In Which We Feast Like Hobbits

I've been planning to write this post for months, now, and I just kept forgetting or getting sidetracked by other, more timely, posts.

But, here were are, finally, where I got to talk about the wonderful terribleness that is a HOBBIT FEAST.

What's a Hobbit Feast, you ask?

A Hobbit Feast is where you eat all the typical meals of a hobbit (First Breakfast, Second Breakfast, Elevenses, Luncheon, Afternoon Tea, Dinner, Supper, Dessert)(period appropriate food, too, of course) while watching a marathon of the extended LoTR movies.

My brave family and I decided to give this a try, and what better time and place to do so than winter, up at our cabin!

We split up the meals, so no one had to do too much cooking. The recipes all came from a middle earth database of middle earth dishes. And here is photo documentation of all of the food that was consumed.

FIRST BREAKFAST: Beorn's Honeynut Cake--made by Twin




The cake was okay. We felt with Twin's baking skills, she could have made something better

SECOND BREAKFAST: Strawberry French toast, Bangers and Bacon--made by my dad




Delicious. Also of note, the banger sausages were made by myself, Twin and Brother, since we have a killer banger recipe

ELEVENSES: Lembas Bread and Merry's Mulled Cider--made by Twin




The Lembas bread really had no flavor, though the texture was good. Another one we thought we could do better ourselves

LUNCHEON: Po-tay-to Soup--made by my mom



Really frickin good. One of the best courses

AFTERNOON TEA: Bilbo's Tea Cake, Lemon Muffin, Tea--made by Twin and myself



Another disappointment of baked goods. Especially since we have a killer lemon muffin recipe

DINNER: Balin's Spiced Beef--Made by my brother

Delicious. You can't really go wrong with a roast beef

SUPPER: Mrs. Maggot's Cottage Pie--made by me

Also delicious. Like the roast beef, you can't really go wrong with a shepherd's pie

DESSERT: Ten Cup Ranger Cookies--made by my brother.

Not bad, but again, we have better cookie recipes we could have gone with

Pretty much every two hours you eat another meal. They're really just tasting portions, so you're not eating a lot with each meal.

Honestly, the hardest part was sitting there, watching the movies all day long. It's a long marathon. By then end we were exhausted and we decided that if we would do the feast again, that we would allow activities while the movies are playing (i.e., board games or something). Overall, the entire feast and movies lasted 11 hours and 45 minutes.

The meals themselves were hit and miss. Any sort of baked goods were pretty much a failure and if we were to go it again in the future we would follow our own, much better, recipes. But the other meals were good.

Now, whether or not we'll do this again this winter, I don't know. I'm sure distance will make us grow fond again, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

In Which I Win The Arcade And Cross An Item Off The Bucket List

Remember when you were a kid and you'd go to the arcade? (and, I guess this is assuming you're roughly the same age as me, but regardless, if you can't rely on your memories, then use your imagination)

And so you'd play games and some of those games would reward you with tickets when you played well (or maybe not so well). And you'd be so excited and you'd go up to the counter to see what you could get for your tickets?

And it was always something disappointing. Like some taffy. Or a plastic ring, or, like, maybe a slinky if you were real lucky. And behind the counter they would have the high value prize, that would take thousands of tickets. And you'd look at them and wonder what it would take to get one of those most awesome prizes.

Well, I have the answer. It takes you being an adult, your two siblings, a bit of disposable income and about a month of Saturdays.

And if you do that, you too, my friends, can finally cash in enough tickets (though it's all digital now) and get yourself one of those super prizes.

Like a PS4, worth 52,000 tickets.

BLAMMO!

 

In Which I'm At The Minnesota State Fair

No real post today, pals. It's Labor Day which means it's my last day to hit up the MN State Fair.

It is a delicious time of year.

deep fried cheese curds

 



Bingo!

 

 

ham and cheese savory scone

 



This happened

Chicken fried bacon

 

 

Brother, Twin, Me

Corn Dog!!!

 

In Which Things Slow Down (A Bit)

HerpaDerp!!

I've been meaning to include this link for the last few weeks and I keep forgetting.

