A Laugh for Sunday Morning

Found this on Brenda Coulter's blog. It's a hysterical how-to video for men on hugging. Remeniscent of those Goofy cartoons on how to dance.

I tried to get the video to post here, but for some reason YouTube and Blogger aren't talking to each other this morning.

The Big Announcement

I’ve never been much of one for following the crowd. In fact, I rather like swimming upstream. So since a lot of people move to Arizona from the Midwest, I decided to move from Arizona to the Midwest. Besides, last year at the ACFW conference in Dallas, Dave Long of Bethany House Publishers called me a cream puff for never having lived anywhere it snowed. Well, I couldn’t take a challenge like that laying down. So, we’re off to Indiana. Take that, Dave.


(Okay, yeah, I know there's not snow there right now, but I didn't take any more pictures last time I was there when everything was green. The first one is a deer track in the snow.)

Things I’ll miss about Arizona:

The water out of the tap is hot. Probably 95 or so. The pipes get really hot in the summer. And the toilet water is hot. You can lift the lid and have condensation. Kind of like giving your rear end a facial.

Not many mountains in Indiana

Amazing and dramatic views.

Dust devils the size of small tornadoes

Warm (okay, blow-dryer hot) afternoon winds.

Warm nights

Monsoon season with amazing thunderstorms.

Colorful Mediterranean plants


Things I’m looking forward to:

Seasons. I’ve heard rumors there are four but I’ve only seen two.

Snow. Not sure how I’ll survive. But I’ve never seen a real snowflake. That should be fun.

Greenery.

And plants like peonies and lilacs and bulbs. Stuff that doesn’t grow anywhere I lived.

Things that are the same:

Lots of two lane roads through corn fields.

Trains blocking those two lane roads

Bright, starry skies.

Here's where you come in.

The name of this blog is Sonoran Saga. Um, guess that's not going to work anymore. So I'm up for suggestions. I also need to change the little description box up at the top. Right now, the only thing I've come up with is Jen at Work and putting 'Caution:...." in the little description box. But I need more stuff to choose from. So, give me your ideas and if I pick yours you can come over to my house and help me pack. Wait, that doesn't sound like much of an incentive. Um, okay, how about this? I'm getting rid of a bunch of books, so I'll give some of those away.

Check This Out

There's a good discussion about taste going on over at Mick Silva's blog. I like these kind of discussions because there is really no right answer, but everyone's thoughts illuminate a little bit more of the puzzle for me.

And yes, I'll have something else to post this afternoon. ;)

Sick of These Yet?

These are two examples of fields near my home. The first is an alfalfa field recently harvested. I love how the hay bales look like green Legos in a row.



I'm not sure what this field is going to be. It looks like either cotton or potatoes. But I love the geometric lines of the furrows accented by the afternoon light.



These are bougainvillea (foreground) and lantana (purple flowers in background) in my front yard. They looked like little brown sticks two months ago. As Mediterranean plants, they didn't do well in the frost. But they've come back nicely with some pruning.



Now, make sure you come back tomorrow for the big announcement. There might even be a little contest or something involved.

Still More Arizona Images...

These are my kids, taken at the pool the other day. Not really an image of Arizona, but rather an image in Arizona. I liked it, though

More Images from Arizona

As promised, here's more pictures of Arizona. These are from Sedona taken a couple of years ago on New Year's Day after a big rainstorm that caused flooding. It's very pretty up there. I love the contrast between the greenery and the red dirt. There are some nice hiking trails too, but many were closed off due to mud slides. And let me tell you, that red mud was extremely sticky. We couldn't get it off our hiking boots.

Images of Arizona

Later this week I'll have some news to share, but in the meantime, I thought I'd post some pictures from Arizona. I spent some time this week trying to recover photos from my Mac (got it back, yay!) and on the PC. And I realized there's some great pictures from Arizona to share. So guess what? You get to enjoy them. (And if you don't, just pretend, okay? Thanks.)

