You know how you are always told to never power your computer off by using the power button? So, um… yeah. Listen to that.

For some reason my laptop takes several minutes to boot up. Just as I turned it on Thanksgiving afternoon, our company showed up so instead of waiting for it to finish booting up just to shut it down, I cheated & hit the power button. Epic. Fail. When I tried to boot it up on Friday, it went in a continuous loop of trying to start windows. All you computer geeks will shout several tricks at me but none worked. It wouldn’t even come up in safe mode.  Hubby did go to “geek” school & has several degrees on this stuff but even he was stumped. It was years ago &  you know how things drastically change in months with computers. Of course it’s a holiday weekend so I have to wait ’till Monday. Could you imagine me on Black Friday at Best Buy trying to get the attention of a member of the Geek Squad? I think not.

So, just a friendly reminder to all that it isn’t merely a suggestion and even if you have done it before – don’t do it!! I hope it can be restored & save all my bookmarks because I don’t know half of what I have but I know I’ll need them eventually. Hmmm…. sounds like my closet. “But I can’t throw it out, hon. It may come back in fashion & be of use someday!”

I also have no idea how to get into the control panels or e-mails of my websites. How can I be such a dork? I am thankful for my personal “Mad Geek”, Alan. By all rights he should want to throw me through a window by now. I promise to make better files now, really. *smiles sweetly and bats eyes at Alan* I am really starting to despise how bad I rely on technology :/ Time for a pen & notebook for backup, Bug!

I’m sure my files are safe but I am grateful I thought to finally save my latest book on Wednesday to my flash drive. It’s almost done & if I had to start over again, I wouldn’t be able to for this one.  For some reason my daughters books are harder and take 4 times longer than my women’s fiction novels that are 4X their length.

On a brighter note, Thanksgiving was great. We had all the (MN) nieces and nephews here & it was a blast!  My son & his girlfriend made it too. They wanted to do Christmas gifts early since we will all be in CA. I told them no gifts. In fact, I told Ashley several times “no gifts”. I have learned she is not yet afraid of me. I will have to work on that. DIAMOND EARRINGS, ASH???? Yes, they are lovely but I am gonna have to beat her. Sorry, folks.

Our stove did decide to pick that day to “play dead”. We had to run back & forth to the neighbors to cook the turkey & breads. It just made it that much more interesting.  At least the weather was nice. And in MN, nice at Thanksgiving is 40′s and no snow! The cook top still works so that helped anyway. The movie “Pieces of April” kept running though my head.  Gotta love the holidays

The “things I’m thankful for” shout out may be a few days late, but I am Thankful for hubby’s old/mega-slow desktop,  for the one site I do know how to get into, and tagging in facebook. Love you, All!

All right… back to what the blog was originally set up for – Dustin Time.

I officially signed the contract and sent it on its merry way to my publisher on Friday. We have been exchanging e-mails so I wasn’t worried about not getting it yet. (I’m totally lying here ) Seriously, we have been in touch and I had gotten the ISBN number as mentioned so I know things are moving along. The ISBN number was on the contract so I guess everything has it’s order.

The publisher and I have settled on a logline for the cover & decided to keep it short and sweet. “When Kaitlyn tries to leave Dusty, fate has other plans.” I’m not sure if I’ve ever said that the book is a Women’s Fiction with a Time Travel element.

I have submitted the back cover blurb and the 1/2 page teaser as well but I’ll wait for her final say so before I post them. (Way to stretch it out, huh?)

Next in line is obtaining the copyright. I don’t imagine there is too much thrill in that but hey, I’m loving every step.

Now if you’ll excuse me, the pony has gotten out of the fence once again. I’ve gotta put him away before a car stops to tell us there’s a bear in our yard. Faaaaaaarm livin’ is the life for me. (yes, we’re working on leaves today too)

I’m not exactly sure what to blame the latest bout of chest pain on.  Seems to me it just comes & goes but at my neighbor’s constant nagging, I went in for the big “M”. Yes, mammogram.

