- First off, the writing went pretty well this week. Nothing Monday or Tuesday, 624 on Wednesday, a whopping 2034 on Thursday (to make up for Monday and Tuesday), and only 134 on Friday because it was Birthdaypalooza and we never even broke out our laptops until right before bed.
- Birthdaypalooza was AWESOME. Very little sleep was had, and I am totally okay with that. I cannot remember the last time I hung out with people with whom there was NO SILENCE. I mean, I’m not a woman who is afraid of silence, but as soon as everybody arrived…
Totally wrong music but I couldn’t find the original clip from Mamma Mia. Anyway there might have been zombies, a few classic cars, and three hot Irish brothers who were very disappointed to find out we’re all married. What happened in Birmingham stays in Birmingham. There was lots and lots of shoptalk. Went to bed at 2. Up at 8. More shop talk. A three hour lunch before we all had to finally get back on the road. I was so so sad to see them go. - On the way home, I stopped in Tuscaloosa and met Bobby Mathews. His son Noah has possibly the most pinchable baby cheeks I have ever seen. And gorgeous blue eyes. We had a lovely conversation at Joe Muggs with more talking shop (are you seeing a theme–I totally never get to hang out with other writers IRL) and food (which we all know is my other passion).
- I did a fair bit of shopping on this trip. Not really much in terms of time, but picked up several things. Stocked up on meat and cheese and assorted other supplies at Sam’s, grabbed a dystopian YA anthology at Books-A-Million, and picked up wine (Mississippi has lousy importation laws and there’s a lot of good wines I just can’t get at home) and some new bowls at World Market. When I got new dishes at Christmas, the point was to downsize the dishes physically to help with my portion control. But the bowls that came with that set are GINORMOUS and I can fit my head in them (almost), so I picked up some nice small bowls for me. Which brings me to Operation G.I.T.
- So I ate out EVERY SINGLE DAY Monday-Saturday this week. I feel a great deal of UGH for this because a) lots of food, b) I have very poor self control and frequently do not make good choices when I eat out (which is why I don’t do it very often). I’m not going near a scale, but I’m SURE I’m back to where I was after Christmas. AGAIN. I was also very short on my workouts this week due to the injuries earlier in the week and not being home at lunch to do my midday workouts. So the name of the game this week is salads and soups with clear broth, lots of veggies, and hitting it hard on the workouts. I’ll give it a week to flush my system and then weigh and see what the damage is.
- Today is going to be nuts because I must Do All The Things that haven’t been done since I was gone. Laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, and we have a bridal shoot this afternoon. And somewhere in there I need to workout and get words, so must get going.
Lauralynn Elliott
BIRTHDAYPALOOZA!!!!!
Warning: There will likely be an excessive amount of capslocking today.
Why, you ask?
BECAUSE IT’S BIRTHDAYPALOOZA!!!!!!
In three hours I am totally OUT OF HERE and headed for Birmingham, where I am meeting up with Lauralynn Elliott and the other birthday girl, Susan Bischoff (Monday) for 24 hours of writerly AWESOMENESS and birthday festivities.
:whispers: I might be a little hyper.
I will either be incognito and away from the interwebz or there will be LIVE TWEETING OF THE AWESOME. We shall see.
Must go do an iota of real work before I leave.
Fandrew Con 2011
We are in a flurry of prep here at Chez Bischoff for Fandrew Con 2011. Okay really we’ve just finished caffeinating, starting some taco soup in the crock pot for lunch, and are about to get clean so we’re fit for public presentation.
The darling Lauralynn Elliott arrives at NOON. And we just got a text from Andrew Himself that he and wife Tracey have landed in Charlotte. They should be here…at some point this afternoon. And then FANDREWCON 2011 BEGINS! I even made a sign! (proof that I should not be left alone with poster board and a box of crayons).
There are COOKIES (baked with special FandrewCon M&Ms, not that you can tell because the message kind of melted off when baked). And there has been SHOP TALK. It’s been awesome.
The big excitement for me yesterday was heading into Pigeon Forge and hitting up the outlets where the Levis Outlet (which did NOT have what I consider outlet prices, thanks very much) informed me that they have discontinued the 529s (along with a bunch of other female lines). So then Susan was awesome enough to drive me around to THREE OTHER local stores that carry Levis where I BOUGHT THEM OUT of 529s. Hey, when you find a brand of jeans that FITS YOUR BUTT without the GAPPY THING in the back, it’s worth investing.
Hubby texted me a picture of the 5 seasons of Supernatural that arrived yesterday. So we’ll have LOTS of TV viewing pleasure when I get home. Dean in high definition. Oh yeah. It’s research. No really. The hero in the book after the one I’m supposed to be plotting now is loosely based on Dean. Except, you know, he’s a wolf-shifter. So yeah. Research. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Susan and I have been discussing web and Facebook stuff this morning. The Facebook stuff still just boggles my mind but on the web site, I’m looking at creating a static landing page for the blog to make it more website-like, as there are a lot of searches of people just looking for me, info on my books, etc., and I want to make that easier for reader type people to find. For those of you on WordPress.com who might like to do the same, here are the instructions we found (thank you Susan, whose google-fu is better than mine). I want to try it on one of my non-active blogs to see how it works before I implement it. I have no idea whether it will change the indexed addresses of all my old posts.
Wow, I’m just full of random this morning.
Kait Nolan 