This is a roadrunner that was on our back fence one morning. In the background are the Superstition Mountains.





More photos tomorrow. I know you can't wait. You'll probably be here even before you get your coffee. Or, maybe not.

Beauty from Brokenness

Go check out this post by Lisa Samson over at The Master's Artist. All I can say is wow. It really seemed to coalesce a lot of thoughts I've had about writing lately and some discussions the Misfits have been having about writing and our calling as writers. Anyhow, go read it for yourself.

Eight Random Things

Elaina tagged all of the Misfits with the eight random things about yourself meme.

So here's eight random things about myself. With a little help from a friend . . .

1. I broke both my elbows two weeks before my wedding. This is really my claim to fame. It's even inspired a dance.

2. I'm ambidexerous. I can write quite legibily with my left hand, though it's slower from lack of use. Everything else is about equal.

3. I used to turn Rick Warren's (Purpose Driven Life) sermons into small group Bible studies when I attended his church, Saddleback.

4. I'm a bona fide California girl, born there and lived there for over thirty years.

5. I've had quite the wide variety of jobs. I've worked for both Apple and IBM, I've been an insurance underwriter, worked as a draftsman and entitlement specialist for an engineering firm, and directed traffic and drove a bus as part of campus security, i was a director of marketing, and I do web design. And, ahem, I'm now looking for a job, so, any offers?

6. I have a fondness for late night laundry room visits and the smell of fabric softener . . .

7. I like sour stuff more than sweet, especially sour and salty like pickles, olives, artichoke hearts.

8. I broke my toe ring on a trip to visit Michelle. I have no idea how I did that.

I tag Malia, Sabrina, Diana and anyone else that hasn't already been tagged.

Daily Sacrament Contest Winners

Relief Journal announced the winner of the Daily Sacrament contest. Don Hosel was the winner and fellow Misfit Angie Poole was the runner up. Both stories will be published in issue three of Relief which you can order by clicking on the picture to the right. Having read Angie's terrific story I knew it had a great chance to be in contention. I'm looking forward to reading Don's story. I liked his story last year for the Faith in Fiction conversion contest.

Congratulations to you both.

Charlie the Conehead

This is our dog Charlie with his conehead. He got it off Friday and was very happy. However the vet was not so happy with him. He had dislodged the drain that was supposed to be in his ear. It was sutured in and somehow Charlie had gotten it out, despite the cone. It seems like ripping out something that was sewn it would be painful. But he doesn't look too unhappy, does he?

This was Charlie's second surgery on his ears. Part of the problem is because he's a lab and they have floppy ears so the air doesn't get in there and dry things out. But Charlie is worse because he has allergies. He's allergic to everything. He has to have a special pet food with no animal protein in it. No dog bones for him. He gets apples and pears and ice cubes to chew on. When Charlie's allergies act up he scratches and rubs his ears in the lawn, thus creating hematomas (giant bruises) and getting cuts and dirt and debris in there. So I have to bathe him weekly and clean his ears out twice a week, plus put in antibiotics. This last time, his hemotoma got big enough he had to have it surgically removed. Except that he had too much scar tissue from the last surgery so the doctor could only put in the drain to siphon off the fluid. Which Charlie managed to take out somehow.

This picture might give you an idea of how he does that. He runs across the lawn and dives head first into the grass, twisting until his ears hit the grass and he forces the cone back. He went through two cones in three weeks, both of which I ended up duct taping to hold them together.

It's a good thing he's cute. And happy.

Long Time No Post

Sorry I've been letting my blog get dusty. I was trying to get my entry done for the Genesis contest of ACFW.

Also, our dog, Charlie, had surgery on his ear and has a conehead now. I should post some pictures of him.

And I got my Mac almost fully restored. I was so happy to get my pictures back, especially the ones from our trip to Chicago and Indiana.

