Bring on the Weekend

My going away party is tomorrow night!! I can't believe how fast time is flying by this month. One of my friends from DC is going to be in town this weekend too, so she's going to be there and I'm so excited to see her. The last time we hung out was at my sister's wedding back in November. I also might have good news about the place the hubby and I are looking to rent. Since the lease isn't signed yet, it's not set in stone so I don't want to jinx it, but the realtor emailed me this morning and told me it was a basically a done deal. She's just waiting to hear back about whether they'll accept our dog or not. I really hope they do but if they don't, our in-laws will keep her for a year. She'll probably like it over there better anyway. Their dog and ours have become BFF over the past 6 months. I'm kinda afraid she'll mutiny if we take her away ;)


What are your plans for the weekend?

Monday Already?

I went to bed last night @ 9 and woke up at 7 today. Still can't believe I slept 10 freaking hours. Can't remember the last time I've done that except maybe when I was in college. I feel wildly refreshed today and plan to get in a ton of editing and hopefully some new writing as well. On Saturday my mom and I packed up almost my entire kitchen (yay!) so I'm eating off paper plates and drinking out of plastic cups for a couple weeks. The reduced clean up is actually kinda nice. I also saw The Back Up Plan starring Jennifer Lopez this weekend with my sister. Both our SO's can't stand her but we love her both as a singer and actress and I really enjoyed the movie. There was more depth to it than I expected and it was woven in slowly w/out banging the viewers over the head with it. It annoys me when movies feel the need to over explain things. Like in the movie I Am Legend (which I really enjoyed too), when the main character explained why him and his wife had named their daughter Marley and the history of Bob Marley etc. It was unnecessary dialogue and made me groan a little.

Okay, I'm off to get some much needed editing done. What are you up to today?

The Search Continues...

When people don't post pictures online of homes they're renting, there's a reason for it. Lesson learned for the day! The hubby is out looking at a few places today in the hopes we'll find a place to rent asap. I recommended a few places I'd found online b/c of their locations and descriptions but apparently the ones w/out photos are holes. So now we're only looking at places w/ pictures :) As I type this, he's looking at a place right now! I'm very hopeful about this one but trying not to get my hopes up b/c they've already been dashed twice this morning. I did sell one of our microfiber chairs this morning and have had a few emails about people wanting to buy our kitchen table/chairs. We have so much stuff we've accumulated over the years and a few pieces we won't need and will be too big anyway since we'll likely be relocating to a smaller place. It's been wonderful downsizing all this stuff! Gotta love craigslist!


Speaking of craigslist, my mom used it for the first time this year and I'm so proud of her! If you knew my mom, you'd know how much she's admittedly technologically challenged (though she does read my blog daily!). She's also coming over tomorrow to help me pack up my kitchen! (thankfully!)


Have a great weekend everyone! Mine will be filled with boxes, packing tape, and hopefully some really good wine.

Happy Earth Day!

When I was a kid I used to love love love Captain Planet! "Captain Planet, he's our hero, gonna take pollution down to zero..." Oh yeah, I've been singing that song all day after hearing it on the radio so I felt the need to share in the hopes that it will be stuck in your head too ;)


"EARTH! FIRE! WIND! WATER! HEART!"


"Go Planet!"

"By your powers combined, I am Captain Planet!"

Captain Planet, he's our hero
Gonna take pollution down to zero

He's our powers magnified
And he's fighting on the planet's side

Captain Planet, he's our hero
Gonna take pollution down to zero

Gonna help him put asunder
Bad guys who like to loot and plunder

"You'll pay for this Captain Planet!"

We're the Planeteers
You can be one too
'Cause saving our planet is the thing to do!

Looting and polluting is not the way
Hear what Captain Planet has to say!

"The Power is Yours!"

Full lyrics taken from here.


Happy Earth Day everyone!

Waxing and Writing

What do waxing and writing have in common? Stop by Writers Gone Wild to find out.

It's Official!

It's official, I'll be moving in less than a month! We found the perfect renters for our house and now we just have to find a place to rent. If we don't, I'm going to be homeless come mid-May. I don't care if it's perfect as long as it has A/C and Internet capability. Though I am partial to anything with hardwood/laminate floors. Even before we bought our place the house we rented right after we got married was this really cute house with real hardwood floors. It was built in the 1920's, it didn't stay warm in the winter, and I'm convinced it was haunted but I loved that little house.


I started packing up more books last night but found an old school Linda Howard (Heartbreaker) and ended up abandoning boxes and packing tape in favor of reading. I swear, her stuff doesn't get old. I've got plenty of time to pack anyway ;) I've enlisted my mom's help in packing up the kitchen next weekend so I'm sure we'll knock that out fairly quickly. She's a packing pro and super organized in everything she does.


