A Time For Everything

Hey there! Yeah, I missed Friday. Life happens sometimes. :0)

But Saturday was writers group day and I had a wonderful day with my writer peeps as I usually do. I have been friends with these women for close to ten years now and I can't imagine my life without them.

One friend--I'm going to call her Grace--has what she calls a Happy Tracker. Grace is no where her real name but she's so smart and beautiful and wise that it fits her.

Now Grace has this tracker and this tracker has six (I think) sections where she tracks stuff. This includes things like going to the gym and tracking data for a medical condition she has. This also includes writing.

She's been reporting in to us for many many months now and I'm always so impressed by her diligence in the tracking and the progress she's made that I'm thinking of instituting my own. Not only would it keep me accountable to myself, but if I have to show my progress or lack thereof to these gals, I might make better progress in certain areas. Surprisingly, I have a somewhat competitive nature. :0)

So I'm going to ponder this idea a bit more, decide on the things I want to track and be accountable for. I can think of three off the top of my head: exercise, house keeping, and writing.

Anyway, I hope you had a wonderful weekend.

I made it safely to the first destination of my whirlwind week. I'm in Raleigh to meet BFF Jenn.

Here we are, Jen (me) and Jenn (the bff), aka the J Crew to the gang in the chat where we met.


Have a great week, I may or may not see you on Friday. :0)

My royal wedding hat started off as this...

I have met my soulmate. For an odd duck like me, that's not easy to do. I march to the beat of my own drummer and I have a weird sense of humor that can come off as rude if you don't get where I'm coming from and my world, geographically speaking, is pretty small. I live 12 minutes from where I work. I work for my husband and we have three employees. I spend time once a month with 30-odd other writers, six of whom are some of my closest friends.

And that's about it. I travel occasionally, like to the conference I attended last October, but I'm not the personality that jumps right into a group of people and charms them. I hang back, I don't talk much, I listen, I wait for invitations. It gets lonely sometimes.

But.

I recently switched online chat groups. Not because I didn't like the ladies I was hanging out with. I did. A lot. But one gal lives in Germany and her kids were getting home from school when I was just getting online, so rightfully so, it was time for her to be the mom and pay attention to her family. Her writing workday was essentially over. The other gal lives here in the states, but is more of a night owl and has various issues crop up and would just disappear on me, leaving me alone, which was not why I was in a chat room.

I had been getting emails randomly from another gal you might have heard of (Kristen Lamb) to join her band of merry creatives in a chat room for forty minute timed sprints. You can do anything during those forty minutes--write, edit, work your day job, exercise, clean house, whatever--and then come back and report your productivity, chat for a few, and then get back into another forty minute sprint.

So I went. I lurked the first few times, because, hello, nervous newbie here. But eventually I started chatting and reporting and then wielding the timer. Getting to know the core group as well as those who are more sporadic visitors.

And I "met" Jenn.

We clicked. We share a sense of humor. We share a lot of similarities. For example, anyone who knows me, knows I don't go anywhere without a travel mug of tea. Well--she takes coffee with her everywhere she goes. We like the same music. We're both writers. We're close in age. We're both moms. Anyway, as I said, we clicked.

It's been great. Also, I've become a text-er. I mean, we don't text all day everyday like teenagers, but our interactions are not limited to the online chat. We share stuff outside of the 9-5 workday. My love of hockey rubbed off and she decided to watch a hockey game to see what it was all about. We even Facetimed while we watched and chatted for most of the time she was able to watch. (She's on the east coast where it was later and couldn't watch the whole thing.) While she's not watching playoffs like I am, she does ask about the results of the games she knows I'm following.

Awww...

It's just that, throughout my life, I've just had so few people with whom I've clicked that much and that quickly. It's a gift at this point in my life and I'm so thrilled to have found her.

Yep, I'm definitely looking forward to this weekend. Partly because it's been a hell of a week and partly because I get to spend AAAALLLL day tomorrow with some of my favorite people in the whole wide world--my critique group. Right, we rarely critique anymore, but it's more like our little writer sisterhood. We gather monthly to talk and talk and talk and talk. We support one another in all things; family and jobs and personal issues as well as writing. And they are all such wonderful, beautiful women. I don't know what my life would be without them.

