Friday Fun

Woo Hoo! We made it through the week, ape-friends, and we've come out the other side to the awesomeness that is THE WEEKEND!!!

Sleep all the hours!!!

Let's get this party started off right!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday Weird: Ball Lighting

Ball lightning is a phenomenon that people have been seeing since the 17th century. It's pretty much like regular lightning except, you know, a ball.

Descriptions actually vary widely. It has been described moving in unpredictable trajectories (up, down, side to side) as well as moving through physical obstacles (sometimes without any effects, sometimes melting or burning anything it touches) and occasionally popping or exploding.

 

 

For a long time people thought it was fake, made up, because there was no physical proof etc, even though people had supposedly been killed by it (and plenty of people (including famous people like Aleister Crowley and Tsar Nicholas II) had reported seeing it).

Nowadays, it's considered a natural phenomenon, but with no real understanding yet as to what it actually is.

 

 

 

In some cases, they're able to recreate it in the lab, but whether that recreation is actually what happens in the atmosphere is unclear.

 

 

Some people think that a lot of UFO sightings may actually just be ball lightning, and that's probably true in a lot of cases of lights in the sky.

 

Have you ever seen ball lightning?

In Which I Need To Budget

In the past I'd maybe go to a few local conferences a year and call it even. None were so expensive that they'd break the bank.

But this year is a little different. I planned to take a class (it's going on right now) and I planned on 3 local conferences (Children's and Young Adults Literature Conference, 4th Street Fantasy and the MN SCBWI conference in the fall). So there you go. A couple hundred dollars here and there and I'm set for the year.

But then I really enjoyed my class. And I found an Advanced Children's Writing Workshop.
And I also learned that Donald Maass will be here in the fall for a Story Masters workshop (the people I heard about this from said they attended this conference last year and that it was amazing)

So if I were to throw these two into the mix (and these are way more expensive than the others. The Story Masters conference is like $500) and suddenly I find myself spending more money than I planned...

Which made me realize that I think I've reached a point in my writerly life where I need to budget better. I think this year is a wash. I've applied for the advanced class (though you have to actually supply a writing sample, so I may not get in) and depending on how that goes will make my decision on the Donald Maass conference. But I think, starting next year, I'm going to have to actually sit down, figure out how much I'm willing to spend that year on writing related expenses and budget accordingly.

This will be especially important if I apply to Hamline's MFA program for next year (very likely).

So how about you? Do you budget your writing expenses?

In Which We Bribe Begonias

You know who's awesome? Hart Johnson, that's who! And you know who writes awesome books? You guessed it! Hart Johnson!

Today we're giving a shout out to Hart's 2nd book in the Garden Cozy Mystery series: The Begonia Bribe.

You should definitely give this series a shot because it's a lot of fun!


The Begonia Bribe: 2nd in the Garden Society Cozy Mystery series by Alyse Carlson (aka: Hart Johnson)

Roanoke, Virginia, is home to some of the country’s most exquisite gardens, and it’s Camellia Harris’s job to promote them. But when a pint-sized beauty contest comes to town, someone decides to deliver a final judgment …



A beauty pageant for little girls—the Little Miss Begonia Pageant—has decided to hold their event in a Roanoke park. Camellia is called in to help deal with the botanical details, the cute contestants, and their catty mothers. She soon realizes that the drama onstage is nothing compared to the judges row. There’s jealousy, betrayal, and a love triangle involving local newsman—and known lothario—Telly Stevens. And a mysterious saboteur is trying to stop the pageant from happening at all.



But the drama turns deadly when Stevens is found dead, poisoned by some sort of plant. With a full flowerbed of potential suspects, Cam needs to dig through the evidence to uproot a killer with a deadly green thumb.

Pre-order on:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble

Find Hart/Alyse at:
Confessions of a Watery Tart
Facebook Author Page or Profile
Twitter

In Which I TypeRace

I'm sure I've mentioned before that I'm pretty competitive when it comes to... well, a lot of things. It's probably why I like gaming and board games and disc golf and racquetball and all that junk. Can I win at something? Then I want to win at it.

Another thing I'm sure I've established is that I like to write.

So what were to happen if we combined the two??

I would explode in excitement over TypeRacer!!!

TypeRacer allows you to race other competitors with your typing speed. If you sign up (and it's free) it will keep track of your avg WPM and how many races you've run, etc.

The tricky thing, though, is to nail that punctuation and not make any typos. Because you have to fix anything you don't type correctly, which slows down your WPM (news flash, typos are Achilles heel, apparently, in TypeRacing.)

