experience the security changes, and I’m worried about my laptop getting banged up and plundered. Will talk to the cousin about that. I’m just going to need it to download video and piccies I’m planning to shoot while I’m there. I only have 2 2-gig mem cards and that’s not enough, but if I can empty them periodically it would be fine. We’ll see. Anyway, beach + me + hopefully some fog = happy girl. And it will be so damn nice to get out of Nebby for a while.

I know I said that the stuff that went down last week was fun and exciting, and it was, but it also highlighted some of the very worst traits of this town – the stuff I’ve always hated about living here. The ignorance and intolerance is staggering. Usually those two things stay bubbling under the surface and I don’t see evidence of them much. But occasionally it blows up bigtime and makes me long to be anywhere but here.

Anyway, I need to go. Very late for a school night. Gnight internets.

Late night sleepy post

So I now have a decent pair of glasses. I just got them today and couldn’t wait to wear them. Normally, I hate wearing glasses. but after several years of just wearing contacts, sometimes I just don’t want to mess with them. I have wretched vision, so either contacts or glasses are a necessity. After returning from the gym tonight (which is going smashingly btw. Love the treadmills and discovered I’m kind of good at racquetball.) I put on the new specs.

And I remembered why I don’t like wearing them. My eyes feel tired and heavy. Contact wearers you know what I mean. Putting contacts in kind of wakes you up. A nice cold plop of liquid on the old eyeballs and you feel kind of refreshed and ready to go. At least I do anyway. Without them I feel sleepy. It’s weird.

But I’m going to wear them to work tomorrow just for the novelty of it. But if I end up dozing in the afternoon, I’m blaming the specs.

What a fascinating post this is! 🙂 I didn’t have a point to it really. I’m worn out after a crap day at work and exercise my body isn’t used to yet, so I’m just sort of freeform rambling. It’s getting late now though so I’d better put this post out of its misery and go to bed. Night!

Congratulations Jack!

My friend and coworker, Jack, has been training for the past three months to run in his first marathon, the Bill Seymour Half, which was this morning. He blogged his trials and tribulations for the paper and had a lot of people rooting for him, myself included. If you get a minute, check his blog out – he’s a great and funny writer. I don’t read many running blogs apart from my dad’s and Jack’s but Jack turned his into an irreverent look at what it’s like to be a novice runner preparing for your first Big Run.

Anyway, here he is at the finish. Way to go Jack, you made it! 🙂