Category Archives: Life

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Zilker Kite Festival

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I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this highly anticipated yearly event to you non-Austinites, but Sunday is the Zilker Park Kite Festival (man, everything has it’s own website these days…). I’m pretty sure that I have been every year since I moved to Austin. The park is packed with people, the air full of kites. (It’s also fun to go down the next weekend and count how many kites were abandoned as part of the “tree stronger than string phenomenon”). It’s adorable. If you live in Austin and haven’t been, I highly suggest it! We don’t even have the near-mandatory pack of kids and dogs and still have a blast…

34_zilker_kite_fest_05.jpg

Every year we head out in a big group and throw down a blanket and stare at the sky. Last year we made it in time to see a stupid co-worker an acquaintance in a bikini (?) and the contest for smallest fly-able kite. There are stunt kites and power kites and colored kites, maybe even monkey kites.

However, we’ve never participated! Shocking, I know. This year we made a special trip to Whole Earth Provision Co., one of my favorite store since my NZ trip, and got the “Super Dragon” kite. It defies explanation, I’ll just have to get you some pictures after this weekend.

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It Wrote Itself

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Midnight. This is when I’m at my best. I’ll be at home, readying myself for bed time, when something will come to me. Something brilliant. Then I think some more, and some more. Then I realize I need a pen. Then I scribble furiously, which I’ve been told is unreadable to anyone but me (clearly a secret plan so no one can get famous but me). Then I rest. Inevitably, more comes. This is followed by getting up to write, back down to bed, for as long as it takes, amidst cursing and lights flipping on and off.

It’s all worth it. I’m able to admit that my prose was slightly (baby steps here) droning and worthless in my poor little dream of a novel. Today? WHOLE NEW FIRST CHAPTER. Whole new concept. Fresh ideas. Invigorated spirit, which until now, thought about symbolically printing and burning the entire book (very dramatic, no?). Well, anyway, there you have it. It might not be the worst thing ever any more. No fires.

Who knows? Maybe this gym and eating good and being good and going to church life is pointing me in the write right (writer’s humor for you) direction.

If you’re anything like Mr. MK, you’re thinking, it’s about time. I’ll take that. But come on, I just needed to be INSPIRED.

🙂

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My Apologies

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There have been reports of a variety of illnesses. Sore throats, temperatures, road rage, insomnia, blacking out, binge drinking, ingrown toenails, and other issues arising out of otherwise normally healthy friends.

I hate to admit this, but the Earth apparently has titled off it’s axis slightly, in a direct answer to the dilemma it was trying to resolve, The “SGS getting up early (while it’s still dark out) to work out plague”. As a result, many have been stricken with a wide variety of issues. I completely understand what a silly idea that was. My sincerest apologies, I had no idea that getting up at 4:30 would ruin so many lives. In order to stop the insanity, I will be returning to my normal schedule tomorrow, of staying up late and sleeping until my husband calls me lazy and asks for lunch.

Everything should return to normal. Until then, keep your masks on.

fancy sars mask

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Quotations For Today

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Hey, can you blame me? I’m on my way back to the dentist…

Elie Wiesel:
Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.

Sharon O’Brien:
Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn’t wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say.

Sholem Asch:
Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.

Jules Renard:
Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to those who have none.

Stephen Leacock:
Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself – it is the occurring which is difficult.

Jack London:
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

F. Scott Fitzgerald:
You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you’ve got something to say.

pen and writing
www.geotamil.com

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Phat Tuesday

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That’s what I’m having. Woo Hoo. By the end of the day today, the first chapter of my novel will be in the hands of an EDITOR, and I will be working on the second. I can’t tell you for the life of me why it took so long. It’s a challenge to do something this personal for me, I’m a little afraid of success, even more than failure (which of course is the most likely for any writer). Getting a book on the market will validate so much for me.

Procrastinating is easy to do, there are things that come up, excuses that I can make to avoid the work. Since there’s no time limit, no boss, no structure. It doesn’t come to you, and I’ve learned you really can’t force it. It’s rough work, slow going and intense, full of difficult thought and angst and pressure. I actually should be rushing to get it over with.

reading books
www.news.wisc.edu

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I Got Implants

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Not to throw you off or get you too excited, that must be the nitrous talking – it’s not what you think. I went in to the dentist for what started out as a routine cleaning and found out there was this giant ruptured about-to-explode-all-over-my-face-tooth that needed to be extracted immediately.

I, of course, blame that on the crappy food in New Zealand, obviously I was served something that rots otherwise lovely teeth. We’re talking, got a sticker every trip to the dentist for years teeth. Hmpf.

Well, I’m a little lighter now, down one tooth. But then they IMPLANT you with BONE in your MOUTH but there’s still a HOLE and I have to go BACK and get some more FAKE TOOTH or something. Oh wait! I almost forgot to mention the STITCHES. In my face. Yuck.

This is what I think of when I think dentist:


www.garyandmegumi.com

And now you’re telling me I have to go BACK? There will be a total of three days like this one, where I have a mouth full of gauze and can’t talk and have bottles of Vicodin lying around and I’m eating soup and drinking water (not through a straw!). This is not my idea of a good time, folks.

