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roster007 | |
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LightningBoy went to his first Fall Social Dance today. He didn't dance. He said that he walked across the gym to the music and that's as close as he got to dancing. They had donuts and activity booths and ping pong available for "non-dancers". ArtGrrl and I went early to go pick him up so we could peek and get a glimpse of this milestone. It brought a small nostalgic tear to my eye... they were playing Thriller! and other 80s music. One girl even knew all the moves to the zombie Thriller dance and everyone was following her...even the teachers. The bass took over my heart it was so loud! We found LightningBoy playing Ping Pong in the adjacent room where the music wasn't so loud. We looked in the weight room and a teacher of LightningBoy's helped him with a weight machine. Then he let ArtGrrl take a turn and she could move 55 lbs. with her feet! Of course, then they had to show off their trick where ArtGrrl can take all of LIghtningBoy's weight on her back. That's a 50 lb. girl lifting a 100 lb. boy! She is so strong! Even the teacher was impressed. On our way to getting backpacks and leaving I wanted to make sure I told his teacher that LIghtningBoy has gone from getting frustrated and yelling, "I HATE MATH!" to after I asked him a week ago what his homework was he said, "Oh math. Division. I LOVE DIVISION!" In only THREE MONTHS! I told her, "Thank you so much!" and she told me that LIghtningBoy has changed and grown so much and he such a good kid. It's always such a thank you fest at his school. :) Oh yeah, and then LightningBoy and ArtGrrl had to show his teacher the "my little sister can lift me" trick. And his teacher and I cringed. I cringe EVERY time they do it. AND THEN I smile and say, "Wow, good job!" Earlier today I rested under a few blankets, fell asleep watching a familiar movie (Stargate), drank a big cup of Ibarra!, and rested. I've been having a hard time resting, there's always something needing to be done...and I've felt restless and figety every time I've tried resting lately. So, in short, this morning, Resting Goooood. It's been a good day. It feels like a holiday is coming. It feels slower and calmer with a small amount of anticipation of upcoming cooking and shopping events. Since family are far enough away and have other family to eat with, it's just us this year. It's usually like that. I think out of 15 years of marriage I can only count 2 or 3 times having Thanksgiving with my family. More with Ross' family because his siblings were all going to college in Provo and his parents often came to us. After college was over, so was family Thanksgivings. But, we don't mind having a quiet little Thanksgiving with just us. We like quiet and boring. In other big news my brother's wife had a baby boy yesterday! LIghtningBoy has been the only boy grandchild for 12 years! Now there is another boy. Congrats you guys! I can't wait to see him! I feel: typety type sniff! Current Music: my little boy is growing up! kind of.
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webcomics
elae | |
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 Hey again :) I did some new promo art for my Zuda entry, IN MAPS & LEGENDS, that I wanted to post. The end of the November competition is less than a week away, and we could really use your votes and support! Spread the word if you'd like to see IN MAPS & LEGENDS go on to be serialized... we've got some great plans for this webcomic of ours, and I'd love to be able to draw it. November's been a crazy month, with a lot of support pouring in from all over. Mike and I have done a couple in-depth interviews about the Zuda process and IN MAPS & LEGENDS, so if you're interested, check 'em out. Robot 6: Zudist Colony- Talking with November's Zuda ContestantsHypergeek: An Interview with Michael Jasper & Niki SmithThere's also a great interview with Ron Perazza (main Zuda editor) that just went up today, that talks about the horizontal format and how creators work differently when aiming for a digital audience. "A computer monitor is not a printed page. It's horizontal not vertical, it displays color differently, the user 'turns the page' differently, and so on,โ Perazza said. โThe experience is radically different than that of reading in print and the creator needs to keep that in mind in order to effectively tell his story."That article has nothing to do with IN MAPS & LEGENDS, but hey, it's all about webcomics. If you missed it last time, hereโs a quick run-down of our story: Kait doesn't know why she gets up in the middle of the night to carve a map onto the wall of the spare room of her apartment. Before she can finish it, though, a strange man named Bartamus shows up at her place in the middle of a wintry night, claiming to be from another, dying world that desperately needs Kaitโs help.So if you like curvy girls who glare a lot, maps, and the potential for some steampunk, take a look! It's crucial that we get votes (and favorites!) if we want to keep our lead (the guy in 2nd place is breathing down our necks...). With the holidays coming up we're worried that we may slip. So get your votes in when you still can! The competition ends NOVEMBER 30-- Next Monday at noon. Thanks again to all who have taken a look and voted so far!
