Books, books and more books...

It's been well over a week since my last blog post and I apologize for being a neglectful blogger. Other duties having been calling lately - namely work, B who is now suffering through yet another cold, finishing reading the Twilight saga before our new book club kicks off (more on that later) and lastly finding a few moments here and there to write my latest novel.

My previous little writing "experiment" (I'll call it that cause let's face it, I avoided writing classes like the plague when I was in school) is in the safe and very competent hands of editor sj (who DID take all those writing classes that I worked so hard to avoid) and she's probably running out of red ink by now. That little experiment was my attempt at creating a cute children's story for B. It all started with an idea that kept growing in my head and every night I would tell B a little more of the story. Then I got the brilliant idea that I should just write it down so I wouldn't forget any of the details and Voila! "The Tree House" was born. We'll see what happens with it. In any event B totally got absorbed in it and loved hearing what would happen next. If that's as far as it goes I'm happy with it.

As for my latest writing endeavor, it is not a children's story. And it's going to be way longer than "The Tree House". I'm already at 22,000 words and I'm only about a third of the way through. The Tree House was only 9000 or so words. I'm thinking sj might demand a hefty paycheck from me if I ask her to review this one. Thankfully I'm still months away from finishing it so we have some time to negotiate something... And I do not have a title for it yet, nor will I give away too many details here because the plot is still unfolding in my head. So stay tuned...

Now in addition to my own reading list that I having been plowing through (in an attempt to read more to better my writing skills), several friends and I have recently formed a little book club of sorts. It involves reading a book for which a movie has been made, then getting together and having a fun girl's night while watching the movie. And since I'm all up for getting together with these gals, this creates the perfect reason to do it more often. We have already a few books picked out - The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd and Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson. I'm looking forward to delving into those soon.

Random Factoid - Did you know that Buckingham Palace has more than 600 rooms?! Yeah, glad I'm not the one cleaning it...

All things renaissance...

I'm totally bummed. Why does Showtime have to do this to me? Why? They offer me 3 free months of programming just to rip it out of my hands right before the 3rd season of The Tudors starts. It was bad enough that the free preview started right at the end of season 2 (which progressed into me getting a subscription to Netflix so I could catch up on all the previous episodes...) Now I'm stuck waiting until season 3 comes out on Netflix cause I'm not sure I want to drop the moolah to order Showtime... But boy am I addicted!! We just finished watching the last episode of season 2 and I can't wait for more!


And I just had to comment on SJ's post from yesterday. That picture is priceless and she's right - we'd never laugh about the fact that she prances around in renaissance outfits. Especially when I'm looking at getting an outfit of my own for the upcoming Renaissance Feast. But I just can't decide which on to get...

The Queen of Nottingham -
Or my personal favorite, the Anne Boleyn gown -
I'm up for suggestions!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Just wanted to send out a little love since tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Hope everyone's v-day is filled with chocolate, flowers and fancy meals at expensive restaurants. Oh wait - that's what I'm hoping MY day is filled with tomorrow...

In honor of tomorrow's V-Day celebrations, I am including a fun bit of trivia from my calendar. I cheated and looked ahead to the weekend's trivia page and what I saw floored me. Here goes -

** The longest kiss on record lasted 130 hours, 2 minutes. **

You read that right folks - 130 HOURS!!! That's over 5 straight days of kissing!! Holy crap!

How is that possible?!? How did they eat? Sleep? Go to the bathroom?? Eww, I think I just grossed myself out.

Anyway...happy v-day y'all!

And the winner is...

...FunnyGal KAT with her approximation of 9.46 billion!

To be exact, the full answer is - 9,460,800,000.

Catherinette came in a very close second with her response of "a lot!" Cause I definitely agree... that's a lot of stars. More than my little brain can comprehend anyway.

And so to continue along this "star" theme, I am turning today's trivia tidbit into a trivia question for my beloved readers...

What famous disease got its name from the fact that people believed it was caused by the evil "influence" of the stars?

Some star trivia

My daily little calendar filled with "useless bits of trivia that you never needed to know" intrigued me with some interesting astronomy information this morning. It got me thinking, which is never a good thing but you know it happens sometimes, and I turned today's useless trivia into a bit of a math challenge for myself. Then I thought that this might be a fun thing to post on the blog in case any of my fellow readers might want to brush up on their math skills.

So here goes...

Trivia: If you attempted to count the stars in the galaxy at a rate of one every second, it would take around three thousand years to count them all.

Challenge: According to this "theory" (cause I have no idea if it's true or not), how many stars does it suggest are in the galaxy?

I'll post the answer in a day or two.

Oh the frostiness...

This was the view outside my office window yesterday while I was working from home. Ahhh...icicles. That picture doesn't do them much credit. Those suckers were easily 2 - 2 1/2 feet long. I can't imagine the amount of weight that's hanging off our gutters right now. But they are pretty to look at. And I'm sure they'll grow even longer today.

I woke up this morning to a very chilly 4°F outside. On my way to work I saw the temp in my car drop down to 1°F. It was downright frigid. And I think my brain must have froze at some point in the night because I chose to put on a skirt today for work. What was I thinking?!?! Despite the fact that I've got all that Canadian blood in my veins, I don't think my legs defrosted until I was pulling into the parking lot at work. And now I'm going to spend the entire day sitting on my arse, near-motionless at a desk. I guess I'm just determined to freeze today.

But I looked at the weather forecast for this weekend and my hopes have been lifted. Temps for this weekend are projected to be in the mid to upper 40s!! So hopefully I can say goodbye bobsled-luge driveway. And although our icicles will also have to suffer, I think our gutters will be breathing a sigh of relief.

I'm not too keen on groundhogs...

Well today's proclamation that winter will continue for 6 more weeks just reaffirmed my dislike for groundhogs. I think it all started when we caught a groundhog happily gnawing away at the (stained!) trim on our garage a few years back (long story.) They may look cute and all, but they're still pesky little critters. And Punxsutawney Phil is no better. The rascal saw his shadow this morning, so according to legend, we'll have 6 more weeks of winter.

But seriously, can we get a little scientific here? Isn't this whole shadow/no shadow phenomenon really more of an "is it sunny or is it cloudy?" kind of thing? Technically speaking, I know there is still a possibility that you can cast a shadow on a cloudy day, but other things come into play like the amount of cloudiness, the time of day, and where you are standing in relation to the sun. Now if it's a sunny day, I'm sure that most if not everyone will cast a shadow regardless of where you are positioned. So can't we just surmise that if it's a nice sunny morning, the darn thing is bound to see his shadow? And if it's cloudy, there's a higher probability that it won't. Now if we take the critter out of the picture, can't we just conclude that if it's sunny on the morning of Feb 2nd, we'll have to endure 6 more weeks of winter. But if it's cloudy, there's a higher chance that spring will arrive sooner. Stop and think about that for a minute. Doesn't it sound a bit absurd? Forcasting the start of the next season based on the morning weather of one random day?

If that's the case, then why don't we do this for other major seasonal changes? Let's pick a day in April to use for the first major heatwave in summer? Or pick a day in August to foretell the first frost? How about a day in the fall to determine when we'll have the first snowfall? And we wouldn't even need any furry animals - just look at whether or not it's sunny that morning. Sounds easy enough, don't you think?

Sorry for the rant. I'm a little bitter. I'm sick of winter. I'm sick of the cold. Sick of being stuck indoors. And sick of the snow. To top it off, I'm still sick from my cold from last week. I'm ready for a change.