Dude, Where's My Muse?

I totally can't believe its December already. Where did October and November go? I'd kind of like them back lol Its weird to think its 3 weeks to Xmas eve tomorrow and a month till my birthday. 2007 is zooming by and seems to be picking up speed.

Having a quiet wknd at home. Its way TOO cold to go outside (-25ish and with wind, don't want to think what it feels like with wind chill) So I made chocolate shortbread cookies yesterday, finished 2 books for review and printed out the last bit of mine that needs work. Maybe I'm suffering a bit from the not-willing-to-let-go, but I also know that the last few chaps need a smidge more work. Planning on watching the Oilers game tonight @ 6, having my favorite Souvlaki pork chops and fries, and go on a highlighting frenzy with what i hope is the last print out of this particular ms. :o) (side note to all geeky authors, the 3M highlighters with attached post-it flags ROCK!)

Blog wise, this could be a busy month here @ Dude, Where's My Muse? I'm hosting a few authors on blog tours, as well as talking about a new book this week. If you're interested in being hosted, shoot me an email or leave me a comment. I'd like to hit 10K visitors for the year and need about 800 this month to do it.

Hope everyone's having a nice (and warm!) weekend :o)

Labels: ramble

Not blogging as often as maybe I should be, but I'm still around. Busy doing some last and much needed rewrites before hitting send on a couple requests (aiming for Dec.1st). With any luck, I can take December off and just deal with Christmas and finishing off the review books that are taking up half a shelf of the overcrowded bookshelf -- which needs to be re-organized too one of these days.

Most of the cards are done and should be dropped into the mail tomorrow morning if all works out. Need to wrap one of the Xmas presents for one of my long distance friends and get it mailed this weekend. There's something I want to pick up if I can before it makes its way to California. The amazon.com purchase should be delivered today or tomorrow to my friends in Philly. Which leaves 2 friends after that. Best bud is all ready boughten for. Just need to wrap and wait for her to come and visit in a couple weeks. First time in 5 years we'll be giving each other our presents in person. *g*

Managed to find a couple of hard-to-find Christmas gifts for my parents this weekend. London Drugs had the 2 computer games I wanted to get mom and dad and Costco had the collector's edition of Die Hard which was totally not to be found anywhere else (and I didn't want to wait till I had enough for Free Shipping at amazon.ca) so yay! The list for what to get Dad is pretty well done and Mom's going to take some thought (and a day of shopping w/o her right beside me lol). Plus, I splurged and bought a little something for me :o)

Labels: ramble

I have nothing really in mind for this post. So like Matt Hardy's rambling myspace blog at times, I'm just going to go with whatever comes into my mind in whatever order it comes in lol

The third workshop I'm taking this month starts off tomorrow. I'm not sure taking three in a month was the wisest idea I've ever had, but I'm trying to keep up. Learned a few things so far and am anxiously waiting to learn/create my roadmap for revision in the one workshop. I'm very tempted to take my few favorite scenes from VW and cut the rest and just rewrite from scratch. Might be crazy, might be a blessing in disguise or might just be the dumbest idea *g*
I did learn how to create a zen list and am thinking of making one to help me write/finish the brava idea. Could work...

Did my best to put Cruel Summer in order Friday night and somehow managed to lose 232 words. Don't know where they went. Thankfully I kept my rough draft that was totally out of order and spent two hours moving each scene to where I had it in the new draft. Don't know which 232 words went missing, don't really care that now that all are recovered :o) Just hope it doesn't happen again any time soon.

I did find it funny when I looked at the coming soon page in the book Olga sent me *thanks Olga!* Cruel Summer was one of the titles lol Guess its a more popular title than I thought.

I've decided I don't like cold weather in summer. Anything that's cold enough for me to break out the fleece is unnatural and should be banished until December.

The weekend's going slow but its finally warming up a little. Cut a bunch of cosmos yesterday for a vase in the house. Didn't have to reseed them this year, they came up from last year when I couldn't keep up with all the seeds. Actually looks really nice.

And finally, the book's I want to read right now - the new Stephenie Meyer; You Had Me At Halo; Sex and the Psychic Witch - Annette Blair; Wednesday Night Witches (waiting for this one to arrive in the mail *g* I get to review it!)

Hope everyone's having a nice and warm weekend :o)

Labels: ramble

The weather today is muggy. With a capital MUGG. On the bright side of being so hot you can't last more than an hour outside, my flowers are opening :o) The bonanza marigolds today and the new breed of african daisy on the weekend. The one pot has doubled in size but there's still two that aren't anything more than seedlings. Have to hit them with a major dose of fertilizer soon.

I'm not sure if its the heat or what but my brain has been in a complete fog the last few days. I even forgot what day it was today. I swore it was Wednesday when I woke up. I kid you not. I even started to write down that something in the mail today arrived Wednesday. Total brain fog. Apparently it and my muse decided to take off to the Bahamas without me. Ingrates! :O)

No big plans for the week, the Canadian long wknd is over. Writing probably will take up some time. Dad's on his last few days of holidays so probably end up running errands with him one of these days this week. Went to home depot yesterday. I want to go back to Chapters to see if the sale's still on and I need new shoes. Not a want. Its a need. I somehow managed to break the one pair of sandals (the strap may be fixable, dad's going to try and crazy glue it) and the inside's coming out of my only pair of flat sneakers. They may last the month. They may not. Can you tell i'm so NOT excited about shoe shopping? I tend to be pretty picky and I'm more comfortable in heels then flats so trying on flat sandals at this time of year when the place is going to be packed is so not my idea of fun.