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sandratayler | |
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When Howard left the house, there were still two hours before the kids were due home from school. Even better, I had already gotten all my business tasks for the day done. I could feel my brain stretching out, relaxing. It was a chance for me to do whatever I wanted without being on call. I could be alone with my thoughts and perhaps even write.
Then the phone rang. The noise was almost a physical sensation. It cut across my developing calmness.
The call was from Kiki’s school. She was having cramping pain and I was needed to go retrieve her. My first thought upon hanging up was a wordless irritation. In one stroke my quiet space was gone. It was particularly regretted because it is the last opportunity for alone time before the kids are home for five days. But duty called and I got into the car.
Being in the car reminded me of the conversation I’d had with Kiki just that morning. Kiki was complaining because Gleek had the front seat. Gleek had displaced Kiki from the copilot spot because Gleek injured her knee over the weekend and the knee hurts when she bends it. This injury did not impress Kiki who was convinced that Gleek was exaggerating to get attention. I turned to Kiki and said
“You’re just irritated because the injury inconvenienced you. If you still had the front seat, you wouldn’t mind it.”
My statement floated through my brain as I drove. It was now Kiki who was in pain and I was the one irritated. The tables had turned and I had a chance to find myself hypocritical or to choose to let go of the irritation. I’d scolded Kiki for her lack of sympathy. Now I had to do better and I discovered that it was not so easy.
I frequently find myself inconvenienced by other people’s pain. My day can be completely rearranged by an illness, or a sadness, or an injury. I can choose to be irritated and angry. If I do, some of that anger spills onto the injured person, as if it is somehow their fault. Obviously the better way is to reach inside myself and find sympathy. I must let go of my schedule and know that, inconvenient or not, I should respond with kindness to the needs of others. This is true even if my response is “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to take care of that yourself.”
Kiki is home from school now. As I expected, her presence here has already presented multiple interruptions to my quiet state of mind. And yet, I am still writing. I am finding the calm spaces in between the needs and it is good.
Mirrored from onecobble.com. Tags: uncategorized
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cathyr19355 | |
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I spent this past weekend at Philcon, Philadelphia's annual science fiction convention which (for reasons I really don't feel like getting into right now), was held at a hotel in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. I had a pretty good time there. I did some gaming, saw a few friends, and there were more room parties than there had been last year (about 5 or 6, which gives you an idea how few parties there were last year). The con continues to have a good dealer's room, and a fairly big art show (though the quality of the art displayed seemed, to me, to be not quite as good as I'm used to seeing at Philcon). The Masquerade, like the Masquerades at most East Coast cons I've been to lately, was small, though the quality was, again, pretty good. I'm not sure how many people attended the con, because the hotel is so large it wasn't easy to estimate attendance. However, I saw a fair number of teens and college age people hanging out, gaming, partying, and generally having fun--definitely a good thing. Unfortunately, the gaming area was still the same drafty hallway they used last year, and the game bank was supplied by some gamer, or company, that is mostly interested in miniatures gaming. Not a lot of fun for the rest of us. (Fortunately, a large subset of the games we like best live in the trunk of my car, and we were constantly fetching games from the car to play.) esrblog was, for his part, frustrated that, through a series of mishaps, the convention once again failed to put him on the program and use his presence to draw new attendees. He succeeded in getting on two panels at the last minute, and they were quite good. What depressed me a bit about Philcon is not that the con was terrible. It wasn't. But it was entirely too much like last year's Philcon. Even the annoying parts, that various con comm members swore they would do their best to change (like the bad location for gaming and the failure to pick up on esrblog's willingness to do more programming items) were the same. Having tried and true events at your con is great, but being stuck in a rut isn't. Especially when the con has shrunk so greatly. I like Philcon, and I want to see it survive. I still have hope that it will. But it hurts to see so much momentum dragging it back to bad old habits. Tags: con report, philcon I feel: thoughtful
