Eggnog

So after posting my last entry, I began to have an intense craving for eggnog.  The store is a ten minute walk away and I am still in my PJ's (it's a day off!) so I was trying to psych myself up to get dressed and walk to the store for some.  But then I had a thought: what if I just made my own eggnog?  So I turned to my good friend Google and within minutes I found a recipe for homemade eggnog.  We already had all the ingredients so I decided to have a go at making some. 

We don't have a blender, and it might be easier on your arm with one, but I put the ingredients into a bowl and began to whisk away.  It took less than ten minutes to make and I was a little apprehensive to take my first sip.  But it was delicious! I usually buy the extra thick kind at the store so this wasn't as thick as I'm used to (probably using cream instead of milk would do the trick) and of course the raw eggs carry the risk of salmonella.  But it's somewhat cheaper I think and very yummy! And of course I don't have to go to the store!

Find the recipe I used here.

Christmas in October

So let me just start off by saying that it is way too early for Christmas. I don't really consider it the Christmas season until after Thanksgiving. And yet, since I work in the retail industry, I get exposed to the Christmas hype way, way too early. But I love it. Christmas is my favorite time of the year and I really excited as soon as it starts to feel like Christmas.

So about two weeks ago I walked into Rite Aid by my house and lo and behold, they had Christmas wrapping paper for sale. (For all the overachievers that wrap their Christmas presents in October, I guess.) Since then, more and more Christmas stuff has begun to find it's way into the stores: wrapping paper, decorations, fake Christmas trees. I'm still not sure who buys this stuff before Halloween, but that's not the point.

The icing on the cake was yesterday at work. The week after Halloween, Blockbuster does it's big "Holiday Reset." We move all our product around, change all the signs to Christmas-themed signage, put out tables of novelty gifts (this years it's Snuggies, Star Wars gifts, and, of course, Silly Bandz), and create three full bays of the old, classic Christmas movies on our New Release wall. So yesterday I pulled out the signage from the back office and began to sort through it to prepare myself for the reset starting Sunday. This years signs are light blue with white snowflakes and red ornaments hanging down that look like DVD's. They are so festive and Christmasy and I got very excited and spread them all over the floor in the store and jumped up and down and then had to put them all away again. So I thought it would be appropriate today to share with you my top ten favorite things about Christmas:

1. Lights. I love Christmas lights, especially the white ones. And now that it's getting dark earlier, they'll be even more visible.

2. Snow. Not completely Christmas related, but I love snow. They are predicting a very snowy winter this year and I'm hoping they are right.

3. Cold weather. I love bundling up and going out into the icy weather. I love coming home to a warm apartment and cuddling up with a cup of tea.

4. The bell ringers. I'm like Pavlov's dog in this regard. The Salvation Army bell ringers are such an integral part of Christmas for me that I get excited just to hear them.

5. Buying presents. I love to get things for people and then watch them open them.

6. All the people. I love the hustle and bustle of the city at Christmastime, everyone rushing around in the cold and hurrying in and out of stores.

7. The holiday pay. Christmas, New Years and the second half of New Year's Eve are time and a half pay for us.

8. Business at work. I love it when it's busy at work and people come hurrying in to pick up movies to take home to the family.

9. Egg nog. You didn't think I was going to forget about the food, did you? Egg nog is manna from heaven.

10. Green bean casserole. Thanksgiving and Christmas are usually the only times that I get to have this.

Now I'm just waiting for the Christmas tree to go up on the Space Needle and the first snow and then it will really be Christmas!

Laughing, Gaming and Shooting

First off, a funny story from work. My boss answered the phone the other day and the customer said, "Do you guys have 'Halloweentown'?" so she looked it up and found it was checked out. When the customer found that out, she said "Well, do you have 'Return to Halloweentown'?" That was available and when my boss told her that she then asked "So is 'Return to Halloweentown' the first one or the second one?" Hmmmmm....

