Photo Friday: More throwback fun!

January 23, 20151 Comment

Today’s throwback picture goes back to Christmas 2007. It was the first Christmas after my divorce, and Bubbles’ grandparents had invited us to help them pick out their Christmas tree:

lensbreaker

This picture singlehandedly destroyed my camera, the first digital one I’d ever owned. Not thirty seconds after I snapped this picture, I managed to drop the poor camera lens-first on the ice.

*sigh*

Curse you, butterfingers!

I took my Christmas bonus that year and bought another camera, which I subsequently bequeathed to Bubbles a couple of years ago. He’s used it all of twice, if I’m not mistaken. 🙂

Hope you all have a great weekend, and don’t forget to check out Charnele’s blog – she’s got a great post up today. Happy Friday! 🙂

Photo 365 #169

January 23, 2015January 23, 2015Leave a comment

Much to Cricket’s chagrin, Thumper received a package in the mail yesterday. (For the record, Cricket was only annoyed because he didn’t get a package, too.) It was a late Christmas present from his godmother, and he was absolutely ecstatic:

2015-01-22 20.00.42

I’ve seen this before, and somewhere (in my office, I think) I have one of those wall decals that says the same thing. We all love it, and the plan is to get it hung this weekend. Thumper loves it so much that I think he’d have slept with it last night if we’d have let him; he started crying when we wouldn’t let him carry it upstairs.

Photo 365 #168: Revision time

January 22, 2015January 23, 2015Leave a comment

If you haven’t been following me on Twitter the last couple of days, I’m really ramping up my revision of The Price of Mercy.

revision

This was taken a while ago, but I forgot to snap a newer pic of my revisions this noon, so I went trawling through my archives. Some time after I took this, I gave up on marking up my hard copy and decided to go straight into rewrite mode. What that means is that I am literally recopying my hard draft, adding new things and fixing old things as the need arises.

When I started this revision, I’d chopped my book in half. That left me with a starting page count of ~154. The latest page count is 295, which means that I’ve done a heck of a lot of rewriting since I started this project! I still have a heck of a lot more to do, though, and I’m beginning to wonder if a fourth book won’t end up being necessary. Of course, if that’s the case, then I’ll start worrying that I won’t have enough material to fill a fourth book…

Being a writer is…

Photo 365 #167

January 21, 20154 Comments

climbermonkey Last night while I was cooking supper, I shot one of the pictures for yesterday’s post. Bubbles asked why I was taking a picture of toothpaste, so I told him about my photo-a-day-for-a-year project.

“Can you take my picture?” he asked.

I feel like I’ve covered this ground with him here already (Oh, that’s right – I have!), but oh well.

So I told him to do something, and I’d take his picture. He decided he wanted to scale the kitchen doorway. As that’s always entertaining, I told him I was waiting.

His first attempt (and mine) was a total failure. The next one was slightly better, but nearly ended with a smooshed Cricket. His third attempt went better (and Cricket – and Thumper, who refuses to be left out of the fun – got a lecture about not running under Bubbles when he was trying to climb the woodwork), but still sent him sliding back down to the floor. And since all those pictures turned out blurry (either in whole or in part), I’m declining to share, even though Bubbles and I got a pretty good laugh out of them.

At long last, though, he managed to climb to the top of the doorway. I got my picture, he got down, no one got hurt. Yay!

Photo 365 #166: The Dentist

January 20, 2015January 21, 20154 Comments

Too bad I prefer Aquafresh to Crest…

I had a dentist appointment this morning. I hate going to the dentist. He’s very friendly, all his staff are lovely, and I have pretty good teeth. Why, then, should I loathe these visits so much?

The cleanings drive me nuts.

Some people shiver at the sound of a dentist’s drill. I shiver (and cringe and tense up) at the sound of the hygienist scraping the plaque off my teeth. By the time she’s finished, my hands are tired and sore, my shoulders are wrecked, and I have a raging headache.

And that’s with my normal (read: preferred) hygienist.

The one I had today…

Photo 365 #165

January 19, 2015January 21, 20154 Comments

Since I’ve been moaning about the state of the snow round these parts, I figured a picture of it might be appropriate:

snow

Believe it or not, this is the pretty snow. The ugly snow is completely black and fills the ditches along my commute. Yuck.

How’s winter treating you?

Photo 365 #164

January 18, 2015January 17, 20158 Comments

Yesterday Seymour stopped in at the local second-hand shop to see what they had for sale. I couldn’t believe what he found:

At first glance, it looks like an ordinary puzzle. At first glance, I was unimpressed. But then he turned the box over:

This was an anniversary gift for my grandparents. I didn’t remember it, which is unremarkable since I was six in 1990, but there’s no mistaking my grandmother’s handwriting. What are the odds that Seymour would stop in the day they had this puzzle out for sale, and that he would find it?

Apparently the cashier was unimpressed by the amazingness of this coincidence. It appears that my grandparents donated the puzzle to the local library once they finished it, which I suppose explains how it eventually ended up at the second-hand shop. I wonder if it still has all one thousand pieces…

Have you ever experienced a coincidence like this? Tell me all about it in the comments! 🙂

Photo 365 #163

January 17, 20153 Comments

I’m feeling a bit nostalgic today. I’m copying some of Seymour’s CDs onto my computer for my later listening pleasure, and so many of the songs are ones I listened to growing up. He’s got albums by Reba McIntyre and Alan Jackson, Diamond Rio and Shenandoah, Alabama and Tanya Tucker, and a five-disc set of classic Disney tunes…

I’m having a ton of fun listening to them all as they copy; it’s like taking a walk down memory lane with a group of old friends:

I found these while I was going through my filing cabinet this afternoon. (Gotta do something while I wait for CDs to rip.) If you’re like me, you grew up before cell phones were ubiquitous and did your own fair share of note-passing. I’ve got tins of them left over from high school, and every now and then I dig them out and look through them again.

To discourage unintended viewing, we sometimes wrote them like this:

Believe it or not, I can still read this. The key is long since gone, but this was the code we used most often, so even after fifteen years, I can still tell you what it says. (Spoiler alert: It was about a boy.)

Were you a note-passer in school? Did you ever get caught?

Photo Friday throwback continues!

January 16, 2015January 19, 20151 Comment

My brain seems to be out of the office today, so my throwback post isn’t going back all that far:

bubblessnake

Here’s Bubbles fighting with some landscape edging last spring. He and Seymour were prettying up the front yard at our old house, and he had a little bit of trouble.

Don’t forget to stop by Charnele’s blog and see what she’s been up to lately. Hope your Friday’s a happy one, and have a great weekend!

Bonus picture!

January 16, 20155 Comments

Because apparently yesterday’s banana shot went up a month ago, have a bonus picture of some kitties:

kitties

My memory kinda sucks. Apologies. On the bright side, you get an pretty awesome cat picture, and who doesn’t love cat pictures? No one, that’s who. Everyone loves cats.

Everyone. 🙂