Category: Photography

Lotsa news!

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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:

bu-sod

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…

Weekend exploits, or Double Trouble (times two!)

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Good friends and good food - what more could a girl ask for on a rockin' Friday night?

Good friends and good food – what more could a girl ask for on a rockin’ Friday night?

Well, here I am, sitting at my desk on a lovely Tuesday morning, trying to recover from yet another action-packed weekend.  When I look back on the summer of 2013, I think that’s what I’ll remember – it was a summer of action.  This time, though, instead of a family camping trip, the weekend revolved around time spent with great friends (and loads of good food, naturally).

One of my oldest and dearest friends is back in town.  Well, not my town anymore, but I’ll get to that.  See, she moved cross-country to sunny California after high school, putting a serious crimp in our hangout schedule.  Last time she was back in Iowa and I actually got to see her was four years ago when her sister got married (sadly, she couldn’t make it back for my wedding a few months later – stupid circumstances).  Clearly, we needed to get together again, and that’s exactly what happened this time, as she spent her trip to our hometown crashed on my couch.  After the “excitement” I had at the beginning of July, this was just the sort of excitement I needed.

The race is on!

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As soon as I hit Publish on my last post, I realized that I’d intended to post some pictures along with it.  Guess that’s what happens when you get distracted. 🙂

Qualifying laps. If you look under the flag, you'll see a truck.

Qualifying laps. If you look under the flag, you’ll see a truck.

Anyway, since I seem to have skipped over my trip to the Iowa Speedway last month, allow me to share a bit.  That’s where Seymour’s at again tonight, this time with one of his old friends.  They’re at the US Cellular 250, one of the Nationwide Series races.  The race we went to was part of the Camping World Truck Series, but I can’t remember which one it was.  Anyway, Seymour had never been and I’d never been to a professional sporting event of any kind, so it was really neat to go to our first race together.

I had no idea who any of the drivers were because…

Things I love

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  • Look at that sky! It just makes you feel good to be alive, doesn't it? :)

    Look at that sky! It just makes you feel good to be alive, doesn’t it? 🙂

    The sound of laughter in the morning.

  • Long talks with old friends.
  • Cuddle time.
  • Sunshine streaming through my window.
  • Bright blue skies dotted with fluffy clouds.
  • Crisp fall air.
  • Lazy weekends.
  • The smiles elicited by a bedtime story.
  • Impending visits with distant friends. 😀

Speaking of impending visits, I am beyond excited for August 8!  One of my oldest friends will be flying out from sunny Californ-I-A to visit dear old Mom and Dad and guess who’s couch she’ll be crashing on?  That’s right, mine! 🙂

All sorts of fun things are in the works for that weekend.  Of course, fun for me would be staying up all night with a boatload of pop and watching movies till dawn.  But I’m sure other things will be involved, too.  Some major catching up is in order.

But for now…to the writing cave!  My boys (all of them) are down for naps and I’ve got a word count to hit.  Enjoy your Sunday, my lovelies!  How will you be spending it?

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

Campfire tales

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So, after my last post, how about something a little lighter?  I’ve been camping three times in the last month and I don’t think I’ve recounted any of our grand adventures!  How the heck did that happen?!

Okay.  Enough exclamation marks.  Maybe. 🙂

So in June, we had planned to visit the (I assume, having never been there myself) lovely Volga Lake.  Thanks to Mother Nature, we were forced to change our plans and we wound up visiting scenic Pine Lake instead, right smack in our own backyard.  It was such a nice park that we decided to return in July, which turned out to be perfect because I got called into work (our camping trips straddled the week-weekend divide).  So in June the weather was lovely, the river was perfect for tubing, the hiking trails were excellent, and we had a great time.

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But our first trip in July was a little more eventful…

A super moon for the birthday boy!

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DSC_0531Yesterday was Cricket’s birthday.  Can you believe he’s three already?  I can’t.  How did this happen again?  And how do I make it stop?  If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know – I’m also open to options for keeping the older two small. 😀

It’s been quite the week at Casa Kauffman, which made for a grumpy birthday boy yesterday morning.  He was up pretty late (for an adult, never mind a two-year-old) Sunday night and didn’t nap on Monday, so you can imagine the fun I had that night.  By last night, he was in a better mood, but I still had to coax him into the car when I went to pick him up from daycare.   This is how the conversation went:

I’ve got sunshine

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It’s another beautiful day here in Central Iowa!  We’re still dealing with some flooding, but at least the rain has stopped coming every darn day.  Unfortunately, that happened a little too late for a lot of people, some of my family among them.  I’ve been adding pictures to my Flood of 2013 Pinterest board – the water levels are just amazing.  Even now that the constant rain has stopped, more or less, the rivers and creeks are still awfully high.  A lot of fields still have standing water in them.

But that’s not what this post is about.  My brain is currently being pulled in three different directions, so today’s post is going to be light and pretty.  That’s right, it’s another photo post!  After all, who doesn’t love pictures?

“What? Haven’t you ever seen a guy eat cake before?”
A little bit of sunshine on a cloudy day. 🙂
No, it’s not blood. Someone had fun with the ketchup while Mommy’s back was turned.
And Cricket’s frown got turned upside down…literally! 🙂
Gotta love silly father-daughter pictures. She makes the best faces. 🙂
I don’t know why my face is in focus and Thumper’s face isn’t, but it’s still super cute.

So that’s a brief look at what we’ve been up to lately – eating cake, playing in ketchup, and making faces (and writing like mad when I can find a few minutes of silence).  This weekend we leave for our first camping trip of the season and I’m looking forward to family togetherness and more camera fun.  And my Tomcat will be returning from two weeks with his dad, which will make it extra special.  So if I’m even more absent than normal in the coming days, zat’s why, my lovelies.  I promise to return with pictures a-plenty and perhaps even a fish tale or two!

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

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Water, water, everywhere…

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rcsign

Photo courtesy of the Marshalltown Times-Republican

If you follow me anywhere else online, you’ll have seen by now the various flood pictures I’ve been sharing (seriously, much like the water, they’re all over – both my personal and public Facebook accounts, Flickr, Instagram, and soon Pinterest as well).  Despite that, I’m going to post some more here anyway.  The extent of the damage won’t likely be truly realized for a long time yet, and the recovery will probably take years if this turns out to be anything like previous floods have been.

I know I’ve mentioned the Flood of ’93 several times already, but we had another major flood just five years ago that I had forgotten about until a friend mentioned it on Facebook.  I mean, I didn’t really forget, but I had forgotten that some of the severe flooding had been so close to us.  All you seemed to hear about was what happened in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, but there was plenty of severe flooding in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls area, too, and I had forgotten that.  I think the reason that ’93 is stuck in my head has to do with my mom; seeing all the photos she took of the local damage really imprinted the severity of the disaster on my tender little psyche.  The flooding in 2008, while devastating, just didn’t have the same personal connection for me that the floods of ’93 and ’13 have.

Anyway, we drove through quite a bity of flooding again on Monday as we tried to get home.

Where’s an ark when you need one?

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I shot this picture of a submerged field through the window of our truck as we were heading down to visit Seymour’s parents for the weekend. The rain bands on the window blurred the image and gave it the neat effect; the only processing I did to this was adding Instagram’s Lo-Fi filter to make the blue of the water pop out a little more. Even without it, the grass still glowed that green.

I love this image, but…