You can also practice if you don't wan to actually race other peeps. I also wonder if I play around enough with this, if I'll become a faster and more efficient typer? I suspect so. I don't necessarily feel like I need to type all that much faster. I'm happy with my speed and can pump out a couple K in an hour. But if I could do that and have less spell checking to do because I have less typos? Well, that would be just fine. Just fine.

Give it a try! You don't have to register if you don't want to, you can still race and practice as a guest.

Friday Fun

Weekend weekend weekend!!!!

I heard it might be the weekend

Woo! Let's get this baby started with some fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday Weird: The Valentich Disappearance

Okay, so pretty much we can all agree that boats and planes disappear in the ocean all the time. And we're not even talking about the Bermuda Triangle. We're just talking about the regular old ocean.

So we're not shocked to learn that on October 21, 1978, a Cessna 182 light aircraft piloted by Australian Frederick Valentich vanished. That happens all the time. Sometimes we know what caused their disappearance, sometimes we don't.

This one is a bit of both, because we have Valentich's final transmissions, where Valentich described being followed by a UFO:

1906 hours
Valentich: Melbourne, this is Delta Sierra Juliet. Is there any known traffic below five thousand?
Melbourne: No known traffic.
Valentich: I am... seems to be a large aircraft below five thousand.
Melbourne: What type of aircraft is it?
Valentich: I cannot affirm. It is four bright... it seems to me like landing lights.

1907 hours
Valentich: Melbourne, this is Delta Sierra Juliet. The aircraft has just passed over me at least a thousand feet above...
Melbourne: Roger.. and it... it is a large aircraft? Confirm.
Valentich: ... er unknown due to the speed it's travelling. Is there any airforce aircraft in the vicinity?
Melbourne: No known aircraft in the vicinity.

1908 hours
Valentich: Melbourne, it's approaching now from due east towards me...
Valentich: (open microphone for two seconds)
Valentich:...it seems to me that he's playing some sort of game... he's flying over me two... three times at speeds I could not identify...

1909 hours
Melbourne: ... roger... what is your actual level?
Valentich: My level is four and a half thousand four five zero zero...
Melbourne: ... and confirm you cannot identify the aircraft...
Valentich: ... affirmative.
Melbourne: roger... stand by...
Valentich: ... it's not an aircraft it is... (open microphone for two seconds)
Melbourne: ... can you describe the... er... aircraft?
Valentich: ... as it's flying past it's a long shape... (open microphone for three seconds)... cannot identify more than that... it has such speed... (open microphone for three seconds)... before me right now Melbourne...

1910 hours
Melbourne: ...roger... and how large would the... er... object be?
Valentich: ... it seems like it's stationary... what I'm doing right now is orbiting and the thing is just orbiting on top of me... also, its got a green light and sort of metallic like... it's all shiny on the outside...
Valentich: (open microphone for five seconds)... it's just vanished...

1911 hours
Valentich: Melbourne, would you know what kind of aircraft I've got? Is it military aircraft?
Melbourne: ...confirm the... er... aircraft just vanished...
Valentich: ... say again?
Melbourne: ... is the aircraft still with you?
Valentich: ... approaching from the south-west...
Valentich: ... the engine is rough idling... I've got it set at twenty three twenty four and the thing is...

1912 hours
Melbourne: ... roger... what are your intentions...
Valentich: ... my intentions are... ah... to go to King Island... ah... Melbourne that strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again... (two seconds open microphone)... it is hovering and it's not an aircraft...
Valentich: ... (17 seconds open microphone)...

Those were Valentich's last words. What followed were 17 seconds of a metallic scraping sound. No trace of Valentich or his plane were ever found. He was close enough to land for a lot of eyewitnesses to say they saw the EXACT same UFO. The only issue with that is, no one came forward until after the story was released in papers, so we pretty much have to rule all of those eyewitnesses out, whether they're telling the truth or not. He was also close enough to land that if he crashed, it may not have even been in the ocean.

The DOT had two experts examine the 17 seconds of metallic scraping taped at the end of the transmission. They couldn't conclude anything.

Some people have suggested Valentich became disoriented and was actually flying upside down the entire time. The lights he saw being his own in the reflection of the ocean. Which could be a possibility, but that becomes less believable if you actually believe what he said in the transmission, that the aircraft was circling him and going faster than him. If he was seeing his own lights, they would be matching his speed and not moving outside his own path.

So, there's no solution to what happened to Frederick Valentich and we'll probably never know for sure unless they somehow find his aircraft one day.

Thoughts?