Inspiration

For any photography fans - or any of you that just like to look at amazing photos - I have two things to share today:

The Big Picture from the Boston Globe posts fantastic journalistic photography. I regret not more photojournalism courses in college when I look at these.

And 100 Days in Glacier National Park has some beautiful nature photography.

Just wanted to share. Enjoy!

Read along with me... and thousands of other people...

I just started daily installments of Dickens' A Christmas Carol over at Daily Lit. It appears magically in short, little, readable emails every day precisely at 10:30 AM. It's so Christmasy! And totally free!

MARLEY was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

How can you resist that opening? Join me, won't you?

I'm a winner!

I've finished nanowrimo with 50,119 words! Hooray! Although it's sort of an anticlimax since my story isn't even close to being finished. The murderer is still lurking the halls of the radio station in late October of 1938. And he or she will continue to lurk until I get around to finishing. I'm guessing it'll take another 30,000 words to wrap things up. Then the story will go in the (virtual) drawer for a month until I'm ready to dive into the editing process - although it's tempting to start editing before I've even finished the first draft.

Congrats to my niece Jessica who also won this year - on her first attempt. Beginner's luck... pffft :-P

Still around...

Things have been crazy around here lately. My nanowrimo novel (a murder mystery set in a radio station in 1939 Chicago) is coming along nicely. As of right this second I'm up to 19,572 words and going strong. I do believe I'm going to make it this year! Of course, it helps that I see my niece Jessica's word count every time I log into the website (and it's almost always higher than mine!) I haven't been able to meet up with any of the local nanowrimo participants like I'd hoped, but the month isn't even halfway over yet. There's still time.

We've also been very busy tracking down furniture on craigslist, seeing it, and having it picked up and delivered. It would be much easier (and much more expensive) to just go to a furniture store and get this stuff, but there's something treasure-like about finding things at garage sales and craigslist. For me anyway. I found the pine farm table I've been looking for for weeks for a third of what it would cost new. And I think due very strongly to Miss Kate's adorableness (and the owner's desire to get it out of his garage) got the matching china cabinet thrown in for free... you can't beat that. Maybe I'll get around to taking some pictures of everything one of these days.

Kate's got two teeth coming in (one on top, one on bottom) and is motoring around getting into everything. She crawls on her elbows like she's doing a Marine boot camp obstacle course, but it seems to work for her. She certainly gets where she wants to go... unfortunately, for mom and dad who now have to pay very close attention.

I probably won't be around very much here on the old blog until things calm down a little more. Maybe after my novel is complete - fingers crossed?

Glutten for punishment?

I've decided to attempt nanowrimo yet again. For those of you that don't know what that is it's a crazy exercise in which people all over the world try to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. (That's 1666.666666... words a day if you do the math.) I've tried twice before and never made it past the first week... This year I'm going to try to meet up with some others in the area that are also out of their minds. Maybe some support will help me finish?

This year's novel is going to be a mystery - I hope - inspired by my recent readings of the Lady Julia Gray series by Deanna Raybourn and the Aunt Dimity series by Nancy Atherton (both fabulous, by the way, if you're into romancy and/or historical mysteries). I already have a fairly good plot in mind and, according to the founder of nanowrimo, that makes me ahead of the game already. Wish me luck.

A new member of the family

This is "kitten". It's just "kitten" for now pending approval of my name suggestion... She's courtesy of my sister's boyfriend's cat, Luna, who found herself in the family way a few months ago.


Kitten is adjusting very very well to her new home. She's already conspiring with Kate to gain access to the oh-so-fun and super slidey Cheerios. Kate happily knocks them off of her tray to kitten waiting below ready to bat the little things under every piece of furniture in the house.

Swing time

Probably one of the best things about the new house (in Kate's opinion) is the little playground at the end of the street with the baby swing. Unfortunately, there are no swings to fit Mommy's back end, so for now she swings alone.