I particularly liked this picture I took of leaves frozen in Michelle's pond.

Finally, when I converted my blog to the new Blogger version, it lost one of my RSS feeds. The one with the most subscribers. So, if you were one of them, you'll need to resubscribe to the other feed.

I'll try to be a better blogger, but no promises.

Ah, a Good April 1 Press Release

Google announced via press release new, self-installed, plumbing-based Internet access called Dark Porcelain. Hey, it can't be any worse than my DSL.

I think that's going up there as one of my favorites, along with the Liberty Taco Bell.

Credit to Mir for the link.

Happy April Fools!

While I’d love to play some sort of April Fool’s Joke on you all, I don’t have the brain power. However, if someone has a good one to relate, from this year or years past, please tell us about it in the comment.

I did get my Mac back. It now has a new hard drive. And I have the arduous task of sticking all the stuff back on it. But I’ve been busy with a couple of writing projects, namely a novella proposal I was asked to be part of and getting one of my novels ready for the Genesis. And since the restore process is time consuming and doesn’t allow any other applications to be open while it’s running, I have to wait until I’m not working on something to start restoring. Sigh.

On another topic, I ran across this article by Neil Gaiman in my RWA eNotes. In it he talks about the question he gets asked the most: where do your ideas come from? It’s a great short discussion on the creative process and makes the point that ideas aren’t really what make a book. Something writers get but normals don’t.

Also I was gratified to see he had the same experience in his child’s classroom that I did in my daughter’s last year.

But then there was this awesome quote near the end of the article.

My idea of hell is a blank sheet of paper. Or a blank screen. And me, staring at it, unable to think of a single thing worth saying, a single character that people could believe in, a single story that hasn't been told before.

Staring at a blank sheet of paper.

Forever.

Reminds me of Mike Snyder’s post at the Master’s Artist last Thursday.

Which was kind of timely for me because for the novella project I was given a location, a date, and a character. That was it. And I had two weeks to come up with a synopsis and a first chapter. It was a new experience for me. And because I like to plan and plot before I write, it was pretty scary to just write. But I came to the same conclusion Gaiman did: the ideas are there and I don't have to worry about running out of them. That was pretty freeing.

Angie at Infuze

Fellow Misfit Angie Poole has her story, "A Stone's Throw" up at Infuze. It's a great example of her pink collar drama. I just love her voice. So go read it; you'll be glad you did.

Update on the Mac:
Still not working. I did recover and backup all my files but I still have some corruption on the hard drive. Trying to determine exactly what it is before I call Apple. AGAIN. Sigh.

Day Eight and Nine

UPDATE: This was supposed to post Sunday. However, my Mac died. I think it's the hard drive. I ran some diagnostic tests and tried to repair it myself today to no avail. Luckily it's still under warranty and I have automatic backups. Unluckily, I'm without my pacifier and going through withdrawals. I'm having to try to access everything from the PC at home, which is where this post is coming from. I'll let you know more after I talk to Apple tomorrow.

***

Since I was done with writing for a while, I spent Friday updating my blog. Blogger forced me to a new template so I had some difficulty figuring out how to get it back to the customization I had done before. Then I added a few things. So that took a big chunk of time.

Then I decided to get a MySpace page. With Michelle walking me through it I was able to get it up pretty quickly.

On Saturday, we had been invited to a theatre fundraiser by Michelle’s friend, Kim. Kim sells clothes, jewelry, and makeup and has a great eye for putting outfits together. Since the event was formal, she dressed and bedecked Michelle and I with jewelry. She even lent Mich her mink coat.

On the way to the theatre we drove by a field filled with deer. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t seen deer since I was at Yosemite. Well, there was a dead one on the road to Kokomo that someone had hit, but that doesn’t really count.

The evening began with silent auction. Michelle had put together a basket of books donated by ACFW authors. It ended up brining in $105. Then we had a really nice dinner and watched a shortened version of Guys and Dolls.