You’ve all gotten the e-mails preparing you for the moment: If you’d like to rehearse for the big event, there are several ways to do this. Open up your freezer door and place your breast firmly against the cold edge. Promptly slam the door on your breast, switch sides, repeat. Or : Wait until mid-winter and lie on the cold cement floor of your garage. (If garage is heated, be sure to turn heat off one hour prior to session.) Scoot up as close as you can to the rear tire and have your husband slowly back over your breast. Switch sides, repeat.

So, I had a normal exam first. Of course there was some fancy name for the pain. It’s cartilidge related, not chest.  He said, “For what you are here for today, this really wouldn’t warrant a mamogram.”

“My neighbor would kick your ass and she could take you.”

“I’ll see if they can get you in today.”

Now I’m in the cheery little room with the very sweet nurse, gowned up with the opening facing front.

“You didn’t have one before but I’ll explain the new way to you. It’s digital now so we don’t have to put stickers on your nipples anymore.”

“Darn it. I really wanted Hello Kitty.”

She proceeded to tell me how it worked & showed me the ‘torture chamber’. “And if it’s not tight enough, I had crank it here.”

Lovely.

Pull. Twist. Prod. Stretch. Pull some more. “Okay, hold your breath. Don’t breathe.”

“Not a chance. I’m pretty sure you have my lung cranked up in this thing.”

“Hmmm,” she says after she takes the picture.

“What?”

“There’s a wrinkle. We’ll have to do it again.” She leaves to go get the tractor and attaches the chains and takes off to Iowa with my left boob. “There. That’s better. Now the other side.” We get though that one on the 1st try. w00t! But wait… there’s more. “Now we get to do them sideways!”

Oh Goody!

When it’s all said and done, I go behind the curtain to get dressed and roll them back up. She lets me look at the pictures.

“Hmmm,” I say.

“What?”

“I told them the left one was bigger.”(Even before the trip to Iowa)

She proceeds to explain the picture to me and then becomes my new best friend. She called me young on a few occasions and then skinny.

This post is for you Janell of ACMC. Thanks for warming up your hands first.

***Just had to add… I now have one of my favorite Rodney Carrington songs “Show them to Me” stuck in my head. Particularly the line, “Don’t be sad your boobs ain’t bad they’re just a little long….”

Next to the entire Lego Coast Guard set that hubby got for his b-day…

next to the junk magazines that seem to breed in the mailbox this time of year…

sits a new addition to our kitchen table clutter, a dictionary.

Hubby & I are  members of our local ELKS lodge. He is actually the State Veteran’s Chairman (there is a longer title but that’ll have to do. ) He recently stumbled upon a program within the ELKS that sponsors giving dictionaries to 3rd graders. In some towns, other fraternal organizations sponsor this as well. Where our lodge is, for instance (our lodge is 40 minutes away), the Lion’s Club was doing this but in the towns surrounding us, it was still fair game.

He got the okay for the cases of dictionaries to be purchased through the gambling fund and handed them out to two different school districts to over 100 very happy children. There was one extra – hence the copy on my table. We are currently waiting on 100 more for the town I work in, which technically also falls under our lodge’s territory.

The dictionary is very unique. Besides the thousands of words, (it’s scaled down for 3rd grade) it has things like metric conversion, the table of elements, multiplication table, Roman numerals, sign language, braille, the planets, and so on. Now here’s where it seems like its personalized with the ELKS in mind. It tells you about the flag,  gives a civics lesson, has the Declaration of Independence, talks about the presidents, each state, and so much more. The last page hosts the world’s longest word in the english language, which I don’t wish to post here. At 1,909 letters – it would take me forever.

I cannot begin to carry on about all the good the ELKS do for communities and don’t want to turn this post into a “join the ELKS” rant. I guess I’m just hoping to inspire everyone to take that extra step & see what they can do in their communities. These children were very grateful. It only took 1 afternoon & a visit to the school – that’s it. The books themselves were about $1.75 a piece but the children’s reactions to receiving their very own book was priceless.  Our community is not a rich one and for some, this was the first book they could call their own.

This is the website in case you want to see if anything is being done in your area. http://www.dictionaryproject.org/

Now, that being said, you know I was not going to let this pass & not pick on my family, right? We had the one extra copy and my husband tried to give it to my daughter.

“I don’t need another dictionary.”

“Yes, you do. You’re spelling is horrible,” I say.

“I spell perfectly fine. The rest of the world just has different opinions on them.”