But here's the link for my Success Story Interview on QueryTracker.

I always love reading QT Success Stories, because they're a lot like "how I got my agent" blog posts, which we all know are awesome

Last week was the first week I've had in a long time where things slowed down and went a little easier. And it was awesome. I doubt it will last (seriously doubt it, in fact) so I was able to enjoy it even more, since I knew it was probably just a temporary state of being.

I got a bunch of beta and CP reading done and I managed to get in 12 new pages on the WIP.

They were kind of crappy 12 pages, but 12 pages are better than 0 and I will happily take them. I'm just hoping I can keep up the pace over the next few weeks. My next MFA packet is due in early April.

I also went out to meet with some local writer peeps for drinks one night and had lunch on another day with some of my local MFA classmates. Both were a lot of fun! I love hanging out with fellow writers.

Also, going out gave me a reason to wear the new earrings Twin got my for our B-day:

I lurrrrve them

How about you? Have things been crazy busy for you, or are you living at a more sedate pace?

In Which We Build

So my little staycation is over. Sadface. Back to the dayjob and the interwebs and everything else. But at least it's finally gotten cold outside. Minnesotans who don't like the cold peeve me off. I mean, why do you live here if you whine when it gets below 60?

On the opposite spectrum, why are there still people wearing flip flops when it's 35 degrees out and I spotted a few flurries? THAT MAKES NO SENSE, PEOPLE.

Ahem. Anyway. So twin and I did a lot of stuff on the staycation. Not quite as much as we hoped, but isn't that always what happens?
But we started refinancing our house (WOO HOO!) and got the veggie garden prepped for winter. BUT! Most importantly, we honed our carpentry skills and pumped out a brand new pocket pantry!!

We have terrible pantry space in our kitchen. Just one little "fancy pantry" as we call it with a door that swings out of a tiny cabinet. It seems cool, but in reality the shelves are too small to hold anything bigger that a bottle of olive oil, so we have to carefully stack things on the floor. Or, when we run out of room (like we have, now) we just have to put things on our counters. It's super classy.

Anyhoo, thanks to Pinterest, we came up with a solution and Twin and I got to work.




Lumber and a patio full of dog toys

 

 





Woo hoo! The frame has been built!



Shelves and dowels added. Now we stain!



It got colder as the week progressed, so we built a fire in the fire pit. Also we have tons, TONS, of dead fall from our trees that have been waiting for years to be burned. We made a nice dent in the brush pile. The fire was burning so hot that we had troubles keeping it going because it would burn the wood so quickly we almost wouldn't have time to fetch another pile from the brush pile.



YAY! The finished project! It's not stocked yet, because we're still letting the polyurethane dry, but this is our pocket pantry! It slides into the gap between the fridge and the wall (we have a 4.5 inch gap there) It's on casters and can roll out and in.



Here's a pic of it in it's little pocket. I cannot wait to load this baby up!

 So there you have it! That was a big part of our vacay. So how about you? Did you do anything crafty or exciting while i was away?

In Which I Revise (Still)

So I'm revising Break Free. Scratch that. I've been revising Break Free for maybe 2 months? 3? I dunno, I'm a terrible estimator of time and I'm waaaaay too lazy to go look.

Okay I lied. I'm not that lazy. Okay wait. Yes I am, I'm just more curious than lazy. It's been just a little over 2 months say my records. Granted there were a few weeks in there where the day job was so so busy that there was no writing done at all. And also a week of vacay where the writing stuff was not done. But still, you get the idea.

Anyhoo, where I'm going with is, next week I have another week of vacay. Staycay actually. And by vacay I mean, not working at the dayjob. Instead twin and I will be working around the house. Preparing the veggie garden for winter, yard work, house repairs etc. So, you know, better than work, but still actually doing work.




True story: this is not our garden

I'm really, really close to finishing these rounds of revisions. And then I can send the MS to a few beta readers and hope they give me the sign off to send that baby back into the world. If not, it will be more revisions. It's not like I'm really in a hurry, but I kind of am in a bit of a timing crunch to get it back out as soon as possible for varying reasons that I won't get into because that's a whole post on it's own.