On Tuesday Aaron and I were off work and we have been talking about getting the new PlayStation 3 Move since we have a PS3, so we decided to just go downtown and get it since the rainy weather has set in here in Seattle, limiting our repertoire of affordable activities we can do together. So on a break from the weather we headed downtown to Game Stop to pick it up. As we finished at Game Stop Aaron looked at his phone and I remember him saying "It's 4:44." Just as we were leaving Pacific Place, we began to hear sirens and five police cars passed us with their lights on and soon an ambulance went by too. Within a few minutes two news helicopters were hovering over downtown. We were wondering what was going on and Aaron bet that it was an accident. From the number of police cars, I guessed a shooting. When we got home, we turned on the news and found out that I was right. A man had been shot point blank at 2nd and Pine, about five blocks from where we were, at 4:41, just minutes before we walked out of Game Stop. It was a little weird to be that close to something like that.

But on a lighter note, the PS3 Move is really fun. It comes with a bundle of sports games, including disc golf, archery and ping pong. We played it for a while on Tuesday night and again last night and I have to say, my arm is a bit sore. Unlike the Wii, where you can flick your wrist and it is just as affective as moving your whole arm, the Move tracks the motion of your whole body with a camera, so you really have to do the whole motion. I tried doing it sitting down and just about threw out my shoulder trying to get the necessary power behind it. It just doesn't work. The initial charge on the controller was a little annoying as it took over 3 hours and we were impatient to play. But definitely worth the 100 dollars it costs to get the bundle add-on to an existing PS3.

P.S. I'd also like to shout out to my international readers, a few of which I seem to have gained! Thanks for stopping by!

Time Traveler caught on Video?

I heard an intriguing story on the news this morning and I had to do some more research once I got home from work. Apparently a filmmaker in Ireland was watching the behind-the-scenes DVD extra on the 1928 Charlie Chaplin movie "The Circus" when he spotted a woman off to one side who appears to be talking on a cell phone. On the video, which was shot at the Chinese Theater at the premiere of "The Circus" the larger woman wearing a black hat walks alone to one side of the video. She appears to be talking and is holding her hand up to the side of her face like people do when they are on a cell phone. As she turns a few seconds later, it appears that there is a black thing in her hand. This Irish filmmaker, George Clarke, is convinced that she is a time traveler.

Although I admit it looks very much like a woman talking on a cell phone, the conclusion of time traveler begs many questions, the most obvious one being the questions of who she would be talking to, considering there were no cell towers in 1928. I believe that time travel could very well become a reality in the future, and while I maintain that it is possible that she could be a real time traveler, I am very skeptical. Another question that I have is, if she is concentrating on blending in to her surroundings, considering that she is dressed appropriately for the time, then wouldn't talking into a mysterious black box attract some attention? As one blogger suggested, perhaps she was shielding her face from the camera, and the "black box" was just a shadow, a makeup compact or something else in her hand. Others have said that perhaps she was holding an ear trumpet, which was common at the time.

Watch the video for yourself here: http://www.youtube.com/user/yellowfeverbelfast. Feel free to skip George Clarke's intro and skip straight to 2:42 when he shows the actual video. Although his Irish accent is pretty cute so I'd watch the intro anyway. ;-) So check it out and tell me what you think. Time traveler or not? Either way, it's intriguing to me! Perhaps it would make a good novel idea?

The Final Countdown!

Well it is officially one week until NaNoWriMo starts! I am more than ready for it to begin and already have figured out where I am going to be at midnight on Halloween. I'll be at the local pizza place, which is open late, with my laptop and a slice of pizza and at the stroke of midnight I will furiously type out the first 1,667 words (the daily quota for NaNoWriMo) before bed. Now I'll probably have to work the following morning at nine o'clock or so, so I may not be the happiest camper in the world, but it's all worth it in pursuit of literary mediocrity.

On a somewhat side note, I came up with an idea for a fabulous short story which I will probably write after NaNo. Now I am taking a sort of risk, I suppose, by putting my idea out here, so NO TOUCHY TOUCHY! HANDS OFF MY IDEA!

