Time for a Laugh

My son introduced me to a Weird Al song that I readily agreed with and love.  Please enjoy the video of Word Crimes by Weird Al.

I like this post because it is so true.  I have received comments before that people really don't make these mistakes.  If only I could post my emails from work. Reef for wreath, do for due, grate for great, etc. I have to read emails aloud to sound out what they are trying to say because the English is so bad.  I have this posted on my office door. I wonder how many of the words my co-workers actually recognize as an acyrologia.

The final chuckle for the day from my favorite cartoonist Nick Seluk at The Awkward Yeti. Love him.


okay one more from him


I hope you enjoyed your visit.

Happy writing!

Writing exercise -making it part of your daily life

Writing- you get better the more you practice.  We all know this but finding the time is hard.
I don't always have time to practice traditionally because I spend a lot of my time sitting at the ball park for my son's games and practices. I cannot whip out my laptop or notebook there but there are plenty of times when my son is on the bench and I get a little bored cheering for the other parents' kids.  Nothing against the kids I just do not like baseball. I know, very un-American of me.  During these times I love to practice my writing.  How do I do this when I can't use my laptop or a notebook?  I observe the people around us, the location, listen in on conversations and write them in my head.  Bear with me here and you will be doing this soon yourself.

As I sit and cheer mindlessly with the other parents I image how I would describe the scene; the cool breeze chilling the metal seats as it wicks the heat from my body, the sounds of the younger siblings playing around the bleachers, the grandmother knitting juxtaposed next to the grandmother who is pretending she is too young to be a grandmother.

I don't limit myself to "writing" only at the ball park. Today at lunch I watched an employee walk by the open door and instantly started "writing" how I would describe his gait if he was a character in my book.  Here is what I came up with: ...his feet shuffled resistently along the carpet as his bulky hands worked like paddles moving him laboriously towards his destination  Or worked like paddles as he lumbered towards his destination.

I love some of the things I have come up with during these sessions and have quickly jotted them down or secreted off and recorded them into the voice recorder app on my phone.

I have heard some interesting conversations, observed some interesting behaviors and people and paid more attention to my surroundings.

Writing in my head, creating scenes, using bits of dialogues as prompts, creating character back story, and describing what I am seeing have all helped me exercise my writing muscle and I am a better writer for it and my time in line, at the baseball park, on long drives, etc. all go by more quickly.

I hope you find this technique helpful too.  I can't wait to hear how it has worked for you.

Happy Writing!

B.B. King

I was sorry to hear of the great Mr. King's death on May 14th.  Sometimes when I hear of someones death it seems too soon or I feel sorry but B.B. King was an amazing man who lived his life to the fullest and shared his love with everyone who listened.  He passed away at age 89 and had still been touring into his 80's.  I have been lucky enough to see him play in a few small venues.

I always liked his music but seeing him play live was amazing. He played with so much passion. In fact I was so inspired by him that he plays a part in my first MS. Now I have to decide if he stays in the book or if I take him out so the book is not dated.  I can't think of anyone else who would be as amazing and inspirational a musician with such a long career.

I couldn't let his passing go by without saying something.  Thank you B. B, for all the music and wonderful concerts.  Peace be with you.

33 and stuck in your ways?

I read in the elevator- so it must be true- that once you are 33 you are stuck in your musical ways. That seemed completely unbelievable to me so I searched for the study and found this site:

http://www.idigitaltimes.com/age-33-your-musical-life-officially-over-says-new-report-437371

If you don't want to read it, it basically states that, from research gleaned from Spotify and Echo Nest, people's musical tastes are cemented at 33.  You will no longer discover new music or listen to music out of your genre.   For some reason this happens earlier if you have kids.

 I cannot believe this.  I have kids. Nine years after my music exploration cut off date I started liking Country music.  I had never listened to it before. Over the last year a new employee has shared a lot of music I never listened too before with me and I love a lot of it.

If this study is true than I am an exception. Which feels kinda good.

What do you think?  Please share your stories. I can't  wait to read them.

If you like music Arlee Bird's blog "Tossing it Out" usually has a battle of the bands where you can listen to the same songs by two different bands and vote on which version is your favorite.  Arlee is the founder of the very popular A to Z Challenge and is focused on that right now but I am sure he will go back to his regular format soon so check it out.

http://tossingitout.blogspot.com/

Crazy Times

These last two weeks have been crazy busy, stressful, injury laden and exhausting.

I cannot talk about most of it because it pertains to work.  But I can say that is where most of the stress and exhaustion have come from.  On a lighter, strange but true note, I have an email correspondence at work going back and forth between the following people, (These are their first names only and they are their real first names. I wish I could use whole names because one of the full names is great.) Decolia, Tip and Passion.  If I wrote that in a book no one would believe that I had put any work into coming up with names for my characters.

Some of the exhaustion is due to having to sleep in a different bed in another room in our house.

We recently had a guest stay with us from Nicaragua, she was a lovely women here through an exchange with our church. The day she left we had to move into the guest room she had been occupying so that we could finally finish fixing the bathrooms from our massive Thanksgiving leak.  Since then we have not had a working master bathroom and for them to fix it we had to be out of our master bedroom.  While moving was a pain at least we have somewhere to move in to.  The more my husband has bemoaned not having a master bathroom the more I have realized how amazingly lucky we are.  I grew up in a home with one bathroom for a family of four.   We currently have two working bathrooms, soon we will have three, for a family of four.  We honestly are not having any issues with everyone having to use the one upstairs bathroom at the same time and if it was a problem we could always use the one downstairs.

I spent the A to Z challenge talking about all the things that have come and gone in my lifetime and the normalcy of multi-bathroom homes was one that I didn't realize until this week.  I grew up in a neighborhood where all the houses had one bathroom and some had a powder room on the main floor.  My grandparents houses all had one bathroom as well.  Now, the room that everyone hates to clean is a must in multiples in every home.

The stress at work, the stress of our escalating cost to fix our bathroom, the lack of sleep, the injuries, the after school activities, the end of year projects and testing; it will all be coming to and end soon and what that end will be I will only know when we get there but I hope that the end brings some serenity and good health.

I need to carve out some time for writing again.  Hopefully that will come with the transition to summer.  No homework will free up a lot of my time. I know it is not my homework but I still spend so much time overseeing and assisting with said homework.

Happy Writing.

May the 4th be with you

I still find a lot of people who don't know about today being Star Wars day, but I am sure with Disney promoting it now that everyone will know next year.

I visited  http://www.lunchboxdad.com/ last month and picked out the Chewbacca meal for my daughter and son's lunches for today. Although my son would have been happier with the one he is highlighting today with the storm trooper.  Maybe I'll do a version on the veggies tonight with the tie fighter and storm trooper.

Have a wonderful day and May the 4th be with you!  (I am the only person in my office saying this today.)