A Time For Everything

Yesterday, we celebrated the Brown Eyed Girl's 26th birthday!

We spent a leisurely day staying warm, chatting, and watching Once Upon a Time via Netflix. Then there was dinner: mashed potatoes--the Brown Eyed Girl's fave--along with barbecued chicken and broccoli. And, of course, birthday cake and presents!

This past Saturday, my writers group celebrated its 30th anniversary. Yep, back in 1983 a group of women, all pursuing the dream of writing romance novels, came together and formed a local chapter of Romance Writers of America, founded three years earlier.

Of the dozen or so women who formed our group, two remain members, one whose health prevents her from attending and the other who rarely misses a meeting and continues to write, submit, attends classes and conferences, and even teaches classes herself.

Carolyn has served our organization in just about every way and we're so grateful. She's a dedicated member and writer. She was a special guest speaker and talked a bit about the formation of group. And after thirty or more years of pursuing publication, Carolyn announced the sale of her first book to Noble Publishing.

As a way to honor Carolyn and her perseverance, the board voted to name the new published author contest after her. She was quite surprised, as you can imagine, as were the rest of those in attendance.

We were given goodie bags and had extra door prize drawing gifts as well as cake to celebrate.

Overall it was a really awesome day.

Today is my actual birthday!! As of 4:16 pm (if I remember correctly), I will be 44 years old.

I'm feeling happy today, so I'll be warning everyone to keep their grumpies or bad news to themselves.

As you know, I celebrated my birthday on Mother's Day, so there will be no presents today, but that's okay. We may go out to eat, maybe not. Maybe just dessert or something. Maybe not...

I've been trying to lose weight by just altering my eating habits and doing some minor calisthenics during the course of each day, but then I eat something not so good and ruin it. The weight is coming off, but slowly (6.4 lbs. in 5 weeks), which I know is generally better. I'd hoped to lose 24 lbs. by June 29th, but that's not going to happen. But you know what, I'm feeling good, so I'm not going to sweat it. As long as it keeps slipping off, I'm happy.

But DH did say he thought my breasts looked smaller, which was good. (Though he wasn't as pleased. :) But in order to help boost the weight loss, I've given up the beans (carbs) for lunch and switched to meatballs (protein). And just this morning I bought a set of stationary bicycle pedals--not a whole bike, you know, just the pedals. I need to increase the number of calories I burn each day. I've started walking, but my feet can only take so much, and I've wanted a set for quite some time now, so I broke down and bought one. We'll see how it goes.

The Twelve Days of Jen

Since I'm already talking about weight loss, I'll share this gift--which I *did* ask for. Two pound weights to use against under-the-arm flab. I do *not* want that. :)



And that's it for today. I'll see you tomorrow!!

Now that summer's here, I'm feeling adrift. Without classes dictating when Sonshine has to be at school, I have to redefine my morning schedule. But how do I want to do that? I know. It's up to me. I wanted to start walking again, but do I do that at home or here in the business park? I should be getting up early and writing/revising, but again, at home or at work? I suppose, I'll work it out eventually.

Anyway...I've had things to share for a while, so lets get started...

In case you couldn't tell by the color scheme of this here blog, I'm somewhat of a patriot. Yes, I love my country and what it's supposed to stand for. My bedroom is decorated in a red/white/blue scheme, with flags even and some Americana knick knacks. Some painted by my dear mother.

I found these socks a few weeks ago. Cool, huh??


Sonshine has been a Lego fan from way back. Of course, at his age, he needs sets that are a little more challenging (and are expensive). The last few years he's received several Star Wars sets and I finally got them hung up in his bedroom: (top: Luke Skywalker's X-wing fighter shoots bottom: Darth Vader's Tie fighter)



He has Han Solo's Millennium Falcon as well, which we had pics of from Christmas and which is still at the fireworks store and not hung from the ceiling:



We haz drums again! Our foot pedal on our original set of drums broke and you you can't play without the foot pedal. I like to play with the kids, plus music helps keep the brain active. So here they are:


And last but not least, the twelve days of Jen.I celebrated my birthday on Mother's Day and got twice the haul! And as promised, in no particular order, is one of my wonderful gifts:


It's not the most exciting gift, but since there are so many other cool pics above, I thought I'd include one of the more boring gifts. *But* without this camera battery charger, we wouldn't *have* any of the other pictures!

And so Happy Hump Day to you!! We'll see you Friday with next installment of the Twelve Days of Jen. :)

Is it really March already? Spring has sprung here in North Texas, thank goodness. I am tired of being cold and of high electric and gas bills to keep me warm. This is the short period in which those things even out once more.

Time marches on as they say...my younger daughter will celebrate a birthday next week. It'll be a happier occasion than the last b-day we celebrated, I'm sure. I even have a present or two or three already purchased. Pretty good by our standards. Usually, I am running out the day of any given birthday to buy gifts. But this daughter is easier to buy for and I have seen things here and there as I have been out and about and purchased them. It does feel good, I must admit, to have it partially out of the way. Now if I can just remain so proactive and get cake mix, frosting, and the rest of the gifts purchased (and wrapped???) before the actual day of her birth, then I really celebrate.

Time heals all wounds...or so they say. My daddy died two days before Thanksgiving last year and we buried him two days after. A tough holiday, to be sure. I wasn't that close to my dad, sad to say. He even said last year (around this time) that he didn't know if he'd live to see another Christmas. All the usual regrets apply so I won't list them. But I still miss him, and the tears sneak up on me every now and again. A certain song or seeing a skinny old man with a receding hairline and a full-beard.

Time flies when you're having fun...so time alternately drags and rushes by. Fun comes in small bursts that are gone much too quickly, the other stuff seems to linger. But what is fun?

Fun is hanging out with your soul mates--I have various ones. My writer friends who understand the lure of the beckoning keyboard and an active muse. My online fandom friends who share the joyous squee of the BBC's Robin Hood and especially its leading actor, Jonas Armstrong. (Oh, we haven't had JA eye candy in awhile, so here you go...go ahead, click on the image to see it bigger!)



And the most important of my soul mates: my husband who becomes more of a soul mate the longer we are married. (Seventeen year, this July) A good thing, no? My younger daughter, who, as I mentioned in the last post, is very much like me and makes me laugh. And my son, whom I adore. He's fun to watch, to listen to, and spend time with. He keeps me young(ish).

As noted a few weeks ago, I celebrated a birthday. A milestone one at that. Yes, I turned 40. A couple of weeks ago, while at the grocery store, I came across a special edition of TIME magazine celebrating the year 1968 (which obviously was the year I was born). I flipped through it, but put it back on the shelf as it wasn't the cheapest magazine on the rack, and to be honest, I never buy magazines. But my daughter made me buy it, although it didn't take much convincing.

So on the 4th, as I was resting up for the evening's activities, I finished reading through the articles. There were some really interesting and noteworthy events that year - my birth notwithstanding! TIME hailed it as a milestone year in our nation's history. So as an ode to my birth year, I thought I'd share some of the events that caught my attention. The first of which I posted the other day - the image of the earth rise from the other side of the moon taken by Bill Anders during the Apollo 8 mission in December 1968. (Go ahead, take a minute, scroll down and check out the photo, read the post...)

I guess that's it for now. Just wanted to check in, explain my posts in case you scratched your head wondering where these varied topics might have originated... In a couple of days, I'll upload some footage from the 5th Annual Fireworks Extravaganza for your belated viewing pleasure.