Ten years ago, on this day, the final episode of one of my favorite TV shows, JAG, aired.



I have a group of friend who met because of their love of the show. Of course, we've grown and changed and moved onto other shows, but our friendships have remained. JAG was my first foray into fandom. I love being a fan girl!

Tonight those of us who live in the DFW area are getting together to hang out, eat dinner, and watch the last episode all over again.

Several years ago, our whole Texas contingent, plus a couple of extras took a weekend trip to Port Aransas and visited the USS Lexington. Some scenes from JAG's pilot episode were filmed aboard her. We had a blast.


Have a great Wednesday.

Not only was it writers group weekend, but it was the annual JAG get together. After my writers meeting, I traveled further afield to a friend's house and visited with a group of ladies I only see once a year.

We watched close to a dozen episodes of the show, wondering why the lead character didn't, ah, date more women. There were enough of them flirting with him throughout the seasons. In addition we talked about other shows we love and watch, our kids, families, jobs, etc., etc., etc...

We talked a little about the history of this particular group and it all started back in 1999, smack dab in the middle of the show's run ('95 to '05). A group of fans connected online and made plans to meet at a restaurant. They did and the rest, as they say, is history. The following year they moved the gathering to someone's home and it has moved homes a handful of times over the years. Many of the original folks have stopped coming for one reason or another and others (like me) have taken their place. There are even a couple of women who travel from out of state to attend.

In 2010, our group traveled to Corpus Christi to visit the USS Lexington. We rented a huge beach house on the Gulf in Port Aransas. Why would we do that? Well, JAG is a military (Navy) drama. Scenes from the series premier were filmed aboard the carrier museum. So we went. And it was fab.



Hope you had a great weekend as well.

Let the temptation begin!

I'll be spending the whole day with my writer friends, but that also means being tantalized by the delicious smells of the two restaurants we hang out at.

Wish me luck at resisting the really bad things...

Hope your weekend will be just as fun but without the temptations. :)

And happy birthday to my mother-in-law!

It's unseasonably warm for this time of year here in North Texas. I personally don't mind the warmer temperatures, but warmer temps mean that whatever moisture we've accumulated is going to evaporate and we need it. Our lakes and ponds and rivers are still down by anywhere from 9" to 18". Not good folks. But I realize none or few of us are experiencing the weather we grew up with.

The weekend was almost perfect. I wrote and spent time outside doing yard work--if you consider burning off your fire pit yard work--and enjoyed breakfast with a dear friend. The third member of our intended trio had to bow out at the last minute with a sick hubby. While I understood completely, she was sorely missed and her absence was what made the weekend only almost perfect.

But CP and I hit a few major Fort Worth sights and landmarks as well as a couple of minor ones. Sandwiched in between, no pun intended, was breakfast at a local bagel place. I had a pretzel bagel and, oh my, was it delicious.

Starting this Friday, Fort Worth Friday will be resurrected and you'll have the first pictures of our breakfast adventure. My original intent with Fort Worth Friday had more of a historical leaning, but I've decided to just go with anything and everything that tickles my fancy about my home town.

As if that weren't enough, I watched a lot of TV this weekend, including Grey's Anatomy and Downton Abbey, and except the one episode of one show I really wanted to watch. Ah, well. Lunchtime viewing for today.

How was your weekend?

(And can you believe today's post is already up??)

...when foggy is the weather. So foggy, in fact, the fog advisory lifted only a short time ago.




The fog, clouds, and mist suit my mood just fine. Too bad I can't crawl back in bed for a few hours. It's great sleeping weather.

In other news, DH and I sat the kids down last night and had a discussion about house rules. It was made perfectly clear to them all, in front of each other, what the rules are, what the consequences could be, and what's expected of them. It was a late night since the Brown Eyed Girl had work. She has additional rules to follow. Not from us, but due to her stint through prison. Parole and probation. As a condition of coming back home she has to abide by those rules as well. She was not very pleased, but we made it perfectly clear (to all of them) that if they don't like our rules, they are free to move out. DD and Sonshine are perfectly fine with the rules. But that Brown Eyed Girl just seems to chafe under them. And it's not like our house rules are really that difficult and harsh. Sheesh.

