Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Dreaming of Spiders

Last night I had a dream that this huge black, ugly spider was climbing the wall in our house and my husband was trying to kill it. I kept saying, "Make sure it doesn't have the red hourglass on its stomach because I don't want you to die." I said this over and over and surprisingly my dream-husband didn't get annoyed with me. So then the spider climbed into its web and I saw the stomach and there was no red so I screamed, "Kill it!" Apparently I didn't want to see the murder of an innocent spider because my dream-mind wandered to new images.

So when I woke up I looked up dream interpretations on the internet, like I often do for fun after bizarre dreams. This is what it said:

"To see a spider climbing up a wall in your dream denotes that your dreams will soon be realized."

Now, does this mean that my dreams of a spider crawling up my wall will soon be realized, or all my hopes and dreams? I totally support the latter. But what about the fact that my husband was trying to kill this spider. Does this mean that my husband is trying to smash my dreams with a shoe? This, of course, is ridiculous, my husband is beyond supportive. So while I enjoy the thought of all my hopes and dreams coming true, the reality is that we have lots of spiders out here in the country. They are annoying. So it probably means that my dreams of spiders crawling up my walls will come true. And it will. I almost got bit by a black widow just the other day. It was scary.

Anyway, again, I have no book to review today. Mostly because I'm in the midst of editing--I got my very first editorial letter last week (yay!)--but also because I'm reading a friend's book (hi, Renee) and it's one you can't buy yet. Which is sad because it's really good. Really, really good. But, if you didn't get a chance to see all the recommendations from last week, check out the comments section from the last post because people had some awesome reading suggestions.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Tell me your favorite book...

So I've been in a reading slump lately. Normally on Wednesdays I'd tell you about a book I'd read and loved recently. This book usually isn't the only book I've read that week, it's the one I liked the best. I don't review or post about books I don't like. But I haven't been in the reading mood. Sometimes I go through cycles, like this, where nothing I read holds my attention for very long. It's usually not the book's fault. It's just me. (Yes, I just used the 'it's not you, it's me' line) What usually gets me out of these funks is a REALLY good book. So I need some suggestions. What is the best book you've read recently? Or just tell me your all-time favorite because I'm desperate. I want to read.

Friday, August 19, 2011

It's Alive!



It's official. I am the mother of a teenager. (Cue screaming) This week my daughter turned thirteen. Crazy. I thought by this time I'd be all-knowing so that I'd have really good comebacks to her teenager wit. But I'm not. So give me all your motherly advice for surviving through three teenage daughters because starting now, this is my future. (More screaming)

Happy birthday to my smart, gorgeous (would post a picture but she's way too cute to be showing the world), amazing, sassy, funny daughter! Love you. Go easy on me, kid, I still have three more children to raise.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Twitter!

Ah, twitter. How I both loathe and love you.

I thought I'd share a few things I've learned since starting twitter (dare I say two years ago?). Half of these things I didn't know until more recently, which means I am not very observant or I don't like to read directions. Both are true. You probably know all these because you are both more observant and like to read directions, but I'll share them anyway.


-If you're responding to a tweet, push the 'reply' button right underneath that tweet (it appears when you hover over the tweet). That way the person you're responding to knows what you're responding to. Especially if the response is hours later.

-Also, if you hover over the tweet, did you know a little arrow appears to the right of the tweet? If you click on it, all the responses to that tweet or the conversation that led up to that tweet will appear to the right. So cool.

-If you start a tweet with the @ sign, only that person and anyone following you and that person can see that tweet. Your other followers will not be able to see it unless they decide to go to your profile and spy on you.

-Following someone and then waiting for that person to follow you back and then unfollowing them=mean. It makes baby seals cry. And me. It makes me cry. This is why I signed up for who.unfollowed.me so I can know who you are. Then I yell at your picture (oh, and I unfollow you. So unless you really want to follow a person, don't. Following people just so you can improve your followers/following "ratio" is not cool).