GAH!!  Her spelling tests are great when she studies for them – it’s just the everyday words that are terrible. In all honestly, without spell check – I’d be a gonner too. srsly

On another note, hubby also discovered a Thesaurus program for 4th graders so I imagine that will follow soon. I’m gonna need a bigger table.

This post inspired by Turkey Lurkey’s loving b-day status update to her hubby.

Nope. The title is not a typo. It’s something hubby says to me now & then. Thank you ‘Back to the Future’ part 1 & actor Crispen Glover.

I’ve said elsewhere on the blog that we don’t have regular TV. We simply couldn’t justify the price anymore, especially when there seemed to be less and less of anything interesting on. Reality shows have taken over and they just weren’t our thing. That’s not to insult anyone that enjoys these shows, it just isn’t us. We did enjoy a few different series’ that would probably make you go “ick” so we’re even . We really enjoyed Mythbusters and Dirty jobs (well, if not the show, Mike Rowe anyway) so I buy the DVDs. Hubby also loved “The Unit” so I purchased that and have really gotten into it as well. Right now “Heros” has our attention and we blaze through those a couple episodes a night. So, we’re not TV snobs, I just didn’t  take to “Cooking with Aunt Betty while she remodels your house and takes in the neighbors kids to raise them right while she dances with Brad Pitt on a deserted island with only a rolling pin and a thong to defend herself”. Nuff said.

Back to the title (almost sounds like another ADD post, doesn’t it ) Although we don’t do TV, we are movie watchers and at the top of the list are trilogys and such. Okay, so maybe ‘Back to the Future’ wasn’t an award winner, but it killed a few days and has re-inspired another saying in our home. If hubby does something allegedly asinine, the repair is, “I am your density”.

My favorite 80′s movies are slowly creeping their way into out collection as well. You just can’t go wrong with anything John Cusack. *swoon* “I want my two dollars” (Better off Dead) has been bellowed more than once (okay, mostly by me) and although it can’t be tossed out there easily, it’s hard not to giggle when handng hubby a pen. “I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen.” (Say Anything)

As silly as it is, we love the movie ‘The Three Amigos’. We had some of our nieces & nephews over and made them watch it (because it was just child abuse that they hadn’t yet been subjected to it). It was my fault for making double layer tacos the next night. They said all-together with almost the skill of syncronized swimmers, “Is that all you have, Mexican Food?” LOL! The little boogers have a knack for memorizing movies.

Hands down, ‘The Princess Bride’ cannot be topped for quotes. Last year, I met a friend my my writer’s forum with hubby & daughter in tow. My friends comment to the size of my hubby was “He’s huge. Bugs Bunny character, pick you up and bend you into a pretzel huge.”  Hubby’s response: “I can’t help it if I’m the biggest and the strongest. I don’t even exercise.” Rest in peace, Andre the Giant. “Inconceivable”, “As you wish”  and “I do not think that word means what you think it means” will always be timeless classics as well.

I love when silly movie quotes and typos make their way into our lives. Share yours. I can always use another

Today started off in typical Saturday fashion. Laundry, cleaning, & attempting to get some embroidery done for a friend. The change in weather threw in a twist today; rearranging my closet from the dozens of pairs of shorts & Capris that I don’t wear to the dozens of pairs of pants & jeans that I don’t wear. Rotate shirts with sweaters, say bye bye to cute sandals – helllooooooo boots!

Even through all the different tasks, there is always time for e-mail. I was more than thrilled to see a letter from my publisher this morning! She sent me the ISBN # (International Standard Book Number – not “I’m selling books now”, thank you, Wayne )  for Dustin Time. *faints* It may be a small thing, but it’s one more step in the realization that this is really happening. I also need to work on taglines & cover blurbs which, believe it or not, is harder than writing the novel itself! My writer friends will agree with this.

So…my writer friends. A word of warning: One you get your query perfected, once you get your synopsis done, once you get your agent or publisher, congrats! But wait…there’s more! It’s the industries way of keeping us on our toes or saying “Hey you – yes you. Get the heck off facebook & get busy!”

I’m a barcode! wOOt me!

*gets off blog to go get busy*

…or are you just obsessive?

