Done Deal

Finished! I'm finished! I've sent my project to my teacher and I'm finished! Until August!

Whee!

Regrets

Part of the project I'm doing for college is a summary of my experience with marketing myself. Part of that has to do with the art of querying. So, for the first time in about 3 years I'm looking through the stuff I did to promote both a novel and an article which was successfully published. It's filling me with regret today. I feel that, at that point, I was getting some momentum going and that I didn't manage to keep it going, you know? What was it, I wonder? Fear? Lack of expertise? Bad luck? Or worse: lack of talent?

You, Too!

Newbies get to start selling for free!

Click here for what I've been shopping for lately.

Amid May

I quit my job three weeks or so ago and have been home finishing up homework and doing house projects ever since!

One of my homework assignments was to put together a binder proving that I've satisfied all of the requirements of a class for my major called Professional Communication Practices. I need to write one heck of an essay and photocopy my many query letters and market research to show that I know how to do all that stuff. It's quite a job but it will be worth it if I can get credit for this class without having to, you know, take it. Gosh, I love being a middle aged college student!

Last month I took 3 CLEP tests. I passed two of them but flunked College Algebra. By 3 points. I was so disgusted. It was 57 questions and my score was 47. I would rather have gotten 27 than 47.

I begged my TA at college and so they're going to let me try to test out of College Algebra when I'm on campus in August. That doesn't mean I'll get the 4 units credit like I would have had I passed the CLEP. But at least I wouldn't have to suffer through the class. 3 lousy points. The agony.

In non-school news, I'm busily tidying up and organizing the house, as well as doing a virtual garage sale on eBay. That's my Big Plan for making up my part time job income: selling stuff on eBay. I have tons of antique-type stuff from my mother's estate as well as things of my own. Good stuff. I guess I'll do this until I get sick of it, or run out of junk. The former is much more likely than the latter.

What's not to miss?

Well. Well.

March began with a fizzle and ended with a bang.

At the beginning of the month I was all on pins and needles as I anticipated (read: dreaded) yet another downsizing at work. I think it was the worst one yet, which left so many pessimistic. (Fizzle.)

Springtime is so busy with my son's school activities, even though by mid month at least the after school sports had settled down. By the time I'd blinked it was Spring Break and time for us to go on vacation to California.

This time I'd decided I wanted to go sightseeing and visit places, not people, I was missing. As a result, we only saw three, count'em, three people we knew. But that was okay -- maybe not for those we didn't see, but certainly for me. In fact, it was heaven. (Bang.)

We got back home yesterday and I'm having some trouble adjusting to be in Colorado again. But I'll live.

Well.

It's been a while but I've been so tired and overwhelmed lately that blogging is about the last thing I feel like doing.

I've been vegging out in front of the TV news lately and that's always good for some ironies.

For example, Bob Woodward on the build up to the war in Iraq. He actually sat and said, straight-faced, that he believed all that the Administration said about the existence of WMD's.

How about that all-female country music band who won some Grammy's, widely seen as vindication for the aftermath of their earlier anti-Bush remarks.

Then there was the Katrina-surviving family whose trailer they'd been living in since that hurricane was just destroyed in another storm.

Truth is always stranger than fiction!

Pop Goes the Wall

Here's the design I'm going to paint on the wall opposite my Elfa unit.

Happy 2007!

It's warmer but there's still a ton of snow on the ground (most of it in my driveway, actually). Yesterday the boy and I went sledding and I have the sore, aching muscles to prove it!

Later in the day, my old home town boys beat the new hometown boys out of the post season. Go 9ers!

Then, we rung in the new year with those fancy fireworks we'd been unable to set off back when the ground was dry in July.

Today all roads were open again and things are slowly getting back to normal here. We went furniture shopping and got some great deals on some nice stuff to be delivered Friday! I can hardly wait!

Husband and I are both sobbing because tomorrow it's back to work for the two of us...son, meanwhile, is still off for another full week.

'Hope Yours Was, Too

I had a great Christmas. Actually, since I've been celebrating since Saturday, I feel like the whole weekend and today have been just one, long day. Our tradition is to open gifts Christmas morning and my son actually let us all sleep until 8 a.m. this morning, which is a Christmas miracle in itself! One of my gifts was the coveted robins' nest egg blue, small box tied with a white ribbon, which made my holiday! We assembled a gingerbread house later and decorated it, and also ate the requisite Christmas ham for dinner. All is well.

