Untweetworthy, Part the Fourth

Sometimes, about a thousand untweetworthy things occur all at once. Yesterday was one of those days.

For the first time in about a year, I went out to lunch with a particular friend of mine. Our favorite thing to do is to go to Ikea, browse around until we get hungry, then eat at the restaurant, then buy as many unpronouncable things as we can afford, and then drive home in time for our kids to get home from school. It's a silly way to spend the day, but we really needed a break from the routine. I needed a writing break, and since she works from home, she just wanted to get out in the world with another (sort-of) grown up. It worked out well.

When we got there, I sort of felt like this:

Happy Strawberry.

But as things went along, and I realized they'd rearranged the entire store since I'd been there last, I felt a little:

Stunned Owl.

By the time we were done and ready to go home, I was definitely reduced to:

Because I don't speak Swedish, and I refuse to accept the printed translation, I'm going to assume this means Drunk Flower.

When I successfully found my way out of the Maze of Stylish Swedish Things, I sent this tweet:

I have returned from Ikea. You can call off the search party. I am all stocked up on unpronouncable goods.
— Laura Hughes (@MittensMorgul) January 10, 2013

I am proud of this because Ikea favorited it. Silly, right?

Also, I bought something called Pepparkaka. I also bought a Pepparkaka house. Both of these things made me giggle in an entirely inappropriate manner. *these things are gingerbread*

Here ends the Ikea portion of today's program. Let's begin the cat portion, shall we?

We've taken down all the Christmas decorations, but the tree is still standing, in all its naked plastic glory. I'm so sad to see it go, not because of all the fond family feelings surrounding the holiday, but because the cat seems to love it. He spends half his day eight feet up the tree.

So now we're looking into buying or building a kitty tree for him, but one made for cats. I am such a sucker.

Okay, so now, on to the comestibles.

Earlier this week, I made a really nomulent chicken soup called Cock-A-Leekie. Go ahead and say it aloud. Feel free to say it again. It is fun to say. I haven't stopped saying cock-a-leekie all week.

Last night I was supposed to enjoy a fun family meal of pizza before I had to head out to a meeting. Instead of eating and spending time with Helper Monkey and Lulu, I fell asleep in my Comfy Chair. Even more shocking, I WAS WEARING REAL PANTS! IN MY WRITING CHAIR! Who knew walking around for half the morning would knock me out? I woke up just in time to leave for my meeting.

To avoid driving off the road in my stupor, I grabbed a can of Cherry Coke on my way out. I was looking forward to my caffeine fix. First thing I did after signing in to the meeting? I spilled half the soda all over the sign in sheet, proving just how much I needed to drink it as opposed to dumping it out all over a table.

FOUR DAYS IN A ROW! That is how many times this week I have known the answer to Final Jeopardy, and NONE of the contestants on the show knew the answer. Too bad I don't get paid for playing at home. :/

And I think Twitter has already accepted all the other non-tweet-worthy things I've thought of today. It really has been a banner day for me. Between essentially rewriting the first chapter of the manuscript I've spent the better part of a year querying and then feeling stressed out about having wasted so many chances to show wonderful agents my best work, it's been full of feels. Now I am subjecting my brave and intrepid CP's to my Frankenscript. I can't even. There is too much.




 

Imma go drown all those feelings with alcohol and then start writing again! Wheeeeee!

This is why I lost on Jeopardy!

I stink at pushing the button. It's my major downfall in life. It's why I only managed a single win on Jeopardy! The Stinking Button. (For anyone who doesn't know about the whole Jeopardy! thing, you can read about it here and here.) (And yes, when referring to the game show, if you leave of the exclamation mark, you've spelled it wrong.)

Despite the obvious nerd credit involved with just being on a show like Jeopardy!, I obviously lack some basic nerd skills. I'm not great at video games, because I have a slow trigger finger. I never mastered the darned buzzer button, and I only won a single game because I lucked into a couple of Daily Doubles and wagered big. As soon as I had to face another contestant with a faster thumb than mine, I lost.

