Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts

Winter cleaning

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Today is cleaning day here at the Brezenoff household. Beth's slaving in the bathroom right now, while I am on lunch break. Fear not; I do my part (vacuuming, dusting, some odd decluttering). We also took down the Christmas tree, which is a relief. I like it; don't get me wrong. I'm not about to get all anti-goy on this. Fact is, when I was a tot, I was jealous of many of the Christmas trimmings. I do get sick of seeing it, though, after a few weeks, and its placement makes everything else have to shift to one side a little. Now everything is back to normal.

I think after lunch, though, before I tackle the kitchen, I'm going to brave the cold and take Harry on a longish walk. It's sunny out, and I could use a little of the old vitamin D, believe you me. The winter continues to hammer away at my soul, so I better fight back when I have the constitution to do so.

This evening, I think it'll be Jake Maddox time; I'm behind on the next title (a football story), and it's due Tuesday. Eric Stevens's good name must live on.

Wednesday is looking like my big highlight this week. Various in-laws will be watching Sam for me for about five hours, and I intend to use every minute of that to work on YA MS the first. I have this ridiculous notion that I can get a draft finished before the end of the month. It's probably a pipe dream.

I am not watching football. Football is boring.

If only December had been NaNoWriMo!

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Christmas is behind us. With it are also several dozen cookies, at least one turkey, three chickens, several imitation crabs, a bucket of mayo, five rolls, a quarter pound of sliced cheese, three portions of Grandma's potatoes, a liter of soda, two beers, six cups of decaf, and 6 hours of quality slick-road drive time. Woo!

Truth is, I made out like a bandit this season, with great eats and gifts and I should shut up. Also, the few gifts I either picked out on my own or had any amount of influence on were very well received, which is nice too.

In news more relevant to this forum, my writing for the last ten days has been fairly productive; it remains to be seen whether that productivity will prove useful to me in some way, namely monetarily! Ha. But seriously, I'm more than thirty-eight thousand words into YA MS 2 right now, and though I have already spotted a great many holes in its plot and timeline, which will need fixing in the revision stage, I'm still feeling pretty much good about it. The protagonist's voice feels fresh to me, and making her a gamer was huge fun. Plus, there's this really excellent feminist message . . . I think.

And speaking of gaming, I haven't played WoW in 46 days. But who's counting?

It's been a long time since the last update, so I won't try to cover every little thing, but I do want to add that Beth and I went to Good Earth for lunch again, and Chad was our waiter. AGAIN! It's starting to feel a little weird, to be honest. But I had the croque monsieur, which made me feel all oogy in a good way.

WTB house in warm climate PST

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Yesterday was a good day, in at least a few ways, but not so good in one way in particular.

On the plus side, I wrote a chapter and a little in Lily's section of the YA MS. It turns out she's a load of fun to write, and way smarter than I thought she was. Besides the productivity itself, I was able to do some writing during the day, while Sam was napping, which is always great. And all it took was a split-second decision*: I think I won't play Assassin's Creed right now. I think I'll open Word. Totally worked! Then Beth was nice enough to let me run out to DBC after supper and get even more done.

Sam was a pleasure to be with, too, for most of the day, and even let me shoot a couple of videos.

The negative side? Cold. SO COLD. PAIN COLD. I am so done with winter already, which is a huge shame, because (A) I live in Minnesota, and (B) WINTER HASN'T EVEN OFFICIALLY STARTED YET.

Today, Sam and I will very likely go to the MOA. You say, "MOA?! So close to Christmas? Are you MAD?!" Yes. But that's irrelevant. I don't think it will be too crowded during a weekday. Plus? Opa! for lunch. But we have some things we need to return to MOA-only stores, so it has to be done. And I could use a nice long errand to get out of the house.

*Anyone else remember the Split-Second Decision assembly in high school or maybe junior high? In that presentation, the split-second decision was of course saying NO to drugs! Yay, Nancy Reagan!

'Tis the season

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Time for more.

It's Thursday, which means in a few hours begins my evening to work seriously on the YA MS. In related news, I pushed through about 2000 words of that sucker yesterday. I'm not sure how many of those 2000 were actually any good, however.



It snowed today quite hard for maybe 5 minutes. Of course, I was in the car, driving, during those 5 minutes. But it was very pretty, and Sam was out in a real snowfall for the first time, albeit briefly as we walked through the parking lot when the snow began.

By the way, despite the name of this blog, or perhaps owing to the scenario to which the name of this blog alludes, our Christmas tree is up, as is a wreath on our front door. I'll post a photo of the former soon, I hope; we're planning on having it in our holiday photo. Think we'll get a card printed up to send out this year? I have my doubts. We never seem to get quite around to it.

Your opinion, please: When I was on my way out earlier, I spotted a woman, very bundled up, with her toddler son (presumably) wandering from house to house. At first, it appeared she was collecting recyclables for their deposit value (do they do that in Minnesota? I don't even know), but upon closer inspection, I realized they were in fact going through the numerous bags and boxes my generous neighbors have left out for today's charity pickup (by the Epilepsy Foundation, I believe; they want your new or gently used clothing or household items). This woman's infraction made me angry, and a little confused as to whether I was right to be angry.