In other other encouraging news, I have dropped a few more pounds. I haven't talked about it since the beginning of the month. I'm still ingesting more carbs and sugar than I should, but miraculously, in the last week, the weight has trickled off. Now I've got to switch from carb-laden dinners to protein & veggie rich meals. That should help me get past the line I'm straddling. One scale says 141.8, one says 139.9. I'd rather be firmly planted in the 130s so on to the next step. My goal is somewhere between 116 and 120.

Sunday breakfast plans in Fort Worth with friends are finally finalized. I'm excited about hanging out with ladies and seeing more of my city. Fort Worth Fridays will be every other Friday, probably starting February 8th.

I'm glad it's the weekend. Big plans??

Girls Writers Weekend (really, just an evening/following day) was a success. Marty and I successfully navigated our way to Dallas and found our friend's apartment without any trouble. We chatted, ate, and wrote on Friday. Saturday, we ate, chatted, wrote, and took a walk around the complex walking trail, around a small lake/pond thing with a fountain and turtles and coi. The trip home was a little dicey out of Dallas (sorry, Marty!) as traffic backed up on the way we needed to go and cars were flying across lanes in both directions to get were they wanted to be, so we had a bit of close shave. Once we got past that, though, the rest of the trip was relatively quick and easy.

Sunday was very productive. I got the second coat of paint on the paneling in my spare bedroom. YAY. My upper legs are very sore today from the crouching--the real, solid-wood paneling is on the lower half of the wall rather than sheet rock. Next step will be . . . hmmm . . . I should probably put a second coat on the ceiling and upper walls. Which means I have to go buy more of that color. I'm also waffling on whether or not to actually paint the one solid wall the lighter green color or leave it/paint it white. It also has paneling on it, though it's not the same as the other walls. We put up this wall to create this room from the dining room so rather than sheet rock, we used thin sheets of paneling. It's already white, but a bit dingy. I really wanted an open, airy, light room, but forgot how dark paint will dry. So I think I'm going to paint the wall white so as to help keep the room as light as possible. I'm also debating on leaving the chair rail molding/window and door trim white as well, rather than the lovely turquoise-y blue I bought. (I am taking pictures, so we'll see before and after.)

Then yesterday afternoon, as part of Sonshine's punishment for fibbing last week, he had to work on cleaning out the garage. So we got about half of that accomplished. It'll look much better once the local charity advertises its next visit to our neighborhood as we'll be able to get rid of the large pile of stuff we have for them. That'll help tremendously, too.

The kids and I played a couple of games, which was nice. And DD and I watched a bit of Grey's Anatomy while Sonshine tried to build something from all the scraps he cleared out of the garage. First it was going to be a dog house, but then he decided to build me a little step stool. That ultimately failed as he really didn't have the right kind of wood for the job. But he he was outside and using his brains and his brawn for a change. :)

So overall, a most excellent weekend.

So I went shopping last night. I don't do it often.

First up, Office Depot. I was in desperate need of a new printer cartridge for the office. I had milked the old one for all it was worth and was consistently getting a faded strip down the center of all documents. Today, being the first day of the month, requires me to send out about a dozen invoices (times 2), not to mention pay checks. There was no way I could scrimp by any longer. So ink, paper, and various other misc items, and it was off to Target.

I have been carrying around a gift card from Verizon--a $50 rebate from buying a phone for my son for Christmas. I ended up with two long-sleeve button down shirts for work, identical in style, one blue, one dark red, and a new bra. And a bit of candy to spend the last few dollars. Total purchase: $49.71.

Tonight starts Girls Writers Weekend. I am out the door at 2PM to pick up my girlfriend and then we're off to the wilds of Dallas to the other girlfriend's house. Food, writing, girl talk, writing talk--fun, fun, fun!

All right, well, best get the work done that needs doing before I leave.

Have a great weekend.