Anyway, now that that official admonition has been issued, the idea is to write an Old West rendition of the Shakespeare play Much Ado about Nothing. It's my favorite of all of his plays and I feel it could be perfectly set on a cattle ranch in Montana. The only thing I have to figure out is if I can actually get it published/enter it in contests, or if it is plagiarism since it's a rendition of a separate work. I know Shakespeare is public property or whatever the legal terms is, but since I didn't come up with the idea myself, is it still ok? I think it is, since books like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies basically do the same thing. But I'll have to look into that some more. Either way, it would be fun to write.

NOTE: After doing a big more research on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, it appears that that book has Jane Austin credited as co-author. I wonder if that makes it ok?

Short Stories

So when I was a kid I always always wanted to be a writer. I loved writing short stories and hated writing anything longer than that. From before I could even write, I would dictate stories to my mom (usually about a girl named Rose who incidentally had the exact same things happen to her as happened to me, only with way cooler outcomes. Like instead of simply stubbing her toe falling off the swing, she would break her arm. Etc.) Then when I was about nineteen I suddenly had an urge to write a real novel, "The Great American Novel" in fact, so I sat down with my laptop and no outline whatsoever and wrote the first few chapters of what would later become Runaway Train. (Sort of. My computer crashed and I lost those first few chapters and then later started over and rewrote them with a few details changed). Then I discovered NaNo and wrote my first NaNo novel in 2008 which was pretty much a load of crap with a horribly Mary Sue main character and no conflict whatsoever. Then I rewrote Runaway Train as I mentioned above in June of this year and now I'm going into NaNo prepared for a third novel.

So all in all, it's been several years since I've written anything other than journal and blog entries, novels, and an occasional poem. I used to really enjoy short stories because they can be so intense, so real. Also, one technique I used to use all the time when I was a kid, which I would still love to really pull off successfully, is to write a short story with no names. Only a couple of characters, maybe as few as two, and not name any of them. I did it a couple of times as a teenager with varying degrees of success.

So anyway, I've had a couple of novel ideas that would probably either need to be a short story, or would need some serious subplots to really pull off as a novel, so I was thinking about trying my hand at some short stories after NaNo. By that point, I'll have two hopefully halfway decent novels, which I will be revising, editing and hopefully querying some agents about, so getting some short stories under my belt might be good. Also, I've heard that having some published work is useful when querying agents which I hope to be doing by next summer or so, and I currently have none (well, except for a poem which I published in the Highlights for Children's reader section when I was 12).

So I found a few short story contests with no entry fees that have deadlines in the late winter, early spring, so I think I'm going to write a few short stories after NaNo. Wish me luck!

Maps, Trees and other projects

So a good chunk of the novel I will be writing in November takes place in the small, isolated town of Innisburg, so naturally I felt that I should make a map of the town to ensure that I won't confuse myself come November. And of course, being a NaNoer, I was not content to simply sketch one up on a piece of notebook paper. So I got a big piece of foam poster board stuff and some Sharpies and drew up a map of the whole town.

And then, of course, there were two sides to the board so I had to come up with something to decorate the other side. So since my town of fifty has been living in isolation for three generations, they have a complicated family tree, and I was determined that no one should be married to siblings or first cousins, so that made it a little bit more complicated. But with some colorful Sharpies to keep it from being too confusing, I managed to get the whole family tree mapped out on the other side.

It was fun and challenging but it's done now, so I'm all ready for November to start!

Biding my time til November...

So I was re-checking out the book that Chris Baty (founder of NaNoWriMo and God to all insane novelists) wrote called "No Plot, No Problem, and I remembered all the pitfalls that over planning can cause in the noveling process. I began to get worried that I had already overplanned for my NaNo novel (I am a very paranoid novelist) and there is still a lot of time left before November. I knew that if I didn't find another project for myself to work on until then, that I would very likely over plan.