I don't need to go to work until Wednesday. It will likely be awful trying to catch up between the snow days and the holidays, but I'm not complaining.

To Finish the Story...

...the biopsy was negative but I have a pre-cancerous condition that the surgeon and I will explore treating with medication. I am thankful, despite the horrific nature of the investigation, for techniques of early detection and for not listening to them when they said (after 2 years) "Let's watch it for another year."

I'm Back

Whew!

Finally able to get onto Blogger again -- I have been very frustrated with my inability to log in!

Of course, now that I'm on, I have nothing whatsoever to say.

Figures.

This is My Brain on NaNoWriMo

Any questions?

(Boy, that Debbie Ridpath Ohi -- she gets me!)

Out of Nowhere

So, I'm driving home from Denver yesterday and I'm listening to some nice music that was sort of sad and thinking about things and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I notice that it's the 2 year anniversary of when my mother went into the hospital. She was in intensive care for about six days and then she died. When I got the phone call, 2 years ago yesterday, I made the stupid decision I'll always regret not to fly out until the weekend because I was just a few weeks into a new job and I was worried about taking the time off. As a result, I never got to see my mother conscious before she died.

I was thinking about all of that and also re-living the moments before her death when she was given the last rites, and remembering made my chest hurt and then I started to cry. Not the little I feel sad so tears leak kind of crying, but the kind where you make noise and you can't help it.

It was pretty amazing to me that I could be driving along one moment and then succumb to complete mental and emotional anguish. I thought, wow, I'm walking around everyday with feelings like this just below the surface?

Basically, I couldn't stop crying for the next 4 hours or so. That was not a fun Friday night. I woke up this morning with big, swollen eyes and a feeling not unlike sore muscles in the area of my heart, which still has not gone away. Yep, feeling pretty crappy.

No desire to write. At all. Or do homework, either. So what else is new?

So, yeah. Grief, as I've said many times before, sucks.

Homework Blues

Homework and NaNoWriMo just don't mix.

If you think I'm behind in my wordcount, you should see my homework. Especially that darn math that just keeps piling up.

Sometimes I'm so stressed about it that I'm paralyzed and don't do either. Smart, huh?

At Last At First

I finally started my novel and got in a whopping 843 words!

I'm so happy.

Not sure what was going on. I think I needed the Kickoff to officially happen (it was so much fun) first. I wrote an outline at the Write In portion of the Kickoff and then deviated from it completely this morning.

I just woke up and suddenly I knew what I was going to write and how.

All Hail

To all those parents (mostly fathers...) who stood out on the cold streets of Colorado, with coat collars zipped up around their chins, hunching so their noses would be covered, gloved hands in pockets, watching their children run with wild abandon on darks streets in 17 degree temperatures: I salute you!

And I was standing next to you!

Another Halloween under the belt!

Blizzard 2006

I thought this curly little "wave" of snow was a good indication of that wind we heard howling all day yesterday!

Post Blizzard

I tried to go to work today, I really did. It took me 15 minutes to drive around the block, slipping all the way despite the good tires and traction control. The street was a sheet of ice. A cookie sheet, with high walls. About 3 inches thick. All ice.

So I came home, called in, and started on homework. It took about 4 hours, interrupted, and came out 18 pages long. That was one assignment for one class. It is a very tough class.

Then in the late afternoon I got cabin fever, so hubby and I went to run a few errands. (Son was playing at a friend's house, learning to snowboard on the kid's front lawn, it turns out.) It was nice to get out of the house, but we passed by many cars still in ditches and some new accidents involving cars without the good tires hitting an ice slick. We also drove over many high spots where, thankfully, the warm sun today had melted the snow enough for us to get over them. Who knows what would happen if we drove over those same spots now that the sun's gone down and the temperature's dropped.

I'm very glad I didn't go to work this morning.

We Had to Call It

Well, we were almost as stubborn as those Cardinals fans in the rain. We finally postponed the Kickoff party at 2:30 this afternoon.

Highways and major roads are closed, and the coffee shop's not answering their phone so I think they're closed as well. At any rate, there's ice under the snow and it's not a fit day to be doing any driving even in daylight!

I'm very bummed out.