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mbarker | |
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Writing Excuses Season Three Episode 26: Nanowrimo From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2009/11/22/writing-excuses-season-3-episode-26-nanowrimo/Key points: Nanowrimo, National Novel Writing Month, is an opportunity to write 50,000 words in November along with 160,000 other people worldwide. See http://www.nanowrimo.org/ Nanowrimo forces you to write quickly, turn off your internal editor, shut up and write. What do you do when characters act dumb? If it's in character, fine. If it's not, what information are they missing, what emotions cloud their judgment? Forging ahead is one of the best ways to find an alternate solution. What do you do when main characters digress? Keep writing, and expect to throw away words. Save the good stuff for another book, because there will be other Novembers. What do you do when the pacing changes? If you're comfortable, keep going. You discover aspects of your style by writing. It's possible to have character development in action -- fight scenes can reveal and develop characters. Getting ideas on paper lets you see them and develop them, plus it gives you good practice. Nanowrimo -- keep writing. ( cut and paste? )[Howard] Katherine, give us a writing prompt that involves a traveling shovel. [Katherine] On the nano forums, I don't know if any of you all have been there but there's this sort of motif about the traveling shovel of death. One of your characters gets killed with a shovel somehow. You just have to work it into your story. [Dan] Awesome. [Howard] There's your writing prompt. Kill somebody with a shovel. No, wait a minute. Write about killing somebody with a shovel. You're out of excuses, now... [Dan] Kill somebody with a shovel. [Howard] Go write. Tags: action, character development, digressions, dumb characters, internal editor, nanowrimo, pacing, style, writing excuses I feel: shoveling
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blogunderschlok | |
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http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/2009/11/23/holiday-sale-at-the-schlock-store/ http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/?p=1482 We’re running a holiday sale at theย Schlock Mercenary store. You can get 10% off of your entire order by entering the coupon code Schlocksale09. But what might you acquire with this additional purchasing power?

The XDM Autographed Edition Bundle.
We start you off with a triply-autographed copy of XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery. It offers all the other benefits of an XDM book, and then allows you to gain not one but three XDM levels via the stamp in the cover and the magic imbued via the title-page signatures of Tracy Hickman, Curtis Hickman, and Howard Tayler.
Then we hook you up withย the glossy, 11×17 XDM promotional poster which proclaims “God doesn’t play dice with the Universe… We do.” And finally, every package includes one XDM Holiday card exposing the truth about Mr. Kringle. ย More importantly, the back side of this card has the special XDM Fortune Cookie Magic table.
We only have 100 of these bundles, so get yours now before they’re gone!

We have now listed the Schlock Miniatures in our store.
In full partnership with Garden Ninja, we’re now offering Schlock minis from our store. This allows you to have maximum shopping convenience when placing your order. The minis have to be specially packed, so they are shipped separately. We have the painted, unpainted, and patina finishes available.
If you’re just getting miniatures, you can still order direct from Garden Ninja studios. They, too, are having a 10% off sale this month.
Of course we still haveย Schlock Mercenary Boxed Sets and marker-coloredย ACEO cards. And don’t forget the Tagon’s Toughs or the Sergeant In Motion shirts, several posters, Tagon pins, and Writing Excuses CDs. So much to choose from!
 
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