-You can put people you're following into lists and then only view that list if you want. For example, most of the time, I look at my main feed with everyone on it, but sometimes, I want to see what my agency sisters are up to and don't want to have to wade through hours of tweets just to get to theirs. So I have them all in my 'wolfpack' list and when I click on that, I only see their tweets. It's a pretty awesome feature.

-Want to link a person to your blog post, but the link ends up being a hundred characters long and you wanted to include a message with it as well? Did you know you can go to www.tinyurl.com and make your link smaller? You probably knew this. Someone had to tell me this.

Okay, now it's your turn. I want to know more twitter stuff. Tell me something I didn't include on my list that is either twitter etiquette or a feature of twitter that you discovered. Because I probably don't know and I want to.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Wednesday Reads

Look what I read:

It was awesome.

So I've been waiting all year to read this book. I loved HEIST SOCIETY and couldn't wait to follow Kat and Hale on more adventures. I wasn't disappointed. Such a good, fun, clean read.

Summary from amazon: "Katarina Bishop has worn a lot of labels in her short life: Friend. Niece. Daughter. Thief. But for the last two months she’s simply been known as the girl who ran the crew that robbed the greatest museum in the world. That’s why Kat isn’t surprised when she’s asked to steal the infamous Cleopatra Emerald so it can be returned to its rightful owners. There are only three problems. First, the gem hasn’t been seen in public in thirty years. Second, since the fall of the Egyptian empire and the suicide of Cleopatra, no one who holds the emerald keeps it for long — and in Kat’s world, history almost always repeats itself. But it’s the third problem that makes Kat’s crew the most nervous, and that is . . . the emerald is cursed. Kat might be in way over her head, but she’s not going down without a fight. After all, she has her best friend — the gorgeous Hale — and the rest of her crew with her as they chase the Cleopatra around the globe, dodging curses and realizing that the same tricks and cons her family has used for centuries are useless this time. Which means, this time, Katarina Bishop is making up her own rules."

Thursday, August 4, 2011

The Duck Who Lived

It's been a while since I've talked about my duck.



Oh, the duck. He is a troublesome little thing. First he causes mayhem with the other ducks in town. Then he leaves for days at a time and comes back, all apologetic, looking for food. But the other night he almost met his end.

I was sitting here, on the far end of the house, late one night, writing (not checking twitter or facebook or goodreads or google+ because I never do that when I should be writing) when I heard a loud noise outside. Now I'm not talking about the noise the ice maker makes in the middle of the night that about scares me to death when everything is quiet and the ice clunks into the container. No, this noise was LOUD and right outside the window behind me. My heart jumped into my throat and I learned that in the 'fight or flight' scenario, I fall firmly in the category of flight. I tore through the house like a crazed zebra being chased by a lion to where my husband was reading in our bedroom.

"Hi," he said.

"Someone is trying to break into our house," I said because I never overreact. "Go save us."

He chuckled a little, because he knows I never overreact and stood up. I followed him through the house, clutching the telephone that I must've grabbed in my crazed zebra state. He got a flashlight and went outside.

"Hello," he called into the night.

"Don't announce you're here," I hissed from the doorway behind him.

Where we live, out in the country, it is dark. No streetlights at all. His flashlight beam cut through the blackness and I held up the phone to show the bad guy that I was armed.

"There's no one out here," he said and that's when our duck, looking very much like a crazed wild animal, flapped out from behind the garbage cans and started running in circles. I saw the dark spot on his white feathers.

"Blood. Something attacked the duck." There was an obvious bite mark in his wing.

We're still not sure what attacked it, but I'm convinced it was a werewolf. My husband thinks it was probably a coyote. We'll see who was right soon enough.

As for the duck, he'll have a little scar on his wing and he's probably acting as a horcrux now for a piece of some werewolf's soul. Other than that, he's perfectly fine (no thanks to my flight response).