So for right now, my goal is to try and revise the shit out of the MS this week in the hopes that I can send it to beta readers and not have to worry about it on my staycay. And by worry about it, I mean, not have to worry about how I'm not revising because I'm tilling the garden or tevs.

So anyway, wish me luck!

How about you? Are you revising? Or writing? Or brainstorming? I want deets!

In Which I Share Good News

Yay! You're back! I'm glad to see it.

Because I have some fun news to share today!

What is it, you ask? What could it be?

Simple.

I sold my short story Hole Ridden!

Woot!!! That's right! I'm going to officially be a published author!!

It will be appearing in Dark Moon Digest #6, which should be available for purchase in early December. It will be available as an ezine at a later release date.

I'm super excited guys. It's nice to know that when I actually put in the work to get something published (this was the first story I actually submitted anywhere) it can happen.

This is, hands down, my favorite short story I've written. It's also the short story that people who have read it tend to remember the most. People refer to it as "the hole story", which is a pretty accurate description.

I've mentioned it in posts here, here, here and here (where it was picked as editor's choice on OWW).

In that third post, which was mostly about how my wordle cloud for it ended up being a creepy, ominous cloud that was a perfect visual representation for the story itself, Twin had stated that when it was published she would make me a nice frame with the wordle cloud.

Well, she didn't forget:

Yay! Thanks to everyone who's ever beta read it for me or offered me advice on dealing with submissions. YOU ARE ALL AMAZE BALLS. Glitter in the air for all!

In Which I Went Shopping

Hi all, sorry about yesterday's post, The link for the bread recipe was included, but I realized it was kind of hidden between the pictures.

So here's the link to the recipe again, for anyone who wanted it: Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread.

Here's what mine ended up looking like. And I'm not going to lie. It was delicious.








So, last week I mentioned shopping therapy at the RenFest. I told myself I wasn't going to buy anything this year because, as mentioned, I am pretty broke (AND Doggy Tula has come down with a serious itching problem over the last few weeeks. She will be getting a second vet visit later this week. Sigh).

Anyway, so they we were, hanging out at Renfest, studiously NOT thinking about how Twin's car was stolen and how someone was in our house while we were sleeping, and THERE IT WAS...

Now, I know I've mentioned before how I'm jealous of Twin's ability to look good in hats. It doesn't come as easy for me. In fact, my steampunk writing hat in my blog pic is really the first awesome hat I've ever owned.


Until. I found. THIS!!!





That's right! A mothereffing steampunk Bowler/Derby Hat! Holy hell guys. I wanted it IMMEDIATELY.

So I bought it.

For reals. I would've totally regretted not getting it.


So, now I have another steampunk hat. This one, though, will be a steampunk EDITING/REVISION hat. I think I may change my blog picture to match the hat of whatever I'm doing at the time. So, for example, since I'm revising Break Free right now, I'll be changing the above picture to match.

So, there you have it. The Siren call of the steampunkery sucks me in again. Man, I would buy so much cool stuff if I had a lot of money.

How about you? Bought anything frivilous necessary lately?

In Which We Talk Swears

*there will be swearing in this post. Look away if you do not approve

Like the title says, let's have a damn chat about swears (see what I did there?)

Specifically I want to talk about swears in fantasy (or sci-fi, or maybe even dystopian) novels.
If you're writing contemporary, or even paranormal or anything where your setting is the "here and now", well, your swears are already created for you. They're the ones we use every day (well, that some of us use every day *furtive eyes*)

BUT, what if you're writing a novel that doesn't take place here? What if it's 300 years in the future, or a fantasy world or wherever?
Fuck is probably not going to cut it.





It's important to remember, though, when making up swears, that you don't just make up any word to replace Fuck.
I mean, you can substitute Frem, or whatever, but it will hold a lot more believability if you pick a word that has actual meaning in the world.


Example.
When writing Glimpse, I needed some swears. Sure, I could have used fuck and shit (and there are some damns and hells) but it would have been a little lazy of me. My story is not on earth as we know it.
Pier, the main character, lives on an island and their whole culture is based around the sea. So, though shit may still be able to work, would a sea-related curse be even more believable?
The short answer is Yes. Also, creating world specific swears is a quick and easy way to fill out your world-building.

