Retrospective Introspective

1) One of my wonderful friends gave me an Amazon gift card for my birthday. I have no idea what to spend it on! I have some books I want to read but I'm trying to not amass any more books and go to the library instead. We don't really buy DVDs anymore. I haven't bought new music in ages so I wouldn't know what to get (even though we listen to the Indie channel on Sirius). All I can think of to buy is stuff for Reese!


2) We have a 5-gallon jug we are saving coins in. Right now it's about 3/8 full.
a) And we don't know what we're saving up for. Ideas?
b) Should we save until a certain date, or until it is full? I'm guessing it is going to be a l-o-n-g time before it is full, maybe another year or more.

I'm getting my hairs cut in a couple hours and I still have no idea what I want to do with it.

Blah.

Any other Mac users having problems with Firefox? In the last day or so it has started shutting down unexpectedly, and it doesn't seem to be tied to anything I'm doing.

Do not try Skittles Chocolate.


Crispy Mint M&Ms, however, are awesome.


That is all.

Artist friends (and those who may know)!

On average, approximately how much would it cost to get a logo designed for a website? In a few months I'm going to need a cartoon-style dinosaur logo and I'm trying to figure out what my budget will be.

Also, if you know anyone who might be interested, let me know!

I got home from caucusing at 12:15 this morning.

More later!

How can I get my writing mojo back?

It has been very hard (almost physically painful) to write for almost a year now. I'm getting very discouraged, especially since I do have lots of ideas for writing and I do know where I want to go in my current story. I just can't seem to pull the words out.

Help!

Tomorrow is a big day. Voting early and often. OK, actually casting my ballot before work, and then going to caucus after the polls close. I've never been to a caucus event before but I'm interested in learning about it.

Surprisingly we only got one thing at our house about the election (an Obama flyer on the door reminding us tomorrow was voting day, as though anyone around here could forget), and no calls, since we don't have a land line. I have, however, seen Hillary Clinton's "3 a.m." ad about a thousand times since it came out on Friday. I'll be glad to not see the ads anymore, even though I think most of Obama's ads were well done. This evening there was one where he says he won't be a perfect president. I like that he comes right out and says that.

I do regret that I never was able to attend one of the rallies. It's just impossible with a little one, especially since a crowd of 10,000 really isn't a great place to take him.

I do hope that it will all be over tomorrow.

And also, tomorrow is National Grammar Day! Go forth and speak and write well!

We went to the farmer's market today! I'm so glad we went right when it opened, because there was so much more to choose from. Last time we went it was around 11 and there wasn't much. Of course, they might also just have more booths now!

One thing I like about the market is that you can actually spend all morning there, if you want to. They have booths with coffee and tea, multiple places for pastries, plus places with stuff like pizza, spanikopita, tacos, kettle corn, who knows what else. And there is a little area where various people play music, and a section for kids.

Anyway, we bought: carrots, broccoli, lettuce, red and white onions, wheat bread, serrano bread, orange cinnamon coffee cake, hot garlic pickles, bison jerky sausage, and strawberry jalepeno jam. I also wanted to get some eggs, but we were going to get breakfast afterward (Maria's Taco Xpress! Yum!) and didn't think the eggs would be OK sitting in the car. Next time!

Later on I'm going to make a post to my blog about the chocolate-covered strawberry cupcakes. I'd like to be able to perfect the recipe before posting it, but I don't think that is going to happen. It's a bit time- and resource-consuming to keep making them over and over. Plus it's not like I mind having cupcakes in the house, but it's not exactly the best idea. And I figure you guys can help me figure out why the things won't rise!

Finally, is anyone on goodreads? I just made an account there and would like to add people, so if you're on there let me know!

Tonight I am restarting my NaNo 2007 story, which I only managed about 4,000 words on.

I think my main problem with writing lately has been that I am focusing too much on what I want the story to be, rather than just letting it be what it is and edit later. And I need to write more often. Now that Reese is going to bed around 7, I'm able to put in at least an hour a night - and I need to hold myself to it.

My goals for the year are to have a short story to enter into the Austin Chronicle contest, and have a good draft of the story I'm working on now done and sent out to agents.

Only 400 words in I've made some large changes to the story. MC is now Abby instead of Agatha, and her parents are no longer divorced. It's interesting that single-parent families seem to be the norm in books now.

I still can't decide on first- or third-person. I don't think I'm particularly good with dialogue-heavy stories, so third-person (which I'm currently using) will make things interesting.

I need a word widget.

I still have four quarts of strawberries from picking last spring, and I finally decided what to do with them: chocolate-covered strawberry cupcakes! Strawberry cupcakes with dark chocolate frosting. Yum. I'm really excited to make them but I'm waiting until Wednesday so I can bring them in to work on Valentine's Day.