So I decided to go back and begin the editing process on the book I wrote in June/July of this year. It's called Runaway Train and it's a sort of post-apocalyptic romance story. I hadn't looked at it at all since I wrote it and so I was a bit nervous to open it up and see if there was anything salvagable among it. The first three pages or so were total BS and I cut them immediatly, and even after that the beginning is going to need a bit of work to keep it from dragging, but over all it was suprisingly well written. I found myself getting pulled into the story almost as if I hadn't written it, and laughing at a few funny things that I had forgotten I had written. It is refreshing to work on a new project, and I'm excited both for Runaway Train and the NaNo novel which is currently called Finding Innisburg. It seems I do have some writing talent after all and I'm stoked to edit Runaway Train and make the whole thing as great as some of it is already.

So that is my project between now and November.

Also, I officially got Halloween night off of work so that I can begin noveling right at midnight. Although there is a good chance I'll have to work in the morning at like 9 or some other unholy hour. Somewhere behind my eyes my brain is contemplating pulling an all-nighter to novel, attempting to pull ahead of the pack by a few thousand right off the bat, but at 22 I'm not as young as I once was, so we'll see.

Noodles and Weird Guys

So I just have a few random musings to share with you at the moment. First off, an amusing story.

I was on the bus (the number 5 from Greenwood if anyone is interested) home from work today and my snooping, eavesdropping ears (notice I blame my ears!) caught on to a fairly one sided conversation happening one seat up and to my right. The lady near the window was probably in her thirties, reading a book and the gentleman sitting next to her was Asian and spoke very poor English. He had apparently said something I didn't hear but her reply was, "No, it's just that people usually don't talk to other people on the bus." After saying this, she promptly went back to reading. Now anyone else would have taken this as "shut up," but not this gentleman. For the next ten minutes he peppered her with questions, and she replied the absolute bare minimum amount she could get away with, while making it very clear that she didn't want to have a conversation. Every couple of questions he would apparently run out of things to say and simply say "You're very pretty." or something along those lines and she would pause and say, "Um, thank you."

This was all very amusing to me, until she got off the bus about halfway to my stop. He stood up to let her off and somehow caught my eye. I quickly turned away, hoping he hadn't taken that as a good sign, but it was too late. Instead of sitting down in the seat that the woman had been sitting in, by the window, as most people would have, he proceeded to sit down next to me, and attempt to make conversation for the rest of the trip to me. I was relieved when my stop came, although I have to give him credit for effort. He was very determined to meet someone on the bus!

The second thing I have to share is simply a tidbit about me. Aaron is lactose intolerant, so on the occasional nights when I am home and he has to work, I always try to indulge my cheese cravings as much as possible, usually in the form of pasta/fettuccine sauce or pizza. Tonight it is Buitoni Three Cheese Tortellini and Vodka sauce. YUMMY!!!

Outline complete!

So many apologies for the lack of blog posts lately. I have no excuse other than that I've just been doing other things.

So I finished my outline for NaNoWriMo. It's quite exciting because I had experienced some moments of doubt as I wasn't sure I was going to be able to figure out the novel. But I've got a plot, a sub-plot and I'm working on planning out some more fun, well-rounded characters. Since that's mostly what I've been working on, I thought I'd fill you in on the details of how I plan a novel.

1. It starts with an idea. One beautiful, shining nugget of an idea. It will pop into my head randomly and I will immediately get very excited and start running around like a chicken with it's head cut off.

2. As soon as I get the idea, more ideas start to come. I start to see some characters in my head that could work, and I begin to feel a tone for the book coming on. At this point I am euphoric and nothing could ever bring me down.

3. Now I decide to write. This could be the same day that I get the idea, or months or even years later. I'll begin by writing a short synopsis of the idea, sort of summing up the main points. Then I slowly begin to tease out the details.

4. I do a bullet list of an outline, listing points that I want to make, scenes that I want to include and characters that I want to introduce. Then I put the list more or less in chronological order. This is where the hard part comes in. Once I have part of my idea down, I begin to realize that there are huge holes or gaps in the story, where the characters jump from J to P without stopping at K, L, M, N or O first. This is frustrating because often I have no idea what these letters are going to be. But often I find that if I just let my brain work over these problems during my day to day activities, as long as I keep them in the back of my mind, the solutions usually slowly come to me, one day at a time.

