Odds and Ends

I don't have enough of any single thing I wanted to talk about to make a full post out of it, so I thought I'd just bullet point some of them.

• Every year, a mockingbird family has nested in one of the trees in my front yard. I always enjoy when their baby makes its appearance, but this year? No nest. I'm so disappointed.
  
  
•  I mentioned that I owned seven books in JAK's (writing as Jayne Castle) Harmony series. I own the anthology with the novella Bridal Jitters, too, but the source I looked at it called it .5 instead of 1 in the series. So between my Harmony collection and what the library owns, I can read the entire series. Almost. Guild Boss is not available. The publisher has the eBook priced at $8.99. Gah! I can get the audiobook at the library, but I'd rather read.
  
  
•  I mentioned the readathon helped me find some new authors that I loved. There's also a year-long reading challenge from the same group. I had to get a recommendation from one of my friends to fulfill one of the prompts because it's a genre I don't read. I now have another author to glom. I might have to find more reading challenges.
  
  
•  When I loaded up my kanban board for the next Paladin League book, I used page markers instead of full sized Post-it notes. It takes up less space and made it easier to load all the chapters. I think I'll like it?
  
  
•  I love having a reading journal! It's a little futzy using my sticker cutter to make book cover stickers and I'm definitely not good at decorating it, but it brings me joy. It also encourages me to finish books.
  
  
•  I was reading books on my phone or my iPad. Buying an eReader made a big difference for me in how much reading I do. It's much lighter than my phone and it's easier to hold it for long periods of time. I probably would have figured this out earlier if I could have found my Kindle. No, as of writing this, I still haven't found it. I gave it to my dad, and he passed away. I don't know where he put it and I haven't found it yet.
  
  
•  I think I have my weekly planning system figured out. When I'm sure, I'll do a full post.

Some Random Thoughts

I'm kind of brain fried after writing all weekend, so instead of trying to write a long, cohesive post, I'll just mention a few random things.

--Heroes come in all walks of life. I overheard a conversation on Friday between my boss and another engineer. They were both talking about the storm and how they got up and turned on the weather report so they'd know whether or not they'd need to wake their families and have them move to the basement. I thought that was pretty damn awesome. I'm going to have to put something like this in one of my books. This is the quiet, day to day stuff that really counts when it comes to relationships and families.

--Conversation with my dad tonight that made me crazy:

I open the refrigerator door and the butter rolls out and onto the floor. I mutter a curse, pick it up and put it back in the fridge.

My dad asks why I'm swearing. I tell him the butter fell on the floor. And he honest to God asked me if I'd picked it up. ::banging head against wall::

No, Dad, I left it on the floor. Who even asks a question like that?

--The pitcher for the Twins today had a no hitter through 7 innings. The manager pulled him out and put a reliever out in the 8th. If I were that pitcher, I'd be really angry. Pitching a no-hitter is maybe a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The manager shouldn't have taken that achievement away from him. Send him out, and if he gives up a hit, then pull him. This man will spend the rest of his life wondering what if? That's a pretty cruel thing to leave someone with.

--The WordPress For Dummies book did help me a fair amount. Most of it was a little simple for me, but it did hit things I didn't know. Overall, I'd rate the book helpful, and if you're new to WordPress, very helpful.

Hope you all have a great week!

Random, Totally Random

I needed a blog topic for tonight and was getting desperate. I searched news headlines for articles I could maybe talk about about, but nothing grabbed me. Then I thought, well, maybe I'll head over to Google and search for someone who has suggestions about interesting blog topics. That was no help. My next idea was to use the "I feel Lucky" button on Google. For some reason, I thought it would take me to a random website, but unfortunately that isn't what it does. It takes you to the first website listed in your search results. Pfft. That wasn't what I was looking for.

Then I googled "random website" and lo and behold, there are sites out there that do just that--take one to a random website. The first one I found is called Random Website Dot Com and the other was Memory Cloud/Random Website Generator.

In my exploration for a topic, I was taken to a website with wallpapers--some cool ones, an animal rights group website, zombie nation, and project censored, the news that didn't make the news. Some of these were meh, and others were interesting and I've bookmarked them to explore later. But while I did find some cool stuff, I still had no blog topic. :-(

Then I was taken to the Inspirational Quotes website. Now this is something I can go with. I love inspirational quotes. So my quote of the day is:

If you have built castles in the air,
your work need not be lost;
that is where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them.

~Henry David Thoreau

Is that cool or what? To me, what he's saying is that the dreamer should do more than merely dream. He's saying that the dreamer should do the work necessary to make his/her dreams come true. I totally believe that. I can't imagine looking back and having regrets.

Now granted, some dreams are impossible, but I'm not talking about things like becoming an Olympic gymnast or something that would bankrupt a Rockefeller. I'm talking about pursuing reasonably achievable dreams. Like writing. Go for it!