So, for Glimpse, I brainstormed with Twin and Brother and Also Hannah and Teebore, and the two main swears I came up with were:

Rot
Bilge

Both of them are related to the sea, or ships or whatever. They're believable and they work.
Also, if you plan to use any form of God as an expletive, it's important to take into consideration whether or not God even plays a part in your milieu.
In Glimpse, Pier's culture worships a sea goddess called Mear.
So instead of God-Damn, we have Mear Damn You.

Here's another example. In Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, the MCs are typically dragon riders (holy HELL I want to read those again RIGHT NOW). Even if they aren't dragon riders, all their lives revolve around dragons and fire lizards.
The swears they use?

Shells
Shards


In Across the Universe, the swear used on the ship is Frex, which seems like a no-nonsense word, until you find out that the letters FRX appear on certain areas of the ship. If you spend generations looking at those letters, it's completely believable that Frex could rise out of that.


Of course, all of this is relative to whether or not your character would even use swears. Pier most definitely would.
Kiersten White's Evie does, but in an adorable, believable, way: Bleep.

You should first and foremost do what is right for your character, even if it goes against your own beliefs. If you force a character to conform against their nature, then the character will read false and weak. And that's something we all want to avoid.

So, give me your damn thoughts. What are some of the swears you've used?

In Which I Search For Some Betas

Well, the time has come. I'm allllllmost done with my most recent line edit on Glimpse (just finishing up the whole "read backwards" edit. I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a great way to edit each sentence on it's own merit)

The novel has been read by Twin, and by the sparkling (but not in a vampire sort of way) Hannah and is in the hands of my other Crit Partner Teebore. It's also been sent to a few non-writers (Brother and some fabulous friends) So, now it's time to reach out to the rest of my awesome blog pals.

I am looking for a few Beta Readers for my YA Fantasy Glimpse of Another Shore.

logline = A boy rescues an orphaned sea serpent and discovers a way to save his home from war.

My sea serpent is not this scary

Things I would require in a beta reader:

• I'm looking for someone who reads YA. I really need someone who has a good feel for the YA audience.
  
  
• You have to be willing to read the entire manuscript. I'll email the whole thing to you.
  
  
• You have to be willing to read the entire manuscript in a month or less. I want to give people time to read it, but I also want people who will be willing to commit.
  
  
• You have to be willing to answer a questionnaire sent with the manuscript. It's not a huge list of questions, but it'll be included with the email.

In return, I can beta read for you if you would like me to.

If you are interested and fit the criteria, either comment on this post or shoot me an email at sarah.ahiers (at) gmail.com. I'm looking for 2-3 peeps and I hope to hear from you.

Otherwise, how are you doing? Are you working with betas for your novel?

In Which We Discuss Critiques Pt. 1

How was everyone's weekend? Was it fun? Did you win the lottery? Can I have some of your winnings?

No?

Jerk.

Anyway, for all you people who didn't win the lottery, I hope your weekend was full of fun and also of sleeping in.

Today, and for the next post, I want to talk about critiques and some of the weird things that can come about and some of the rage emotions which can sneak up on us during a critique of our work.

For today's post I want to discuss the "hit and miss" critiquer. That is, a person who gives you both a good and a bad critique.

And by "good and bad" I mean "useful/constructive" and "not useful/not constructive"

I'll start with my own example. I had a critique recently from a person I don't know. It was on an online critique... club I guess we'll call it? So the crit was solicited, but I've never met this person, not even in the Internet sort of way we've all "met"

We'll call her Jane (because I'm not super creative right now. Also Jane is easier to type than Shamalamadingdong, which is the first name that came to mind)

So Shama Jane writes a lengthy critique and I would say a good 50% of it is useful. Places she had troubles visualizing. World building questions. Helpful things that I was looking for in a crit.

