I'm on my way

Back to the Twin Cities in the next hour or two. I didn't get a thing done this weekend it terms of work for Hamline classes. That's all plane work and Sunday night work. Oy. I'll leave you with more pictures of the work I did get done this weekend. Just because it rocks.

Thought I'd try posting this

Skinny Bitch: A No-Nonsense, Tough-Love Guide for Savvy Girls Who Want to Stop Eating Crap and Start Looking Fabulous by Rory Freedman

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a rather funny wake up call so far. Look forward to reading more as time goes on!


View all my reviews.

More of my work today

Totally not finished because I still need to add captions and birthdays and figure out who the hell these people are, but that's the basic layout. I'm quite pleased so far.

This is what I do when I'm at home...

I thought I'd give you some idea of what my scrapbooking and history-preserving efforts turn out to be. I started some more, which I'll post soon. This first one is a collage I did for my grandmother's 90th birthday. She passed away a few months later. These things really don't photograph well.

One of the scrapbooking efforts I did today, not finished, but a work in progress:

Still at home....

Trying to drum up some entertainment until I meet up with friends tomorrow. (All friends seem to be involved in some type of Black Friday activity, be it shopping or selling.) I think I'm going to head down to Micheal's Craft Store (hoping it's not too crowded) and browse the selection of photo albums and photo organizers and try to make some sense out of grandma's photos. Might make a stop at Starbucks too, a peppermint hot chocolate sounds awfully good to me right now, so we'll just see about that today. I don't have any exciting photos or pictures to share, so I'll just save that for another day. I don't even know how I feel about blogging today and telling the world that I exist. I want to, but then again, it just seems so, well, vain. Thoughts?

I have nothing to share

Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers. I feel the need for a profound post here, but have nothing to say. I don't even feel like looking for a hulu.com or YouTube video to post. So I will just say there are many many things to be thankful for this year and end it at that. I am reading a really intriguing book though. Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone is fantastic, so I will probably go back to reading that soon. Sorry for being so, well, boring.

How do you know you are a broke late-twentysomething?

It's Friday night. You are curled up with a book and a laptop on your mattress on the floor of the room you share with an early twenty-something who is out at a concert. It is your idea of heaven to have the room to yourself for at least two hours. You also happen to be sipping hot chocolate from a used salsa jar because you are too lazy to wash any of the three coffee mugs in your house. That jar of hot chocolate also happens to be your dinner. And it is fabulous. Aren't you jealous?

Rethinking Radio

If you haven't already (and I'm sure you have because I'm hopelessly behind on all things technology) you need to check out Pandora.com. Put in a couple of artists and songs you really like, and the site (affiliated with the Music Genome Project) will design a radio station just for you, playing only songs you like. If you don't like a song they chose, you can tell it so and it will revise your radio station. Seriously the best thing ever and I've been having a a pretty good time playing around with it. It's great for discovering new music and having access to the music you know and love. Check it out!

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This week on TV

It's after five am.
I'm awake. Which means I'm watching and posting episodes of the office.
I love my life.
I love the office.
I love NBC.com.
I love hulu.com.
My life can't get much more fabulous than this. WooHoo. AmeriCorps to Teaching Temp to Associate Educator with Minneapolis Public Schools.

You need to watch this weeks OFFICE. Period. End of Story.

Enough Said.

Life.
Amazing.
Damian Lewis.
Hot Redhead.
Enough Said.

Ghostly Relationships

I'm thinking a lot about sixth grade and relationships. In two entirely different contexts. And this is what comes to mind. Remember this? It was about sixth grade that I watched this scene in total awe, thinking I want this to happen to me and this song rocks! Why can't a boy appear out of no where and pretend to show an interest in me when no one else does? And of course, that's none other than Devon Sawa, preteen heartthrob of the nineties. That's right bit&*#@! I said NINETIES!!! Eat my dirt I'm old.

Easy Fixings

To avoid getting absurd tickets from the City of Minneapolis, I had my roommates help me attach this plate to the front of the car. Yes, that's string. Yes, it's stayed in place for two months now. Go roommates. Getting things done for America. Or at least the recycled art guru's bank account and parking ticket record.

More photos!

More photos from my wonderful city, mostly taken from my outings with my kids at work, but another reason why I love my city in the fall. It's getting cold here, so I won't be outside for much longer. Enjoy it now!

Picture time!

Loring Park, Minneapolis MN
Why I love fall in my city

This hit close to home tonight

I'm browsing PostSecret, as per usual on a Saturday night/early Sunday morning and I stumble upon this postcard that hits maybe a bit too close to home. After all, it wasn't too much longer than a year ago that I decided to completely move to a city for the same reasons. I wanted to be anonymous. I wanted no one to know me. I wanted to start clean and have no one realize who I was. For reasons that I realize now and that I'll elaborate on later, that didn't work. I'm OK with that. I realize that I am who I am and I just want to make myself better. I didn't fresh start, but I started better. I'm still working on improving. I'll keep you posted. I'll update with more details later. I'm exhausted and my roommate just returned.

Hulu how I love thee, let me count the ways

This is pretty funny, or as funny as the new SNL can be. Just thought I'd share with my lovely readers.

