The Banned Underground: The SatNav of Doom

October 14, 2013October 14, 20131 Comment

The latest installment in The Banned Underground series, The SatNav of Doom definitely holds up to the standard set by the first four novels (you can read my reviews of them here, here, here, and here). Chock full of humor as always, I laughed my way through The SatNav of Doom at an admittedly slower pace than the previous books, but that was due to my overwhelming open house (and moving) preparation and is in no way a reflection on this fine novel. Indeed, settling down with Fungus and the gang for a rockin’ gig was a welcome relief from my moving stress. 🙂

The discerning reader will find many gems along the way to the Edern’s enchanted Fairy Hill hideout. From wonderful musical jokes to brilliant pop culture references, there’s plenty here to make you giggle, grin, and even guffaw. For example:

Fruitful

October 11, 201320 Comments

In my post from Tuesday (that should have gone up Monday, but was delayed), I talked briefly about all the fruit we have at our new place and how it reminded me of summers at my grandparents’ farm. I’d intended to get back to that in my post from yesterday (again, delayed), but I ended up going a different direction. So today, let’s take that trip to Grandpa and Grandma’s house.

My grandparents lived on a farm about half an hour away from us. My grandmother lived all but six months of her life on that farm, as it had been passed down through the years from one generation to the next. It’s a century farm, and I’m proud to be part of that tradition, even though the acreage has been sold off and all that’s left now is crop ground. I’d like to someday buy the acreage back, but so far, no luck (the one time it was up for sale, the timing was just not right and we couldn’t do it *sigh*).

When I was little, the acreage included much more than it does now. When you turned in the driveway, the house was on the right and the old garage was on the left. The old garage has now been leveled, but the foundation remains, and the new owners put up a basketball hoop. Just west of the old garage was a corn crib, which I believe still stands, and to the west of that was a barn. It was lost in a fire several years ago – the new people had heating lamps in the barn for some animals, and somehow the place caught fire. If it hadn’t been for a passing fireman, of all people, the whole farm might have burned.

A bit of fun

October 11, 201313 Comments

One of my friends did a fun little quiz about one’s internal nationality. I thought it sounded like fun, so I tried my hand at it, and this is what I got:

Apparently, I identify with Turkey. Who knew?

Next, there was a link to a quiz about what part of Russia you would live in. A woman in my childhood church used to travel to Russia quite a lot back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and when she came back, she would give talks on her travels. She sparked my interest in this country (and a variety of other things, too), so I thought, why not? And this was my result:

I’d live in Kaluga Oblast!

Wanna take these quizzes yourself? You can do so here and here. Have fun! 🙂

My First Blog: Russia (akphotogallery.wordpress.com)

Working vacation

October 10, 2013October 11, 201313 Comments

Well, once again, my post for this challenge is late. We have an open house coming up on Sunday and I spent yesterday painting our bedroom in preparation for it. Two coats of bright white on the ceiling, one coat of some sort of beigey color on the walls. I’ve never used Ralph Lauren paint before, but man, that stuff goes on nice.

I somehow managed ti sand, spot prime, and paint the whole room – including the radiator – in just over nine hours, making going back to work today feel like a vacation. Tadpole and Bubbles got out of school early yesterday and they were huge helps once they got home. Miss Tadpole even begged me to let her paint. I couldn’t argue with that, so I set her to work. 🙂

Once I’d finished painting, I got cleaned up and we went out for supper. When we got home, the plan was to put the bedroom back together and relax (I received a package of custard creams and Tetley tea from a friend in the mail yesterday, so I had every intention of indulging myself). But alas, the best-laid plans of mice and men are often laid to waste…

Bubbles was helping us clean up, and I’d asked him to take the paint pans, brushes, and roller down to the basement and clean them out while I helped Seymour move furniture. Before supper, I’d slid the paint pans into plastic sacks so the paint wouldn’t dry out as fast. One of the pans had more paint in it than the other, and he must have carried the emptier of the two down first and gotten lucky, because all of a sudden I heard…

Moving memories

October 8, 2013October 10, 201321 Comments

1094527_10201786529601589_1779662465_o So, I didn’t get my post uploaded yesterday for the October Blog Challenge. I was a little bit busy yesterday, busier than I thought I would be, anyway. We closed on the purchase of the acreage we’re moving to, and it involved a lot of driving – to the boys’ daycare and back (an hour round trip), to the acreage for the final walk-through (forty minutes round trip), to the bank for the closing (an hour round trip), back to the acreage to drop off some things (another forty minutes round trip), then back to the boys’ daycare to pick them up much later than I had thought I would be (another hour round trip). In between all of that driving, the closing took about an hour, we had to eat, there were errands to run…By the time we ate supper, it was after 8:00 p.m. It was a very long day.