But, for the remaining 50%, the crit was just crap. Crap to the point where I got really angry. To be fair, I'm quick to anger and quick to cool off (especially if I have no clue who you are and you're giving me a bad crit). Also, some of it was the tone she used (also, to be fair, she had stated straight up that she could be blunt in her crits and she didn't mean anything by it) but here's an example.

Pier hits someone in the face and I make note that the punch hurts his hand.

Her response is "Have you ever hit someone before? It doesn't just hurt your hand, it hurts your whole arm"

So right there, I'm annoyed. Of course I've hit someone before. Actually, Twin, Brother and I smack each other around quite a bit. Alone, I would ignore it. But it continues on in this vein for quite a bit more.

Later I make mention that Pier is a free diver and that he can hold his breath for five minutes after spending months working at it.

Her comments is along the lines of "That's completely unbelievable. No human can hold their breath that long. You've completely lost me as a reader"

(This is when I freaked out in my head.)




It frustrates me, as a writer, that she just assumed I was pulling this out of my ass, that I hadn't done the research on free diving (clearly she didn't even know what free divining was. Otherwise she would know that 5 minutes is pretty average and that the world record free-dive is somewhere around 12 minutes)

So, my question for you is, how do you handle someone who has, what you think are, fair crits and then has a junkload of crits you can't even begin to respect?

Obviously the answer here is to take what you want and discard the rest, but it's hard to separate the good from the bad when the bad makes you question the validity of the good.

Thoughts? Opinions? Stories about horrible crits you'd like to share? Please do so in the comments!

Wednesday will be part 2 of this critique blog post series (Critiques when you least expect them/didn't ask for them)

In Which The Siblings Provide Me With Some Art

So a few weeks ago, when Hannah, Teebore and I had a NaNo write in at the Libary (I actually know someone who pronounces library like that. It's weird because he's well educated and smart, but apparently he doesn't know "library" has two "R"s) Twin and Brother came along to do some drawing.

Brother decided he would draw a cover for my novel. Back in the day he wrote a comic strip for his school newspaper. It was really good and Twin and I keep harping on him to make a webcomic, but so far, no dice.

Anyway, back to his "cover" - this was before I won the cover for 30 Covers 30 Days. Keep in mind he didn't know anything much about the story beyond "A boy and his sea serpent".

Here is his work of genius:

The text, in case you can't read it says:

"You gotta believe!"
- a touching story about a boy and his sea serpent friend and their rage-filled fight against the world
Written by Sarah Ahiers
Illustrated by Sir Patrick Ahiers

Apparently at some point Brother was knighted.


Twin also drew a (more serious) picture for the WIP. Here's the colored pencil version, though I have high hopes she will color it with her awesome art tablet on the computer (hint hint)

I'm a particular fan of the fish.

So what about you? Do you have any art created for your WIPs?

In Which I Do A Dance

The "I finished a novel" dance of course!

It looks a little something like that, though to be fair I kinda hurt my back shoveling on Saturday, so it was much more restrained. You can ask twin, she'll vouch for me (she'd better...)

So, the working titled Glimpse of Another Shore is now completed at 58K words. Also, because I edited as I wrote (which was awesome by the way, I highly recommend it) I'm also technically done with my first line edit as well! wOOt!

Here are some fun stats:

This is my second novel completed in 2010 (though to be fair, Foxfire was started in late 09)

This is my first novel written in First POV (though I've done many a short story in first POV)

This is my first full length YA novel. I had a lot of fun and now think I may delve into YA more often. Also the shorter length required for YA is kinda nice.

I love it. A lot. I think some of my love has to do with the very minimal amount of editing and rewriting that needs to be done, but I don't even care. I LOVE IT.

So now I'm giving it another read through for a quick line edit. I'm also adding chapter breaks instead of just scene breaks. Then it will go to Twin for a read (since she's my alpha/beta reader) and also Hannah and Teebore who are my awesome crit partners.

After that I may look for a few other betas as well, peeps who read a lot of YA, preferably fantasy YA. So if that's you, we may be chatting later if you're interested (I'll make a post about it in the future)


So, how is your WIP coming?

In Which We Had No Interwebs

So the Internet was a no go yesterday evening in our house and therefore I couldn't write a post ahead of time.