Yes. As much as I try to fight it, deer season is upon us. I have never been a fan of hunting and make it no secret. I understand all the arguments about population control, etc. but I still don’t have to like it. I won’t eat venison as a matter of principle and yes, I should just give up bar burgers as well if I were really going to pretend to have a conscience about it. Deer are just pretty and duh, Bambi’s mom after all

I recently posted this picture of my husband’s “deer stand” in my writing forum with some funny comments that one of hubby’s cousin’s made after he saw it. In your deer stand…
Do you need a scope to see the ground?
Do you get a nosebleed?
Do you invite your friends over to play football in it? No? Well, my hubby’s does.

Needless to say, my friends did not let me down. Posts that followed guaranteed my need for paper towels and cleaner for my computer screen. (Someday I will learn not to drink or eat anything when I’m in my forum.)
“What? No elevator?”
“Just how big are y’all’s deer, anyway?”
“Bugs, I’m glad he decided to go with only 3 telephone poles. 4 would have been excessive.”
And my favorite: “From that height, you could spit on the deer’s head and kill it with the force of gravity.”

So, with another season upon us, I will hideout in my house and hope he doesn’t get anything. I have to be a prisoner with the dogs because they’ll want to run after the hunters. Our property is great. One of the best parts is that there is a 160 acre forest to one side of us & we aren’t totally surrounded by just corn fields but therein also lies the problem… the hunters.

My only request of hubby is this: “If you do manage to murder the pretty beast, don’t let me see it in what used to be it’s original form. It’s bad enough to have the meat in the freezer :{

End rant. Carry on mighty hunters. Millions of children are awaiting their nightmares. “You shot Bambi???” *sniff*

Fortress ala Kramin…

Okay. After my last post, you can see where everyone’s mind is in my house, which is pretty much not where it should be. I don’t know why we’re so scatter brained. It’s not like any of us are horribly overworked. I am still in the waiting stages on the progress of my novel editing so I thought I’d share another version of a typical night at Nimark Ranch. (That’s what we call our hobby farm. When I figure out how to post pictures here, I’ll share the sign at the end of our driveway)

Like almost every other woman I know, I am trying to regain the body I lost somewhere between kids an the occasional bar burger that I can’t resist (with bacon, mind you). I brought our Wii to work along with an old small TV to do the ‘Wii Fit’ at lunch. It had been extremely windy for a few days as well as rainy & I couldn’t even get a walk in at lunch for over a week & was getting restless. I thought this would be a great solution. After a month of Special K for breakfast & lunch & diligently doing the Wii fit, the bastard dude trainer with the ponytail told me I had gained 2 lbs. WTH??? And before you say “Muscle weighs more than fat”, zip it. I never gauge by numbers alone, I go on how my jeans fit & big fat NADA for change there too. Anyway, a friend of mine had been talking about doing the Jillian Michaels 30-day shred on facebook. I decided I needed to step it up a notch so I bought the DVD.

I wrote my friend and asked her, “So, how much am I going to hate you after day one?”
She replied, ” A LOT. In case I didn’t make that clear, A LOT!”

She was right but it feels good to feel like I’m getting somewhere. Now I’ll bring in where the home antics fit in. Yesterday was day 2 of the “Shred”. We all walked downstairs to the TV room to continue watching the ‘Heroes’ series. We don’t have TV but I am a non-disciplined movie buyer. I figure what we save on cable I can spend in DVD’s. (It can all be justified, right? ) I walked down the stairs slowly with “ow ow ow ow ow” at every step, my loving daughter ahead of me laughing all the way. I get to the bottom & utter “Dammit!” & she & hubby giggle knowing what that is for. Yes, I forgot my glasses. I do this EVERY.STINKIN’. NIGHT. I only need them for TV & driving so they are easy to forget. I beg my daughter to go get them so I don’t have to climb the stairs again.

“Okay, but you owe me. Where are they?” she asks.
“By my purse.”

She takes off upstairs and I settle myself on the couch. She comes down a minute later… and hands me my cell phone! Apparently it was by my purse too. A phrase my dad always said came to mind. “It doesn’t run in the family, it gallops.”

This is one of my favorite sayings. I made it for my sister-in-law on my embroidery machine:

*sigh* I live in anticipation of what tonight will bring.