5. This is also an exciting time because great, perfect ideas will come to and eventually the book really seems to be coming together. Now I take my rough bullet list and turn it into an actual, beautiful outline, with Roman numerals and everything. I fill the list in and put things where they go. It is usually at this point that I find my plot holes, and realize (in the case of this novel) that one character can not be hero, villain, and be killed, so I will need a few more characters.

6. Once the outline is done, I go back through all my notes and miscellaneous questions and comments to myself and make sure that I haven't forgotten anything that I wanted to include.

7. At this point I usually begin writing the book itself, but in the case of this particular novel, I still have over 17 days until NaNo starts so now I'll have to content myself with possibly picking up a few more subplots, and creating some more characters.

So it's quite a relief to have the outline done, because now I know that the book can be pulled off, it's like planning a trip for months and finally getting your vacation approved at work, making your hotel reservations and booking the flight. It's all coming together now and I think it's really doable. I have my road map and now I'm ready for the trip to begin!

Bring it on, November!

(Comic used with permission from Debbie Ridpath Ohi at http://www.inkygirl.com)

NaNoWriMo 2010

So it's official. The NaNo website has been cleared of all past years and relaunched. I have logged back in to my friendly AnnaKaris account which has happily wasted my precious time during November. I have trolled the forums and made a few posts of my own. I have talked my boyfriend's ear off about my novel, and I have come up with a sketchy, Swiss-cheese-resembling outline for my book. NaNo is officially only 23 days, 14 hours, 22 minutes and 9 seconds from beginning. (And yes, I have had a countdown on my desktop for about a month now.)

So as far as my noveling (I just ran spell check and they want me to change noveling to "novelising." Hmmm. I think I'm going to stick with noveling) plot goes, I have A. I have Z. I probably have about B through G or so, and then J, N, P, and X along the way, and now I have 23 days to find the other letters and get them worked in.

I did some research yesterday online and came up with some good specifics for my plot, mostly based around conspiracy theories and actual government cover ups of the 1950's. NaNoWriMo, here I come!

Also, on a side note, I don't think I've mentioned it but with in the NaNo world, there are regions. Each region can be as small as Seattle or as big as Austria and Germany. Either way, the regions compete for the most combined word count from all members of the region. This year Seattle will be defending their fifth title for highest word count, so we're pretty stoked and planning on totally nailing it this year!

Frying Chicharrones de Harina

So if you read my latest blog, you know that I had a failed attempt at boiling the mysterious chicharrones de harina. So now that I've found out that you are supposed to FRY them, I gave that a try. A bit of vegitable oil in a small fry pan, a few minutes to let it heat up and I was ready. I put in about four or five of the little chips and immediatly they swelled up and puffed, losing their orange color. I used some tongs to flip them over as soon as they seemed done on one side, but they started burning almost immediatly. So I tried a second batch and these I tried flipping as fast as I can and then removing them to a paper towel covered plate. But I still couldn't be fast enough and they began to turn grey and look a bit burnt. There was a bit of smoke in the kitchen and we have insanely sensative smoke alarms so I had to quickly flip on the fan before trying again.

This time I just did one at a time and flipped them almost immedatly after putting them in the pan. This seemed to work and after a few of these I turned off the pan to try eating them. The ones that I had cooked last weren't quite done and were unpleasently hard and chewy in spots. The other ones had good texture but had a bit of a burn flavor to it. Fortunatly I have a bunch left so that I can perfect them!

Cooking experiment

So when I lived at home I discovered these...things. I don't know what they are or what they are even made of. They are some sort of Mexican food and the only place I've ever seen them is at Shop 'N Kart in Chehalis where they sell all sorts of Mexican and Hispanic foods. They are hard and orange when you buy them, rather like an uncooked noodle, incredibly cheap and the only way I've known how to cook them is to pop them in a bowl in the microwave for a few seconds, and they puff up into a crunchy, light snack. They are rather like those onion ring chips that you can buy, really light and crunchy but without the onion flavor.

