The Name Game Part 10,035

If you've followed this blog for a while, you know that I do not get to name my characters. They tell me their names, and if I don't like it? Too bad.

Sometimes I get things like: My name starts with an R. And then I'll spend hours combing through baby name websites and books trying to find the right R name. Hours is understating it. It was weeks because this heroine had a name classified as a male name in all but one resource. If I hadn't stumbled across that, I might not know her name yet.

Then there are the characters who are sort of easy. I was walking down the hallway and I heard Mika. And while I had no clue who she was or what story she was from, at least I didn't have to work for her name. (Through a Crimson Veil)

I preface this blog post with all this information because it explains why I am in a tangle with names in my Paladin League series.

If I were picking names, I would have chosen ones that were a lot different from each other so that there would be no confusion. Instead, I have Case (Wicked Suspicion) and Cal (AKA Baggs). I have Iona and Ian (AKA Rusty).

To combat this, after Case's book, he is only referred to as Lurch. His first name is no longer mentioned. There's a book between Case's story and Cal's book, so I'm hoping that helps.

Iona also goes by Io. Ian is Ian. This one is going to be painful. I'm still debating how to handle this. I have one possibly good idea. If Ian was called Rusty by his family the entire time he was growing up, maybe he would think of himself as Rusty and then I wouldn't have the I-name issue.

The thing that's so frustrating to me is I worried that Ayla and Iona were too close. They are twin sisters. I probably couldn't have changed either name, but I might have been able to coax a nickname out of one of them.

I never considered the other books and other characters.

Although, in my defense on this one, Ian was going by Zack when Ayla and Iona made their appearances in my brain. Don't even get me started about the characters who give me the wrong name and then change it on me at the last minute.

Review: OliClips

I did not receive compensation of any kind for this review. I paid for these products myself when they had a sale.

I've been using magnetic bookmarks in my planners forever. Years ago, I picked up a set of three at a craft store, and paired with some decorative paperclips that I received for free with sticker orders, I managed to separate my planner.

It wasn't until I got into the Tomoe River Paper planner community that I heard of OliClips. There's like an umlaut involved, but I don't know how to make an umlaut in Blogger, so apologies.

My first attempt was an OliClip knock off. It was okay, but it looked like a knock off. It was out of alignment, kind of banged up in appearance, and generally not ascetically pleasing.

When the real OliClip maker had a sale, I tried some of their small clips. What a difference! These were awesome and so much better than the craft store magnetic bookmarks I'd been using. The next time they went on sale, I tried a bigger size clip and the new (at that time) slimline version.

The big clip is excellent for thick sections of paper. I'm using this in my everyday planner to separate the weekly section from the daily pages. The smaller clip couldn't handle the thickness.

And the slimline. I love the slimline. It seems to have less magnetic power than the small OliClips, so I reserve them for particular uses, but the reason I love them so much is how they work in my time tracker booklet.

I was using the small size OliClips in my time tracker, but the bottom righthand clip covered up the page at the bottom. One of the things I use my time tracker for is to record the number of words I wrote that day and I put that number on the last row of the grid. It got annoying having to slide the clip up and down at the end of the week. Too high and it covered up my timeline. Too low and I had to move it to record my word count.

It took me until the end of January to go, hmm, I have a couple of extra slimline clips. I wonder if that will solve my problem? It did.

I was using a decorative paperclip in the top left, but it kept falling out, so I added another slimline up there. Another problem solved. All my annoyances were solved with two small switches.

Anyway, if you were wondering if the OliClips are worth it. I think they are. I wish I'd found them earlier because they are so much better than those weak magnetic bookmarks I had been using before I bought them.

Highly recommended. Your size depends on how much magnet you need, so choose wisely.

And as a reminder, I did not receive compensation of any kind for this review.

Souped Up

One of the things I love having for dinner before it gets too hot is soup.

When my dad was alive and living with me, he did the cooking because he enjoyed it, and he was good at it. Me? I hate cooking. I get bored, wander away, and up with stuff burned to the bottom of my pans.

I really, really missed my dad's Tortilla Soup with Chorizo and Turkey Meatballs. It was a recipe I found at Cooking Light back years ago. A search of their site didn't turn it up, but I found a blogger who has the recipe posted and linked to that site for you.

As much as I wanted the soup, it seemed like too much work. Like was I really going to make turkey meatballs? No. But a friend told me there was premade turkey meatballs available at the store. Okay, call me stupid, but it never occurred to me that they sold premade turkey meatballs. I knew they did premade beef meatballs, but turkey?