Because it was such a late evening, we were hungry again on the drive home, so I requested a stop at White Castle. I’ve had frozen White Castle burgers from Costco but never the real thing. In fact, until I saw Wayne’s World, I never knew it was an actual place. So we go tromping inside in our formal dresses and Mich’s mink to eat at White Castle. Kim shared her White Castle experiences from college. We went back to Kim’s house to return the clothes and jewelry then drove another back to Mich’s house where we arrived at 2:30 AM. It was a great night.

Our flight leaves tomorrow at 8 AM so we have to be up EARLY! It’s been a great trip and we can’t wait to come back and visit again. The only thing the kids missed was actually seeing the snow falling.

Day Five, Six and Seven

Well Sabrina kinda outted us in her comment on Day Two. Wednesday Mich and I had planned to drive down to Kokomo to meet Sabrina and Cara Putman for lunch.

The day before, Mich’s dog, Molly, had scratched Mich’s eye with her claw. So Phil took Mich to the doctor’s where they spent most of the day. Mich got a contact bandage and some drops to put in. It was one of the worst kinds of scratches you can get on your eye. So she had a follow up appointment Wednesday morning.

She got back and we left. Between getting stuck behind some slow drivers and having to ask to find where the Cracker Barrel was, we were about a half hour late. We thought.

I should make another disclaimer here. I’ve lived in two time zones: Pacific and Mountain. In Arizona, we don’t even change our clocks for Daylight Savings. So I don’t know about time zones out here. But apparently Mich lives in Central and Kokomo is in Eastern. So we were actually an hour and a half late. And we hadn’t exchanged phone numbers. Sigh..

So Cara had to leave by the time we got there and Sabrina was nice enough to stay and visit for another hour. Poor woman, she’d spent her whole afternoon there! But it was great to visit and catch up with her.

On the way home we let the kids run around McDonald’s playplace for a while to burn off energy before driving home in a rainstorm.

Yesterday, Mich and I finished the final polish on our Relief Daily Sacrament contest stories and submitted them. I happened to double check mine after I’d uploaded it and it looked like total gibberish. Considering I’d been having trouble with Firefox uploading files to my Yahoo groups, I assumed that was the problem. And it was. I switched to Safari, uploaded it, and it looked fine. But it was a little stressful there for a moment. I should learn to not play so close to the deadline. Which I think I’ve said before.

I don’t know what we’re going to do today. But I know what we’re NOT going to do: write.

Day Three and Four

Since Michelle doesn’t have enough money to buy me off and there’s nothing that I want to blackmail her for, the story of our trip to Chicago will end with the beginning.

Let me just say this. I like to plan. If I’m going some place new I like maps and schedules and all the information I can get. I actually had all that stuff for Chicago, but I left it at the house because I trusted Michelle. That was my first mistake. Kidding! But really, I was just having a good time and not really paying attention where we needed to be and when. I figured Mich would keep track of all of that. However, Mich only got three hours of sleep the night before.

We got off the train at 9 PM. There are two cars in the parking lot, neither of which were Michelle’s. We got off at the wrong stop. One stop PAST our stop. And no trains going back that direction.

So it’s dark. And there’s nothing around but a small gas station. Luckily, it has a mini-mart inside where we got something to drink and a place to wait outside.

We could walk 4 miles in the dark on a two-lane road to the station where our car was at, with three tired kids. Or call a cab. Or call Phil but he’d take at least an hour to get to us.

Luckily, Mich has a friend who lives about 20 minutes from the station. She came and took us to the station. Mich was able to talk to the lady at the mini-mart and get directions. She also told us that people get off at this stop by mistake all the time. So Mich’s friend came and got us, took us to our car and then we had another hour drive home. But we talked writing and stuff, like we have been all weekend while the kids slept.