So a couple of months ago I was at home visiting my family and we ended up at Shop 'N Kart so of course I had to get some. After buying a whole bag, I remembered that I don't have a microwave (Aaron thinks they are evil). So they've been sitting in the cupboard for a while. So today I thought I'd have a go at cooking them. I'm sure there is another way to serve them besides microwaved, so I've just boiled some water and put in a handful to see what happens. Probably should go check on them...

Well they have been in about two minutes and appear to be softening some, so maybe they are a sort of noodle. They smell like cooking rice, and I've always sort of suspected they were made out of rice since they taste somewhat like rice cakes with a different texture. But with the orange color they must have carrot or something in them too. The weird thing is that when they are microwaved they lose their color completely and come out a light beige color, almost white. But with boiling they appear to be keeping their orange.

They are definitely cooking much like rice, with the same smell and a bit of foam on top of the water (which is turning a lovely shade of orange!). I'm going to let them boil a couple more minutes and then try eating one. I wish I knew what they were called so I could Google them! Perhaps "orange cartwheel rice noodles" would do the trick. Let's see...

Nope. Just lots of recipes for things with oranges and rice. Not sure where the cartwheel comes into that though...

Well, they seemed to have softened up some so I'm going to try one...

Um. Weird! First off, it's not really soft at all yet. Still very chewy in the middle. It's got this weird ricey, almost smoky flavor but with a hint of a nasty aftertaste that I'm not a big fan of. Perhaps with some sauce they could be improved. They are so good just out of the microwave! I'm going to boil the rest a little longer until they are actually cooked and try them again. Maybe they're just a little old, since they have been on my shelf for quite a while...

AH HA!!!! After some serious Google work I found them! They are called chicharrones de harina and they are just flour and fat...apparently you are supposed to fry them, not boil them! Ok, next blog: Frying Chicharrones de Harina!

Interesting people and UFO's

So since I am having trouble coming up with something to blog about out of my sometimes incredibly boring life, so I thought I might share with you a few of my more amusing stories of the interesting people I meet at work (and I'm not even talking about my co-workers!). I would to preface this by saying that in the event that these people have actual social or mental disabilities, that I am sorry for them and that I hope they get the help they need. I am not sharing this to ridicule them or even to make fun of them but simply because these stories amused me and I wanted to share them for the amusement of others. I am grateful for the interesting people that I meet on a day to day basis at my job because they counteract all of the jerks and idiots.

Also, I would like to point out that often times people of lower incomes or means are looked down upon and assumed to be dangerous, jerks, or terrible people but in my almost three year experience working customer service, I have found that generally they are kind, considerate and polite, while the real jerks are the rich or middle class snobs with two and a half kids who assume they are entitled to the world and view me as a robot sent to aid them in their every whim rather than an actual person. But back to the story.

So this first incident occurred about four or five months ago. Legion had just come out and a gentleman came in looking for it. He was probably about forty, nicely dressed and clean-shaven, and while probably not wealthy, he certainly wasn't homeless. We were all rented out of our copies and he asked me if I could suggest a similar movie. Legion is about an army of angels sent from heaven to destroy the earth, and since I generally do not watch movies like that, as they don't interest me much, I was having trouble coming up with a similar title. While I was thinking, the customer suddenly said, "That's true, you know." I was a bit confused and it must have showed, for he followed it up by saying, "I have a friend who can look through his night vision goggles and see the angels fighting in heaven." He stated this as though it was a well known but interesting fact. I must have raised my eyebrows slightly as I nodded, a bit taken a back. I changed the subject back to movies, since I didn't know what else to say after that statement. After a minute or two, he very conversationally said, "I saw my first UFO last year!" just as someone would say, "I got to go to the Grand Canyon," or something. I said, "Oh...really?" trying not to be rude but really not knowing what to say. He went on to say, "Yeah, I was down in the Arizona desert, looking for some, and suddenly there it was! It was hovering above the desert and I was all by myself that night so I used my brain waves to communicate telepathically with the aliens and I told them to come back the next night so that I could bring my friend out. They said they would, so the next night I came back with my friend and they came back and he got to see them too!"

