April 12, 2018
Rotation
It’s pretty common knowledge that you’re supposed to rotate the tires on your car. Some drivers are more vigilant about doing it, but by and large, people know that it should be done. It’s good automotive maintenance.
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April 9, 2018
Finding myself in Dayton
I went to the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop in Dayton, Ohio, this weekend, which I shall call EBWW because it’s easier to type and because that’s what the organizers call it so it’s all Official-like. I waited years for this. I’m not kidding. I discovered there was an EBWW right after registration closed for the last one, of course, and since it happens every other year I got to wait approximately 913 days to go to this one. In the meantime, I re-read all of Erma’s books and checked that I had the registration date and time entered onto my calendar about a hundred times. I waited. It wasn’t easy. I am not a patient person.
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January 10, 2018
Holiday Smut
One of my book clubs determined, through a great conversation of great fun that shall not be repeated here (what happens in Book Club stays in Book Club), to read “holiday smut” over the break. I was intrigued. I have never read smut. I swore to never, ever read That Smutty Book Everyone Talked About a Couple Years Ago because I heard right off the bat that it was chock-full of really poor writing. (In fact, I’ve heard it’s so terribly written that I won’t even sully the wall of my blog with its title.) There are too many good books to waste time on sloppy writing, no matter how steamy it is. So when one of my friends offered to recommend a smut book for our December read, I jumped at it. The only smut book I really knew about was the best seller that was made into a movie. Which I also didn’t see because I don’t want to throw good money at poor writing in any form. So to have a smut book recommended for reading over Christmas? Perfect. A whole new genre to explore. I’ve studied the Russian masters, the English classics, the new Americans. Dostoyevske to Shakespeare to Capote to Kerouac. Spent a whole term on Chaucer freshman year of high school. Read Lolita in college because Sting sang Don’t Stand So Close To Me. Fell in love with Dorothy Parker’s wit. But through sheer subconscious purposeful intent luck, I have managed to avoid smut. It’s time to expand my horizons.
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December 21, 2017
Just my type
I pulled out my grandmother’s typewriter today, which I have been more or less using as a decoration on the bookshelves in the great room because I love typewriters. I love how they look, how they sound, and that incredible works have been created on them. I learned how to type on an IBM Selectric nearly 30 years ago. My school had a computer lab filled with boxy DOS machines and giant monitors with tiny displays, but the typing class still had Selectrics. To this day I don’t know why I signed up for a typing class, except that maybe my subconscious knew that I’d go on to bail out of engineering school after three terms and move to journalism. My subconscious, then, is way smarter than the rest of my brain. This is not surprising.
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December 6, 2017
On Writing. Humorous and Otherwise.
Registration for the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop opened at 11 a.m. yesterday. The conference is for humor writers, the only conference I’ve ever found that is specific to humor, and is held every two years. I discovered it too late to register for the 2016 workshop, because it sold out in six hours the winter before. I’ve been waiting not-so-patiently ever since. If you know me, you know that this has been excruciating. I entered the conference dates on my calendar as soon as they were announced in spring 2016. When the registration date was announced, that went on my calendar (with the notification activated for five minutes before). I wasn’t leaving anything up to chance and set an alarm, too, that morning.
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December 4, 2017
Stuff I Did When I Wasn’t Here
Couple days off from writing, and I’m ready to get back to it!
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November 26, 2017
Tech Troubles Part Deux
We have the phone situation sorted out. Solved, as usual, by throwing money at it. I’m the proud owner of a new iPhone, and Zoe took my 6s, which has its own issues (battery is at 83% whatever) but will suit her usage needs adequately for the time being. Turns out her iPhone 5’s screen was coming off because the battery was exploding inside the case, pushing it out. The tech explained that for the cost of the battery, Apple would replace the entire phone as they don’t try to repair exploded batteries. Apparently exploded batteries are very finicky and messing with it could result in a “thermal event.” It took me about 15 seconds to figure out that “thermal event” is engineer-speak for “fire.” We debated replacing it for the cost of the battery, and ultimately decided it wasn’t worth the $79 because the phone is so old it’s incapable of being updated anyway. So, new phones (or new-to-her in Zoe’s case) for the women in the family. Yay.
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November 25, 2017
Will run for bacon
This morning we participated in the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri 1-mile fun run/walk, called “Run for the Cookies.” It’s an annual event that Zoe and I have done for five consecutive years, and M has done for the last three. It’s a good excuse to get up on the lazy Saturday after Thanksgiving and get moving, but my favorite part is being in the middle of a huge group of really cool people. Because Girl Scouts are cool beans.
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November 24, 2017
Tech times three
Just like celebrity deaths, technology woes come in threes. Which is always fun since technology is so inexpensive to replace/repair and since it’s always so easy to work with.
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November 23, 2017
Gratitude with Attitude
On this day we are supposed to be extra thankful and share what we’re thankful for. The top of my gratitude list is pretty standard (family, friends, food, etc.) so I won’t repeat what you can get scrolling through Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Let’s just assume I have all the same feels as everyone else. Instead, here are the things for which I’m grateful that never get mentioned.
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