My first task

For my new LANG 7802 Class at Hamline is to find a book that I have a text-to-self or text-to-world connection with. Do you think I'm being treated like a child? Input welcome. I mean, as much as I love diving into the world of children's literature again, part of me wants to scream "QUIT TREATING ME LIKE A THIRD GRADER!" I'll let you know what I come up with in terms of a "connection book" or whatever they want me to call it.

Shamless Plug

In case you're wondering where I've been spending my time online in the past week, it's here: Bookmooch.com. The site is an awesome book trade site that I discovered in my favorite monthly magazine, Skirt! The site is a book exchange site, and it's free to join and trade, as long as you pay the postage of the books you are sending to other people. You gain points by giving away books, and can use those points to mooch books from other people. The inventory is solid, and usually in good condition. I've yet to receive a book from someone, but that's only because I just started mootching at the beginning of the week. I'll keep readers posted. Just wanted to let you know of another resource for book swapping, and let you know of another reason why the internet is amazing.

Practical Matters

Yes it's me. I'm posting again. Trying to avoid what? Oh nevermind. You know what I'm trying to avoid. I just thought I'd drop you a note to say how annoyed I am with Tires Plus. They are such a corporate money-grubbing chain. Not that there is anything wrong with corporate America, per se, but I was just highly annoyed that I went to them in desperate need of two tires today, and end up spending $430 four tires. I'm a little annoyed at myself, and a little annoyed at the fact that the guys there saw a female who didn't have a choice in where she went becuase her car was undriveable and began to give me their sales pitch.

I don't give a rat's behind what your tires are. I just just need new tires. I can't drive to Wal-Mart or the Sears at the Mall of America because, oh yeah, that's right, my tires are torn to shreds and FLAT. I created an account with them because I didn't have a choice in how I was going to pay, but you better believe I will be paying off this in full each month and closing my account as soon as I can. I just hate sales pitches, and I hate inconveniences. It's also a lesson to keep your car in good working maintenance. I guarantee if I had this done (tires rotated, aligned, changed) before now I wouldn't have had to change all at once. I did it because it's a safety hazard, and I don't want to be another statistic on a highway.

I just wish I didn't feel a little taken advantage of. They even told me that my struts were "severely worn" in an attempt to get another $560 from my wallet. I have news for you. I don't have another $560 to my name right now. Sorry dudes. I think I will go get my car inspected from a friendlier, non-pushy, non-flirty mechanic in another neighborhood. Don't try to pick me up. Don't be a creep. And don't tell me my car is fucked up. It's fine. It just needs new tires. I'm so annoyed. You happened to be close to my house today, but you aren't going near my car again.

Anyone know a good mechanic?

A Blast from the Past, take IV

In a recent conversation with a housemate at a Halloween Party, I came to the realization that I am quite a bit older than the majority of my housemates.

Me: Clever costume, I love foxes!
PumpkinMaster Housemate: Thanks! It's all vintage and completely under $3.
Me: Great. You know, the more I look at it, the more it reminds me of the fox from Zoobilee Zoo. What's his name? Oh...Bravo! That's it! Bravo the Fox!
PumpkinMaster Housemate: (stares blankly) Uh...who's that? What's Zoobilee Zoo?

This is when I realized that yes, I must be older than dirt. This girl was a mere junior at Augsburg College, putting her birth year at roughly 1988 or 1989. Yikes! Of course she wouldn't remember such a gem of a show. How silly of me to remember and bring it up in casual convsersation at such a Halloween Party. So, to educate the masses of youngsters out there, I have included a clip. Enjoy.



Who was your favorite character? I was always a fan of the journalistic, scholarly cockateil (though she was rather annoying at second glance) and the leopard at the anchor desk.

Why am I posting again? Oh yeah, because I don't want to work on my NOVEL. Damn it. Back to work. Help.

Noveling Madness

As some of you well know, I have taken on the challenge of writing a novel in a month. As some of you may not know, I am failing miserably. Here it is the third day of November, and I am at 963 words. LOL. If I have to arrive at 50,000 by the end of the month, I have to write 1,667 each day. That should put me at 5,001 by the end of today. Yikes.

I have never had more motivation to organize everything in my wallet, closet, kitchen, or bathroom. I have never had more motivation to NOT WRITE. There is something so daunting about 50,000 words and having them have to make sense. It's a challenge that far exceeds blogging on a regular basis. With blogging, I can make my posts random and incoherent if I wish to. If I want to do that in NaNo, I will have a harder and harder time turning it into something. Maybe I shouldn't worry about that. Maybe I should just write. Right now, I've started with something autobiographical, hoping to turn it into a chick-lit story of four girls facing the real world. I've started categorizing chapters around each girl. I have a lot of characterization. I don't have a lot of plot. For those of you who have written a novel, will plot come naturally? If I have all the characters in mind and what I want them to behave as, will plot flow into something interesting and readable as time and word count progress?

It sounds like every other piece of chick-lit novelish drek that's out there already, no? You're probably right in assuming that. But if they can do it and get rich, so can I, right? Anyone else doing NaNo this year? Anyone want to share there advice? Comisserate? Offer motivation? You are welcome to do so here. Calling you, dear readers...especially one in particular...that's YOU: EMMY @ LUCKY BALL CHARMS. Yes, now you can't escape.