So, back to the beginning. I forgot to mention that yesterday, even though it was upper 40s, Mich and I sat outside on her porch and wrote. With my heavy coat, my warm laptop, and a blanket on my legs, I was pretty cozy. Of course our being outside was necessitated by Calvin’s attempt to walk on their not-totally-frozen-solid pond.

Today we went to Chicago (okay, it’s yesterday now). I’ve never been. Then again, I’ve never been anywhere. We took the train in, which was also a new experience, and hit the Starbucks in the train station. Mich and I were critiquing some Misfit stuff on the train.

When then took the bus (going the wrong way at first) to Navy Pier where we spent the day at the Children’s Museum.












We also walked the length of the pier and visited the stained glass museum. Apparently at the turn of the century (19th to 20th) Chicago was quite the place for art glass. We saw some beautiful examples.

It was pretty comfortable temp wise. It was drizzling in the morning, but soon turned sunny with a light breeze. I wasn’t cold once.

Mich and I are also teaching our children our rule breaking tendency. They were doing an elevated net/rope course when two of them turned and started coming back. We waved at them to continue on when we heard a chorus of “we’re not allowed!” Huh? We’d sent them through the exit.

Later on the way home we were trying to find the train station. We found the El stations and the bus stops, but we couldn’t find the entrance to the train station. Turns out we walked past it three times, once going a couple of blocks out of our way. I think we were talking. Then we proceeded down the stairs, en masse, on the wrong side. Irritating hurried commuters, I’m sure.

Actually, everyone we met was really nice to us. We were hurrying to make our train, after another stop at the bathroom and Starbucks, only to find every car was full we were going to have to sit apart. Several people changed seats so we were each able to sit with our kids. We found out that even though we got on the train at 7:10 PM, this was actually the 6:08 train. It finally left at 7:30. Because it was running so late, we got to ride for free. Let’s just say I was glad to have my venti chai latte. Especially given what came later.

More tomorrow after we’ve recovered.

Day Two

When we got in the car yesterday Sissy asked, “What station is this? What kind of music is this?” Yes, Mich is making me listen to country music. I don’t think my kids have ever heard it.

The kids got to play in what was left of the snow today. They had fun tossing it at each other. Calvin tried his hand at reverse snow-shoveling. He was tossing it from the yard onto the porch. He also thought shoes were optional.

We went walking in the woods. The Pendergrasses have 15 acres. Calvin came home with the bone of some animal. He was quite thrilled.

Mich and I also spent time brainstorming and editing our stories for the Relief/FiF contest. I think we’ve made some progress.

More tomorrow . . .

We're Here

The kids and I are spending Spring Break with Michelle and her family. This should be an adventure. I’ve rarely been outside of California and Arizona. They live in Indiana. Where they get snow. And it’s cold.

So we’re flying in and I have to laugh. As gray and brown and overcast as it is, it could almost be San Bernardino, California in the summer when I was growing up. The grasses on the foothills would be brown and dead from the heat and the smog hung over and obscured the mountains. Other than the temperatures, the scenes were eerily similar.

One thing I noticed is that the raindrops seem smaller here. Twice we’ve walked outside, I’ve noticed the ground was wet, but I couldn’t feel any rain. I’m wondering if all the dust in the desert air makes the raindrops bigger.

The other thing is how much more hydrated my skin feels. My hands were dry and flaky when I was on the plane and all ready they are feeling softer. So, beauty tip for the day: move somewhere where it rains. Or there’s actual moisture in the air. So it doesn’t get sucked out of your skin.

When we got to Michelle’s house there were still patches of snow on the ground. My kids have never seen snow, so first thing out of the car they make a beeline for the nearest patch. Sissy just touches it (“Wow! It’s cold!”) but Calvin has to go jump in it (“It feels like ice!”). He walks in snow up to his ankles from the car to the house, big grin on his face.

It’s raining tonight, so I don’t know if there’ll be any snow left by morning for them to play in.

More updates tomorrow.

And you might want to check out Michelle’s blog to get her version of events.