Seymour was planning to take another load out to the acreage today, in addition to buying some things to start working on the basement right away. Since we haven’t yet sold our house, we won’t be moving right away, which gives us time to do some remodeling and painting before we have all of our stuff in there (and it’s going to be a tight fit – we’re moving to a smaller house than what we currently have, and we have a lot of stuff). That’ll be nice. But I’ll be glad to be finished with remodeling.

So, how does this relate to memoirs and backstory, or even to relationships?

The Great Wall of Fiberglass

October 5, 2013October 5, 201319 Comments

I spent this morning watching Star Trek: Voyager and eating Goldfish crackers with Cricket and Thumper. They love watching “the ship.” And Cricket trying to say Hirogen was possibly the cutest thing ever.

But this afternoon? This afternoon I spent stacking insulation in my garage while Bubbles and Tadpole made trips down with it from our attic (Yes, they were appropriately attired for dealing with the stuff. I, on the other hand, was stupid, meaning not appropriately attired.). We’re moving shortly, and since the insulation isn’t in any way affixed to our house, we’re taking it with us. Unfortunately, my attempt to stack it neatly in our tiny little garage did not go well.

Greath the wall was, but stable and sturdy it was not.

A memory of books

October 3, 201327 Comments

Yesterday morning I was running errands with Cricket and Thumper, and they wanted a story. I was at Sam’s Club, and they happened to have a bunch of Dr. Seuss board books for sale. Just the sight of them triggered a fresh wave of childhood memories – my dad hated Dr. Seuss, but not me. My sister and I both loved his books, and we kept checking them out at the library and insisting he read them to us before bed. I remember reading a wide variety of books with my mom, particularly from The Great Illustrated Classics line, but I mostly remember reading Dr. Seuss with my dad.

I think it was because he hated him so that we made him read those books to us. Either that, or he hated Dr. Seuss because we made him read the books so often.

We happened to own a copy of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, and we read it so frequently that the spine is now falling off the book. I saw a shiny new copy yesterday next to the board books and was sorely tempted to buy one, but in the end, it remained on the shelf. I remember bringing home How the Grinch Stole Christmas from the school library and insisting on hearing it before bed one Christmas. And who could forget Green Eggs and Ham? Or The Cat in the Hat? Or Fox in Socks? Or The Lorax?

When I graduated high school, my childhood Sunday School teacher gave me a copy of Oh! The Places You’ll Go! I breezed through it, then put it aside. The whimsy of the illustrations still captivated me, but the message of the book didn’t really soak in. Not until I had graduated college, married, had a child of my own, and divorced, did the book really make much sense for me. I recognized several of the stops mentioned in the book, and adjusted my life’s path accordingly.

Books were a huge part of my childhood, and I can’t imagine life without them. What are some of your favorite books, from childhood or otherwise?

It’s October!

October 1, 201312 Comments

And that means it’s time for a blog challenge. Once again, I’m taking part in the October Memoir and Back Story Blog Challenge, run by Jane Ann McLachlan. I had a lot of fun with it last year, so I thought I’d try it again. It’s a little bit different this time around, but I don’t mind.

IMG_20130722_191349 The theme for the first week of October is childhood memories. I always feel like I don’t remember very much about my childhood; I think I blocked out a lot of it in a misguided attempt at coping with my mom’s illness (which you can read about in posts from last year’s challenge here and here). There are times, though, where I think I remember more than I realize, and that thought has worked its way into at least one of my stories.

Today, though, is an absolutely beautiful fall day…

Lotsa news!

September 12, 2013September 12, 20132 Comments

First up, The Lokana Chronicles is up on Miss Snark’s First Victim as part of this month’s Secret Agent Contest. Click here to check it out! And if you follow me on Twitter, I apologize for the pitch spam, but the After the Madness Twitter Pitch Party is today and I’ve – belatedly – been pitching my book in hopes of snagging an agent’s interest. I missed out on Pitch Madness this time around, and I haven’t been too addicted to the #pitmad thread today, either, but both things are always a lot of fun and I wish all the contestants good luck (and all the winners congratulations). 🙂

Next, I was super excited to see this in my email yesterday:

I adore the Banned Underground books and have been anxiously awaiting the release of The SatNav of Doom ever since I finished the last book in the series. My screencap cut off some of the links, so here they are again: Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, even a blog!

And last, but certainly not least…