Luckily, I have some LOLCats saved for just such and emergency.

Here you go.

And how was everyone's weekend? Twin, Myself and our mom went shopping at the Mall Of America and it was awesome.

In Which The Holiday Is Over

Well, here we are, back to Monday.

Yippee.

I actually forgot what I was originally going to post about today. So here's a fun conversation I had this weekend with Twin and Brother while driving over to our parents' to nom on some delicious turkey.

Bro: Look, a hawk in that tree. Where do hawks go in the winter?
Me: Some of them migrate. Some just stay here.
Bro: What do they eat?
Twin: Not all rodents hibernate. Squirrels.
Me: Voles
Twin: Mice
Bro: Well certainly the animal living in my ceiling doesn't hibernate.
Twin: We should get a ferret. That would take care of the problem
Me: Yeah but then we'd have a ferret in the wall, and that would be worse
Bro: Then we could stick a fox in the walls to get the ferret
Me: And we know where to get one
Bro: Then we'd have to put a cougar in the walls to get the fox
Me: No, we're not putting a cougar in the wall. I believe the correct step after fox is foxhound
Twin: Well, a foxhound doesn't actually kill the fox
Bro: Yeah we'd have to get some fox hunters and put them in the walls.
Me: Then we'd hear the fox hunters at all hours and their bugles (side note here, when Brother makes a bugle sound, it drives Tula crazy)
Bro: But then the hunting commissioner would get in the walls to tell the fox hunters that it's not the right season. All we'd hear is "What's this now? The season is over, jolly good and all that"
Me: Then the fox hunters would come out of the wall and tell us they'll be back next season. And we'd still have a fox in our wall

And that's how we spent our time on our drive over.




How was your Thanksgiving?

In Which We Discuss Backup Methods

Once NaNo rolls around, I always see a lot of talk about backing up your work. In fact, I think NaNo has a national "back up your novel" day to remind everyone to do so. Not that it helps anyone who loses their novels before then (and I already know of one girl in my region who lost everything and had to start over)

Almost everyone I talk to says the same thing:

I email it to myself
AND I save it on a jump/flash drive so I am safe.

But are you?

I remember once, back when I still regularly read Murderati, one of the writers said he had added a good 10K onto his novel when he experienced some sort of corruption. The corruption erased the 10K not only from his computer and the jump drive but ALSO (and this is the kicker) in his Gmail.

So even though he was super anal about backing things up, his methods still didn't work.

Which is when he discovered the wonderfulness of Dropbox.

Which is, of course, when I discovered it as well.

Dropbox is a free program/website that allows you to save your documents or pictures or whatevs. You can download it on your personal PCs (it uploads a cute little box on your desktop) AND, it's also available online, so you can access your work on a public PC if you need to, no carrying around a flash drive.

One of the best things about dropbox, though, is that it SAVES PREVIOUS VERSIONS.

So if you make a huge change in your novel, save it, and then immediately have regret, well no worries. Dropbox has your older versions saved as well.

I've been using Dropbox for almost a year and I LOVES IT.

It offers so much space (though I'm sure if you upload a lot of photos your space could easily fill up) AND they offer even MORE space for every computer you download the box on. For example, I downloaded it on both my old and new laptop, and Twin's PC and I got an extra 250 MB for each PC. You can also earn more space by recommending it to others if you roll that way.

I have a few photos uploaded, but even with all of my writing stuff saved, along with our board game info and some stuff of Twin's in there, I'm still only using like 5% of the space.

So let's say I upload my novel on Twin's PC (why I'm using her PC, I don't know, but let's just suspend disbelief for the purpose of the hypothetical).
I save my novel in her dropbox and it is automatically updated in all my other dropboxes on my laptops.

OR, I take a fun photo and upload it to my dropbox. Instead of then emailing the photo to someone, I can just share the dropbox folder with them. They can open the folder and see whatever I have stashed in it.


IT. IS. AWESOME.

I cannot overstate the awesomeness. Because the best thing about it is, I don't ever have to worry about emailing myself and saving my novel to a flash drive ever again. Which frees up more time, which I can then use to get more writing done.