Over the weekend I went to see the movie Date Night w/ my friend Jax (who's also a writer) and when the 'turning point' in the movie happened I automatically leaned over and said 'and that's the inciting incident'. It was the first time in a while that someone didn't stare at me like I was weird. Sometimes I say stuff like that to my other friends or family w/out thinking and get an odd stare. The hubby is used to it though so I don't censor myself with him, lol. I also realized that I'm at the halfway point in my current WIP. Now I just need to kick it up a notch. I'd like to finish or at least get within 10K of finishing by the time we move.


What did everyone else do this weekend?

When It Rains, It Pours...

And right now, that's a good thing. We officially took our house off the market as a sale and put it up to rent. It went up Sunday and we've already had three showings (or maybe four) and my realtor is bringing three more people by today. I know one person has already put in an application and one of the viewers today is someone who's seen it once before. I think she wants to show it to her sister or something. I'm trying not to get ahead of myself, but things are looking up! Our house is near downtown and it's in a really good school district so I knew we'd have interest, just didn't realize it would be so quick. I've already packed up quite a bit, but last night I decided to pack up some more books. Right now, half my boxes are labeled books and I've already donated a ton of them to friends, the library, and Monica at 'The Bibliophilic Book Blog'. I discovered her through another blog not long ago. If you don't know who she is, check out her 'Reading at War' blog here and see if you can contribute. She sends romance books to the women in her unit overseas and that's pretty effing awesome.


I also found a bunch of books from my husband's high school library. I don't know if I should be impressed or disturbed that he stole copies of Robert Frost's poetry. Either way, those books aren't moving with us. They're going to the library! Frost totally creeps me out *shudder*. I'm also saying goodbye to the two huge volumes of 'Norton's Anthology of English Literature' from one of my college English classes. They've moved w/ me to two houses and it's time to say goodbye.


So, in a month, or even a couple weeks, depending on things, I could be on my way up north. When I tell people I'm moving up north they assume I mean, north north, but in reality, I guess I'm moving to the South. But, when you live in Florida, everything is north, even the South. I've been checking out some cute places near the coast and I'm just waiting to hear back from some of the realty companies I've contacted. Updates will hopefully follow soon!


I know I've been scarce lately and I apologize for my lack of blogging, but soon I'll be back into a schedule. I have been reading a lot of your blogs, just not commenting as much. That'll change soon, I promise :) Have a great weekend!

Monday Already

This past weekend flew by so fast I can barely remember what I did! Writing, reading, cleaning, hunting for possible future places to live (once we rent our house), a little packing .... Nothing too exciting to report but last night the ESPAN board met and I realized I totally forgot to blog the upcoming contest we're having!


Is your first paragraph good enough to hook an editor? What about your second, third and fourth? In our contest you will be judged on your opening page, one paragraph at a time. Similar to a first line contest you will enter your first paragraph the first week and, for those who advance, a paragraph a week, until we have 10 finalists with a full four paragraphs (or 250 words – see rules for how we’ll allow dialogue to be counted as paragraphs). Those finalists will be judged by three of the finest editors in the epublishing industry: Angela James (Carina Press), Raelene Gorlinsky (Ellora’s Cave/Cerridwen), Laurie M. Rauch (Samhain).


For the full contest details and information on how to enter, visit: http://espan-rwa.com/contest/


Contest opens this Friday, April 16th!

After the holiday weekend...

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend! Thankfully my boss let us have Friday off so I had a lovely, unexpected longer weekend! On Saturday I met w/ some writer buddies of mine and actually got some writing done, lol. Mainly we just chatted but when we did a timed write I got about 750 words down in addition to the 2K I'd written that morning at home. So, overall not so bad. And yesterday I knocked out close to 4K so I'm feeling quite accomplished. Hopefully this week will be just as productive.

Wish I had some writing news but I'm still playing the waiting game. I guess no news is better than bad news. And in life updates, I'm meeting w/ my realtor this week and we're thinking about taking our house off the market as a sale and trying to rent it. If we can hold onto it for a couple years and rent, then hopefully the market will swing back up and we won't take such a wash when/if we finally do sell. The plus side of that is I'll finally get to move up north and join my hubby :)

How was the Easter weekend for everyone else?

All Fools Day

It doesn't matter that it's the 1st of April, it's billing day at my office and if anyone messes w/ the boss (my dad), there will be a smackdown. So my sister and I are flying under the radar today! I don't really get the whole April Fools day thing anyway, probably because I'm not big into pranks. This is more of a holiday for kids under the age of 12. Even as a kid I don't remember doing anything particularly crazy. I think maybe my sister and I added green food coloring to the milk once and it looked so nasty even we wouldn't drink it. Not sure if that was even for April Fools Day or just something we did for fun.

I guess I'm more of a St. Patrick's Day kinda gal. Now that's my holiday! Green beer? Yes please. Anyone else celebrate All Fools Day? Or have any fun stories from this holiday?

Like this picture? It made me giggle when I saw it. Thank the fabulous Kristen Painter for the inspiration and check out her blog post today. I know I certainly wouldn't want to mess with her on this day cuz I'm no fool! ;)