In Which I Clean

Ugh I spent the whole weekend cleaning. Blergh. I mean, yay for a clean house! That's awesome!
But also, now I'm tired and I have to get through the week before I get another weekend. AAAnd I have a wedding to attend this weekend. Me=busy.

My class has been going well, though. Tonight is the first night we're going to start critiquing. I'm really excited for that portion. I'm bringing my 20 pages tonight to be critiqued next week. I had to be a big girl and figure out how to use a Kinko's since I didn't want to print and collate 160 pages. Me = lazy.

Turns out Kinko's don't really exist anymore. Guess they were bought out by Fed-Ex? But there was a Fed-Ex Office near my house so with Twin's photocopier expertise it ended up being a lot easier than expected.

Me = mothereffing adult.

Aaand that's really all I have for today. How about you? How was your weekend?

 

Friday Fun

What time is it?? Why, it's Friday Fun time of course, ape-friends!

I wish fun time lasted forever

Let's dance our way right into some weekend fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IWSG

Here we are, the first Wednesday of the month, which means it's time for the next Insecure Writer's Support Group.

So this last weekend I had breakfast with the Awesome Hannah, and lunch with the Awesome Tricia. And there was a lot of talk about writing, as usual.

In both meals I mentioned my fear of laziness. I know I've talked before about how I tend towards laziness. It's just a personal flaw of mine.

So I was talking about revisions, and I mentioned about how sometimes I'm so worried that I'm not working hard enough.

Like maybe I'll get to a line. Something like "I pictured Val in his leathers."

And my first instinct is that I'm doing too much telling there, instead of showing. But then I think, well, in this case is it okay for her to say she's imagining someone? Because it's not like imagining is an emotion, that carries with it physical responses. You can't even really describe it.
So then I think, maybe this is one of those times where it's okay to leave this line as is. As long as I don't tell like this too often, it's okay for a bit of telling.

BUT. And this is the big but for me (tee hee. Big but...). I can't help but worry, am I being lazy here? Am I cutting corners because in my cursory revisions I can't think of a way to show "imagining?"

And then I start to worry. Where else am I falling back on my tendency to take the easy way out. Because I don't want to do that. I want to work hard. I want to get better. I want to reach my goals. But sometimes I have a hard time of knowing when something's okay, when my skills just aren't up to par, and when I'm just not putting in the effort or hard work.

I wish it was easier for me to tell the difference. I think it may get easier the better I become, but until then, I'm stuck wondering "is this okay? Or am I being lazy?"


 

In Which We "Tile"

I know I've spoken about Pinterest before. And how awesome it is. And how much I love it. Sooooo many great recipes on there. SO MANY.

I have a pinboard just of pins I've tried. Twin does as well. I've even blogged about projects here as well.

So, shocker, here's a blogpost about another project we've tackled after finding it on pinterest.

Our kitchen was kinda blah. I mean, sure it was serviceable. But we've been planning on pulling down the wallpaper border since we moved in 4.5 years ago.

Sigh. Sure is "quaint"

Obvs, that didn't happen.

One of the things that particularly bothered us, though, was our lack of back splash. Like, really? Come on. How hard it is to put of a back splash?

But tiles can be expensive. Well, at least the style we like. But then we saw a pin about Smart Tiles. Which are gel tiles pretty much like stickers you put up. They're heat and moisture resistance, and good for kitchens or bathrooms. Sticker tiles? Yeah. We could whip that out a lot quicker than regular tiles that need to be cut and grouted.


So here's the before pics:



Clearly we'd already pulled down some of the border here
 



Ignore the mess. We were in the middle of cleaning up and moving stuff before we could start when I took this photo

There was a bit of a learning curve using the smart tiles, but not much. They were easy to use and we did a big chunk of our kitchen in just a few hours.

close up photo of the Smart Tiles

 

Finished pic of the new wall

We're super happy with the finished result. Now we just have to paint the remaining walls and then at some point in the future do something about our shitty counters.

How about you? What did you do over the weekend?

Friday Fun

Yay!!! Happy begging of March, Ape-Friends! You know what that means, right? That we're just that much closer to seeing the snow leave, so we can sit on the porch and sun bathe our tummies.

 

Oh snow. Please get the hell out of here

But until then, we have the weekend to celebrate! So let's launch this one off with some internet fun!

Here we go!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday Weird: Gettysburg Ghost Footage

As mentioned before, I love looking at supposed ghost footage clips. If you have a video of a ghost or something that could be a ghost, then I want to watch it.

So today I have a video of ghost footage at Gettysburg. In case you're not in the know, Gettysburg is purported to be really haunted. People claims to see ghosts and weird things there all the time. This video is one of my all time favorite ghost clips.

When watching you'll see what appears to be flashes of musket fire. And then, if you keep watching, you'll see people in the woods. It's important to note that there is no road behind the trees (so the lights can't be from cars, etc). Whether the people in the trees are actual people or not (and the washed out color of the people is a bit suspect) I guess we can't be certain, but the people on the video were confident there were no actual people in the trees where they were filming.

Here you go!

 

 

 

 

Thoughts? I'd love to hear them!!

In Which I Take A Class

Yay! I'm super excited!

Tonight is the first night of my 8 week long class at The Loft.

The Loft, for you non-Minnesotans, is a literary center in Minneapolis. It's dedicated to making writers more awesome and expanding our writing community.

It's great.

Anyhoo, if you remember, one of my 2013 goals was to take at least one class this year and tonight is my first one!

I signed up for a class called The YA Novel.

 

Young Adult (YA) is having its heyday, and you don’t have to be a teen to love reading and writing these transformational books. If you have a Young Adult project started and you’d like to make its character more real, its plot more dynamic, or its themes more moving, this is the class for you. If you want to learn to read YA books as a writer and apply what you learn about craft to your own project, this is the class for you. And if you need somebody to light a fire under you to encourage you to finish your first draft or dig into revisions, this is definitely the class for you! We’ll deepen our understanding of the craft by discussing great YA books, working through writing exercises, and critiquing one another’s work in a large-group setting. The teaching artist will also read and comment on one 20-page section of your YA novel during the course of the class

 

 

I really hope I get something great from the class. I also hope maybe I'll meet some new, awesome people and, perhaps, snag a letter of rec from the teacher that I can use to apply to grad school.

 

Wish me luck! I'm sure I'll blog plenty more about the class as it goes along.

 

 

How about you? Have you taken any classes recently for anything?