So, are you still emailing and flash driving your work? Do you have a fun program like Dropbox?

In Which October Is An Important Month

Taking a short break from my usual silly fun stuff to let you know that October is Adopt a Shelter Dog Month.

This is a month that is near and dear to my heart. Let me tell you a little story why.


It was January 2007. Our family Sheepdog, Bess, had just died unexpectedly on my youngest sister's 16th birthday. My parents were dogless. Twin, Brother and I were living together and had my frenchie George, who was a year old, to heap love upon.

Then, one night, I received a text message from Twin (who works at the shelter).

This was the text message:





I texted her back - "What is it?" even though I was pretty sure I knew.

"A fawn pied frenchie puppy. 11 weeks old."

I tried not to be excited. I always told myself when I got another frenchie, I wanted a fawn pied girl. But I didn't want another dog for 5 years or so.

Twin texted me another message and pic:

"Her owner bought her at a pet store as an impulse buy. She didn't realize how much work a puppy would be. And also she lives in an apartment and the puppy, Boo, cries and barks a lot."




I didn't want a puppy. George was still a puppy, technically, and two puppies at a time was a lot of work.

Twin texted our parents, to see if they were interested. They said it was too soon for them to get a dog again. But they wanted someone to have that puppy, so they'd pay for half of her adoption fee.

This was an unexpected crack in the wall I was trying to build around my heart. Twin and I agreed she'd bring Boo home the next night to employee foster.

I spent the whole next day trying to come up with better names than Boo. Something to match George's "Georgie Porgie Pudding Pie" nursery rhyme name. I already knew, unless it was a complete failure as a match, that she wouldn't be going back to the shelter.

When Twin brought her home from the shelter, she had pooped in her crate and rolled in it (many puppy mill puppies (puppies from pet stores) don't have a concept of staying clean from their waste).

The first time I saw her in person she stank, she was covered in shit, and I already loved her. Brother suggested we call her Evie after V for Vendetta but Twin and I changed it to Yvie, short for Yvette.

There is not a moment of my life where she doesn't fill my heart with love and adoration. Every time I see her, every time I even think of her, I'm filled with joy.

She didn't need to be rescued by us. She would have been adopted in less than a day at the shelter. But we selfishly snatched her up and every day she lights up our lives.

So, now you know why Adopt A Shelter Dog Month is so important. My family surrounds ourselves with dogs, and Yvie stands out. She was less than 300 dollars and worth a thousand, a million times that. There are so many wonderful dogs out there that are willing to share their lives with someone, all they need is a home, a chance, to show you how they can enrich your lives.

In Which We Wrap Up The Season

For my MN Renfest posts regarding food, costumes and animals, see the posts from earlier this week.

Besides people watching and eating, there are also plenty of activities one can partake in at the Renfest. There's jousting, plenty of shows and every day has a different theme so you can enjoy wine tasting, beer tasting, chocolate and romance and pirate fun.

We tend to skip the shows for fun activities like shopping!

Things I bought this year:

A giant bell wind chime.

it sounds like soft church bells

Steampunk bandoleer

gah this is such a bad picture

And a crapload of incense.

There are also many games that can be played.

Every year Brother likes to fight the Pirate Queen

He typically hits that balloon right in her heart

WINNER! Of a plastic dagger. Or a plastic bug

Twin tried some archery

If you feel like getting insulted, you can throw tomatoes at this guy

Ever ridden a giant rocking horse?

Every weekend brother plays the hammer game

If you can hit the bell all 5 times, you get invited to the strong man competition in the evening for a chance to win a pirate booty t-shirt.

You can stand by the hammer game and watch all these crazy strong-looking, buff guys miss that bell every single time.

Brother gets invited every weekend to the strong man competition, but we've yet to stay late enough for him to give it a shot

The giant puppets are awesome. But don't get too close, they're often drunk

Fancy a trip through the hobbit hole?

Or how about a humiliating spin at the stocks?

one of the many, delicious, food courts

the entrance

And after a whole season of renaissancey fun, all that's left to do is walk back to the car.

We'll be back next year Renfest. Oh yes we will.