Don't get me wrong, I type quite well. I used to be a medical transcriptionist, and you have to type fast to scrape a living doing that. Obviously I lack any other button-pressing skills. I've managed to get quick enough on the Wii to beat an 11-year-old at Mario Kart, but I don't think that skill translates 1:1 into button pushing.

To wit: I failed TWICE to make it into The Writer's Voice multi-blog writing contest. And they even added an extra 25 slots to the second round of entries!

REPRIEVE!!! The four blog owners who are running the contest graciously opened up a third entry window, with only 25 additional slots, today at noon. Maybe the third time's the charm? I can only hope so. My internet connection has been wonky lately, with extra-slow loading capabilities. It's been a nostalgic few days here, hearkening back to my old dial-up connection. I've got to call Verizon and figure out what the problem is.

So I've got one last chance. Let's hope I'm a little quicker on the draw today. Since I don't have the ridiculous schedule I had to battle yesterday (where I was only home for an hour, and running around like an idiot for at least 14 other hours), maybe I can go all zen and miraculously come in under the wire this time. Here's hoping!*

And May the 4th be with you today, this fine Star Wars day.

With the crazy schedule this week, I haven't been writing much, but I feel the need for an update here, if only for my own records:

Words: 39,064
Pages: 130

* And no, I failed again. I kept hitting the refresh button waiting for the widget to appear, when all I needed to do was scroll down to the bottom of the post. I came in at post #206, and they capped the entries at 200. Once again, how the hell did I ever managed to qualify for Jeopardy! in the first place?

**And edited to include this photographic evidence:

Me, as a blonde, and the Trebekster

Making the switch from LJ

So, I've been writing over at LiveJournal for a relatively long time, and I'm trying Blogger out for a while. I'm nervous about switching, because I don't want to abandon all my old posts over there. However, I'm interested to see if this platform is a little easier/better/whatever other superlative comes to mind.

So far, I like the layout and format over here. It's easy to use, but then again so is LJ. I've decided to go ahead and write a few of my daily updates here to see if we can't get used to it.

Practical distractions today:

1. My new laptop battery is awesome. I've not been able to unplug and take the computer anywhere for like six months, because the old battery would die after ten minutes. If I needed to print something, it became a suicide dash down the stairs to the office to get everything printed before the computer completely croaked. I unplugged yesterday at 4:17 pm, gave up and went to bed at 11:05, and when I got up this morning, I still had 26% battery life! Awesome Power! Literally! (at this moment it's still at 26%!)

2. Because I am now free to roam the house with my computer again, of course I've been planted in the same damn chair where the power cord is plugged in. Well, I took it downstairs to watch Jeopardy! last night with Tim, but I came right back. And Jeopardy! is apparently misspelled if you leave off the exclamation mark. I should know, since both my husband and I are past Jeopardy! champs.

3. I'm itching to start book 3 now, since book 1 is done, and I'm working second-round edits on 2. But every time I start looking at book 1 again, I want to cry, go back and edit it again. At this rate, I'll bounce back and forth between the first two books, re-editing until the end of the universe.

4. I've discovered I spend way too much time reading Twitter.

Finally, if you've ever seen my LJ updates, they are basically a writing journal I've been keeping, updating my daily progress. I guess that's pretty boring for anyone but the writer writing them. To me, they are a road map through the insanity that got me to the end of each novel. To a casual passer-by, they are probably as dull as dishwater, aside from the occasional bit of insanity thrown in to keep myself on my toes.

At the end of each of those posts, I'd list my daily progress in this format:

Words: (current number of words in the novel I'm working on)
Pages: (for those who find this is a more accurate measure of writing, although I can't imagine why anyone would)
And when I'm editing, I list:
Edit Page: (which reminds me how far I am through the current cycle of darling-murdering)

So, since I really should get to work today, here's the end of it. (And the battery's down to 20%! Go Antivirus program, you battery power consumption hog!)

Words: 96,787
Pages: 310
Edit Page: 96