My ignorance ties into something else I hate. Grocery shopping. Ugh! I make a list, I run in and buy what is on this list, and I get the heck out of there ASAP. I've since learned that a lot of ADHD people (like me!) do not like grocery shopping or cooking. With my get-in-get-out mindset, I don't do any exploring.

With the knowledge that I didn't have to make my own meatballs, that I could buy pre-chopped onion, and that the only thing I would have to prepare would be the poblano pepper (it's mild!), I headed off to buy what I needed to make my favorite soup.

The premade turkey meatballs worked great. They weren't as good as homemade, but since I'm not making my own, it was good enough. The prechopped onion was also most awesome. I hate cutting up onion. I tossed everything in a big soup pot, added all my ingredients and let it cook for about half an hour to make sure the premade meatballs were hot.

Shock of all shocks, I actually made a good soup!

I added more corn kernels and tortillas than the recipe called for because both items were getting a little old and needed to be used up. I also added a lot more chicken stock than the recipe called for because I wanted more soup. And after I had a bowl, I added even more stock and seasoning so I would have lots and lots of soup.

The biggest issue I had was that I couldn't find things. The kitchen was always my dad's space, and he set it up in a way that worked for him. For example, before he moved in with me, I had my spices setup in an organized, alphabetized order so I could locate them.

My dad liked the spices he used all the time in front and everything else shoved in the back of the cabinet haphazardly. I needed ground coriander for the recipe. Could I find it? No. Do I own any? I assume I must since my dad always made the soup. Did he skip the coriander? Maybe. That means I might not own any. When I have a little time, I'll have to take out all the spices, inventory them, and reorganize for me.

At least I was able to find my big soup pot and the ladle. 

Epic Fail Time

I never enjoyed crafts when I was younger, but now I knit, and I did learn to crochet, although I forgot how and would need to relearn. I play with stickers in my planners and vellums and washi tape.

For the life of me, I cannot use ink stamps or stencils without it looking like a five-year-old child decided to play with those tools.

The stencils should be easy enough that even I can successfully use them, however, this is not the case. I've tried different pens, holding the pens at different angles, and everything else I could think of. My stencils still don't look like any of the stenciling I see online.

I'm even worse with ink stamps. Especially the clear, silicone-looking stamps.

I found videos on YouTube that say the problem is likely over inking the stamp. That makes sense, I thought, so I went out of my way to not over ink the stamp. I still end up with a hot mess. Especially on my fingers, the table, and the paper I'm trying to stamp.

The smaller the stamp, the better the job I do. Mostly. My small weather stamps (sun, cloud, rain, snow, etc.) usually come out okay. Not always. Sometimes I still end up with an extra line of ink when I stamp, but at least I have a fighting chance. These are wooden stamps with rubber impressions.

The bigger silicone style stamps that need to go on acrylic blocks are my Kryptonite. I probably have a 5% success rate with the damn things. Otherwise, it's a hot mess.

I honestly have no idea why this is so challenging for me, but apparently my crafting ability ends with yarn, stickers, and washi tape.

Fitbit Hell

I don't remember how long ago I bought my Fitbit Luxe, but it's definitely nowhere near as old as my previous Fitbit which lasted forever. I can't remember the name of that one, but it was the same size and shape as the Luxe.

Anyway, the Luxe has started to become a problem. Instead of charging it twice a week, I need to charge it every other day. That's not as big a problem as how far wrong the battery reading is. I just swiped and it says my Luxe was at 77%. Good, I thought.

And then thing wouldn't come on when I tapped it.

Back on the charger long enough to restart it and now the battery is listed at 1%. Really? A minute earlier it said 77%. Did the restart take 76% of the battery? I doubt it.

I only wear the Fitbit now for sleep information because I have my Apple Watch for steps and works outs, so I thought I'll just buy one of those cheap knock offs and use that.

The cheap knock off is fine. Mostly. Except that it lights up brightly enough to signal the International Space Station every time I move my arm despite the fact that I have it on manual. I also have doubts about how accurate the sleep times are because it will say one thing when I wake up in the morning and then an hour later it says I slept more. I didn't.

That drove me back to the Fitbit. It might be a pain, but at least it doesn't light up unnecessarily. But here I am, blogging nearly half an hour after I wanted to go to bed because the Fitbit is charging from the 1% it claims it was at. It also takes forever to recharge. Grrr.

I'm to the point where I actually debated buying another Fitbit Luxe. Guess what? Unavailable. Double Grrr.