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Wrap It Up Already

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The difficulty now is the editing. I have manuals, a sense of style, papers, suggestions from everyone I can think of, and no desire to change a single sentence in this book of mine. I have been pushing through all the uncertainties and gotten sick enough of moping around and decided I am so anxious to publish this novel it is going to happen! I’ve gotten through almost the whole first chapter and succeeded in nearly a one-third increase, which puts me on target for a perfectly lovely sized book.

Writing is such a visceral thing, which takes you on a journey, not the other way around. To then go back and pick through that impassioned writing and see what makes the grade is one thing, but to creatively be ready with a backup that’s better than the rough draft has proved near impossible for me. It’s a delicate matter, and I’m not generally very delicate.

I of course will be hiring outside help as well, but it’s cheaper the less work they end up with, if you were wondering. Can’t wait to be selling this thing!


www.proof-it-write.com

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Super Sunday

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Getting up at 9am after going to bed at 4am is something I had never done before. MK and KE went for breakfast tacos and for some crazy inexplicable reason, I cleaned the house. We are talking laundry, sweeping, mopping, dishes. It was bizarre. I think it had something to do with me noticing that my floors were COVERED in glitter, feathers, and confetti. You would have thought Carnaval had been AT my house, not that we returned from it and managed to bring that much stuff home on us. Corsets must collect that stuff.

We then got all the super top secret ingrediets for my WORLD FAMOUS BEST OF ALL TIME 7 layer dip, and upon our return from the store, promptly fell back asleep after noticing what a nice day it was outside. Yay for naps.

We woke up just in time to get ready for the DM Super Bowl Bash. The crowd of the twenty of us, in all honesty, have had to been the best at completely ignoring the projection screen with some sporting event on it in all time. Kevin Federline and noticing that Prince likes other peoples songs better than his own were the only two things that silenced us.

There was too much else going on: the dogs, the fajitas (56 lbs. or so of chicken) the rest of the food, the beer fridge, and last but not least, we all had to call DADDY and say HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

( Sidenote: Thanks goodness the Pats didn’t win, I would have gone with him and been stuck in that rain, I hate rain)

All in all, I couldn’t have had a better weekend, getting to hang out with everyone and having the night together to tell all our stories from the night before was a riot!

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Everybody Loves Bloggers

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AP Press Story from yahoo.com:

WASHINGTON – Shortly after her swearing-in as the first female House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) took time to field questions from a few dozen Internet bloggers on a conference call that was off limits to mainstream media.Last week, Pelosi’s aides arranged for bloggers to question two Democratic House leaders on another conference call shortly before President Bush‘s State of the Union speech.

Pelosi also hired a full-time staff member this month dedicated to blogger outreach, and is making plans to launch a blog of her own. The day she was sworn in, bloggers were given special accommodations at the Capitol to cover the event, and fed lunch.

It’s all evidence of the newfound attention bloggers from left-leaning Web sites are commanding on Democratic-run Capitol Hill, especially from the new speaker, a San Franciscan with an appreciation for the power of the Internet and grass-roots activism.

Schooled by evidence of what Internet-driven politics can accomplish — from fueling
Howard Dean‘s presidential campaign in 2004 to propelling Ned Lamont to victory over Joseph Lieberman (news, bio, voting record) in Connecticut’s Democratic Senate primary last year — Pelosi and other politicians have realized bloggers are too important to ignore.

“They’ve gone from an initial writing blogs off, then moving to skepticism, then moving to, ‘OK, maybe we can find a way of working with these guys,'” said John Aravosis, who runs Americablog.com.

“It’s a power base and it’s influential and it’s an opportunity. And you know what? It exists,” Aravosis added.

“It should only scare you if you’re on their bad side.”

Blogs also are a way for Pelosi and others to communicate directly with a politically engaged audience, without filtering by traditional media. She promoted the Democrats’ agenda for their first 100 legislative hours in a posting on Huffingtonpost.com.

Democrats, in turn, credit bloggers with helping marshal successful opposition to President Bush’s 2005 plan to overhaul Social Securityby adding private accounts, a fight Pelosi led.

“It’s a mistake to think that these people just sit behind their machines and don’t do anything other than talk to each other and send money,” said Joe Trippi, who managed Howard Dean’s Internet-driven campaign. “These people are very active in their precincts, in their communities.”

Friendly bloggers can help defuse attacks. Liberal bloggers rose to Pelosi’s defense when she was criticized after the November election for employing nonunion workers at her vineyard. Thinkprogress.org trumpeted Pelosi’s side of the story: Growers are prohibited by law from meddling in union contract issues before workers vote to organize.

Republicans are stepping up their involvement with blogs as well, and Pelosi’s aides are planning new media training sessions for Democratic lawmakers and aides partly to expand use of blogs — one more sign that Congress’ presence in the blogosphere will only grow.

“The speaker will be blogging,” promised Karina Newton, Pelosi’s director of new media.

“She understands the power that the netroots have.”

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Sorry, doesn’t sway me. I’m sticking to my convictions.

reps vs dems ladies