Labels: ramble

So today's always a roughish day for me. 5 years ago I had to put my beloved 4 year old shih tzu down. Its weird to realize he's now been gone longer than I had him. :o(

Spent some of the morning sitting outside. Its finally nice enough (we had 2 thunderstorms yesterday. One in the afternoon and one at 7 that the thunder shook the house. Always nice lol) Finished reading my arc of Christina Dodd's SCENT OF DARKNESS. Love that book!! Its a great, dark para that's out next month. Just started the sequel, TOUCH OF DARKNESS and three chaps in.

Writing's going slow. SLOW. Like non existant. I love how my head starts rewriting my last manuscript now. :o) Amuses me to no end.

Since writing is well not happening right now, I'm making a dent in my TBR pile. I mentioned Christina's. Finished off Stephanie Tyler's RISKING IT ALL. I think its one of my favorite blazes of the year. Have to see if anyone over at Pink Heart Society has reviewed it yet. If not, I'll write one up. (I signed up to review last year, but haven't put one up yet. Though in my defence I was asked to review a couple intrigues that never arrived. Darn post office!)

Read anything good lately?

Labels: ramble

Alright, you know you're watching way too much hockey when in your dream in your line at the grocery store and in front of you are the two hockey analysts from last night's game. lol

I've been a bad blogger this week. Between my signing up for Michelle Rowen's writing challenge (20 pages a day for 14 days); the hockey and sleeping on the floor... (not so fun. Really) I'm lucky I remember to brush my hair. The writing's going okay, I'm up to 11K right now on the new YA idea, realized the songs I was playing last week on my playlist could actually make up some of the soundtrack to the story.

So I'm sleeping on the floor because I got one of those foam mattress topper things that's supposed to help you sleep better and I'm hoping it takes away some of my back/shoulder issues. But it needs 72 hours to come back to life from being vacuum sealed and to lose its fresh foam smell. And since the only surface it can stretch out on is the bed... I've spent the last 2 nights camping out on my floor. NOT FUN. Really.

The game last night was a little disappointing. I thought the Wings could have taken it -- especially since they were without their fearless leader Pronger (can you hear the sarcasm lol) and Cleary was playing pretty well (wanted to see him get the hat trick). I'm think the series could go 7 though right now, it may go the Ducks way.

I have to remember Ottawa plays at noon -- or is it 1? -- tomorrow. I hate afternoon playoff games. And this one's after 2 days off. I guess from watching tsn yesterday only 4 of the guys skated. So they'll either be fresh or...spending the first period trying to get their legs back.

This weekend marks the first long weekend of summer and its going to be raining all 3 days. Can you believe it? Shocking I know. Oh well. Hopefully it'll help the plants pop up quicker.

Labels: hockey, ramble

Wide awake right now. Had an upset tummy tonight for awhile. Watched three hockey games (or 2 and a half) tonight. Pittsburgh's out, kinda sad. Wished Georges could have played more and watching Sidney play for awhile longer would have been nice, but Mike and co. are on to the second round. Calgary beat Detroit to even the series *woohoo!* and Canucks lost to Dallas :( With a win tonight they would have knocked the stars out and moved to the second round. Hoping they do that Saturday. Not a big Stars fan.

Toying with two stories right now, I forgot to print a few things off earlier so editing off hard copy isn't working and the new idea gave me one of the big scenes so had to get that down before I lost it.

Tried to do some video work tonight on some of my captured tv shows. The audio was out of sync so I downloaded a trial program. Fixed the audio up, but now pinnacle studio won't convert/edit the new file. Which is a little worrying. I'd like to burn the files to dvd and get some disc space back.

No big plans for the weekend. Its SNOWING here (argh!) so probably stay inside and warm and watch more hockey and catch up on my editing.

Labels: ramble

Its snowing.

If I had a pretty digital camera I'd take a shot out the window for you. And its not the nice dry snow either. Its the wet, sticking type that almost makes you trip when you go outside to check the mail. Almost fell twice, once on the steps and once going over the fence.

I'm SO ready for it to be spring. Really. The seeds are sitting near the desk, waiting to be sorted into what's going into a pot together. Which ones need to be replenished. Which ones I don't really plan on using this year... but see, for me to plant, the snow needs to go buh-bye. I have it on good authority Bailey *waves* likes snow, she can have all of it that's supposed to fall between now and Sunday. Go, enjoy! :o)

In writing news, *sigh* not much to report. Story that shall not be named continues to go on and on... and did I say on? And there's a new character who showed up on the weekend, a very talkative character... she's going to have to go to the back of the line. And be careful of Harley, she's not used to her fangs, she could bite unexpectantly.

Labels: ramble