I nodded and said, "Oh cool!" as though he were talking about a normal vacation, and he thanked me very politely and left. I have met a few people who have thought they could talk to aliens but most of them were completely nuts. He seemed totally normal, coherent and intelligent, so who knows? Maybe he was telling the truth?

28 days 'til NaNo

So since we're on the final month before NaNoWriMo, I figured maybe I need to start working out the details, or some of them, of my book. Some people write with no structure, some people write with every detail planned in advance, and I am somewhere in the middle. I have to plan enough that when I get to the difficult to write scenes, I know where I'm going with it, where I need to get to, and this lets me push through to the next important part. With no structure, or not enough structure, I get to this point and either go way off track, changing the entire direction of my book, or give up, because I can't figure out how to get where I want my book to end up.

But, on the flipside, I don't stick to a plan religiously. My outlines usually involve a four or five word heading summing up each chapter or so, with fifteen or so chapters per novel. Within each heading are two or three one or two word bullet points reminding me what to include within that subject. But while I'm writing, I'll usually think of more things to put in and include those, and also realize that some things no longer work or make sense, and leave those out. I also rewrite the outline while I'm working on the book, adding things in later in the book that I'll need to put in based on what I'm currently writing.

This novel is somewhat of a new challenge for me in a couple of ways. This will be my third novel over all and about my four-billionth story, so I have some precedence to work on. But this will be my first time writing a first person story from the perspective of a man. Also, when I'm coming up with ideas for books, I generally come up with some details, or specific story ideas that I want to include and then build a book around it. With this one, I came up with a very general idea, and and working on the specifics at the moment, which is somewhat backwards from my usual. So it is somewhat difficult for me, but also exciting.

I'm also working on creating some very dynamic characters for this story, since I think character sympathy is going to be very important for the movement of the story. Characters are always my weak point and I find it hard to avoid stereotypes when creating characters.

Another challenge/opportunity that I'm taking is that I'm creating this book as though the basis for the story was a national/international story, well known, and now the main person involved is writing the book from his perspective. So that's a bit different from just a regular novel. But I'm excited and am trying to work out some of the middle filler to get me from A to B. I'll keep you posted!

Jesse

Aaron and I went to Petco today and each got a fish to put in the two fish bowls Aaron had. I got a goldfish, which I named Jesse after Jessica Watson. She's a pretty little orange fish and seems very happy in her new little home.

Aaron got a dark blue Betta which he said he was just going to call "Fishy," but after I complained that that wasn't a real name, he decided on Midnight, which suits him well. They each have their own little home and I'm pretty excited about it.

Happy Birthday!

Also, happy birthday to my little sister Laura who is 17 today! Hard to believe they are all growing up so fast!

Nutella

I just recently rediscovered Nutella. I was at Bartell's the other day and saw that they had it on sale and I remembered that the few times I had had it in the past, I enjoyed it very much, so I bought some again and have been devowering it.

So tasty and filling! I love it on bread but I'm going to try it on some toast I think soon. The best part is that Aaron doesn't like it (weirdo!) so I don't have to worry about waking up in the morning and finding that he's eaten it all! LOL

That's all, just had to share.

Ink it Pink

During the month of October, Sharpie is sponsoring a project called Ink it Pink. All you have to do is to find a pink Sharpie, sign your name on something and upload it to http://showcase.sharpieuncapped.com/pages/sharpieinkitpink?t=inkitpink and one dollar with be donated to City of Hope for breast cancer research. It's easy to do, fun and for a good cause!

I decided to do it, so first I had to track down a pink Sharpie, so I dug around through all our pens and pencils, most of which don't work, and couldn't find one. So I went to Rite Aid and they didn't carry pink ones so I went to QFC and found them there (on sale!). I thought I would be original and unique and sign it on my arm instead of a piece of paper, kind of like To Write Love on Her Arms, but when I did that, it was too light and didn't turn out at all. I tried taking a picture of it, but you couldn't tell it was my arm, and you just couldn't see the signature very well. So I finally gave in and just signed it on a piece of paper. I just uploaded my signature and I urge you to do so as well!