I've been compiling a list of cupcake flavors to make. Some of them I have no idea how I'm going to do, but they sound yummy in my head!

Dulce de leche
Pomegranate
Banana split
Apple cider
Green tea
Mocha
Cinnamon bun
Vanilla bean
Raspberry-lemon
Peanut butter cup
PB&J
In Soviet Russia, Cupcake Eats You! (chocolate vodka)

Anyone have ideas for other flavors I should make?

My shiny new iPod nano arrived on Friday, along with the Nike+ accessories. I'm challenging myself to run 100 miles this year, which isn't actually that much until you realize that I'm barely even a walker at this point, much less a runner. But I'm very optimistic about it, and spending the money on the gadgets should help.

Does anyone have podcast recommendations? Right now I only have This American Life.

I'm also suddenly optimistic and excited about writing again. I'm not really sure how that happened, but my return to work has pumped me full of new life, it seems. I currently have five story ideas to work on, and Tuesday I plan to spend the evening hashing things out and deciding what to work on first. I have until December to finish a short story to enter in the Austin Chronicle contest, but I want to have more done before then, and something really polished to enter.

I also have to work on my website again, since it is horribly out of date. It's hard to keep up with all of that stuff. I'll just have to work on it in little chunks at a time.

Happy New Year!

2007 was so busy for us: going to Paris, buying a house, having a baby. Hopefully 2008 will be nice and chill in comparison. There will be lots of trips probably, as my high school reunion is this year, we're long overdue for a visit to relatives in Atlanta, and we'll probably be disowned if we don't bring the little guy up to Minnesota soon.

My resolutions:

1) Pay off at least 1/4 of our credit card debt. Hopefully that won't be too hard but we're not sure how well our budget is going to work with day care. My job pays fairly well so it is worth it to go back to work, but I think the first few months will be hard as we adjust.

2) Figure out my goals as a writer. I don't seem to have too much drive to get published, so I need to decide what I'm aiming for when I sit down and write, especially because I want to write but have been having problems in that area.

3) Practice more with my camera, learning the settings. I almost always use manual mode, but I don't mess much with f-stop. I should take time to try the other modes and play with it more, which means taking photos of more things than Reese.

4) Make sure to take time for myself to do things for me. I want to get out of the house more without the guys or having the trip be just a quick run to the store. I need some time to just curl up with a book somewhere - when you spend 24/7 with a baby your brain starts to turn to mush.

And finally, I can publicly say congratulations to wylderwolf, who got engaged to his girlfriend last night!

This guy kind of looks like my dad, if my dad had a long white beard.

I dunno if we're going to do the "believe in Santa" thing, but I thought it would be nice to have a picture for one year, anyway.

damn... I'm playing four games of scrabulous on facebook right now, and on one game my letters are

U Z V F D Q N


geez.

Anyone have ideas for a white elephant gift? The only criteria we were giving was "the funnier the better". I'm thinking some cheesy knickknack from Marshall's but I don't know.

Anyone know anything about printers? Specifically, photo printers? Mine has started printing photos a lot darker than they actually are, and as I've only noticed it since I've been on the MacBook, I don't know if it is the printer or the Mac.

Thoughts on how to fix? It's a Canon Pixma 4000, if that matters.

this weekend I worked on clearing out my clothes. packed up my maternity clothes (woo!) except for a couple t-shirts. unpacked my cold-weather clothes. sorted through it all and I now have three paper bags of clothes and six pairs of shoes to take to goodwill. a lot of my shirts don't fit anymore due to breastfeeding, and since I'm going to be doing that for a while I might as well get rid of stuff I can't wear! now i just need to go through my underthings, and any other random thing that might be gathering dust around here. I love purging.

I try to get so much done on the weekends, probably because I spend so much time during the week just hanging with Reese doing not much of anything but feeding, changing, holding, or trying to get him to stop crying. lately he has taken to crying in his sleep and then it turns into a full-on scream as he wakes. needless to say I have not made any progress on nano.

plus, I'm starting to think I have a food intolerance or allergy. whee!

For some reason I only got like two of the comments from the last post ... so I just saw all the others! Thanks everyone! :D

There are the beginnings of a photo set over here. The grandparents Myers arrived today so I'm sure there will be more photos coming soon, maybe a family portrait (things were going so fast that we didn't have time to rescue my camera from the car, and I look awful in the phone pic we were able to take).

Also I'm planning on posting the whole birth story in my other journal, for those who are interested. I just need to have the time!

But, right now Reese is napping so I should nap too.

I have no idea what is going on with anyone outside of our house, so let me know if there is something I've missed!

Reese Alexander Myers
8:10 p.m., October 15
7lbs, 8 oz, 20 inches

Labor was about 9 hours and NO MEDS!

Now we try to rest.