Ice Cream
- Blogophilia Week 5.9 Topic: Dare To Dream
- Bonus Points:
- (Hard, 2 pts) Incorporate a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote
- (Easy, 1 pt) Mention goosebumps
Ice cream is the tastiest, yes it is true,
in shades of red, or green, or blue.
I dare to dream of delicious treats
delivered in trucks up and down the streets
Its cold chilly flavor, goosebumps gives
and in its frozen depths, happiness lives
But what happens when ice cream trucks don’t come?
When there’s no vanilla, pistachio, or bubble gum?
When the freezer is empty, the store shelves bare?
Can you turn to someone, who truly cares?
to have a friend is to be one.
That means sharing in joy, laughter, and fun
but it also means sharing your cream of the ice
to be selfish is not considered nice,
so I’ll take that treat off of your hands
help you to be a kind and caring man,
that is what a good friend is for
to help you be better, kinder, and warm,
and look at this way, no effort it took
because I stole – I mean um… No… um…. Gee, this is a long poem. And it has nothing to do with Jonathan’s entry for the week. Absolutely nothing.
Nothing to see here.
Have an ice-creamy kind of day!
Jo 🙂
Blogophilia Week 4.9
It’s time again for Blogophilia, the fun blog group where Marvin gives us prompts to include in our weekly blogs. This week’s prompts are:
I was planning to work the quote into my paragraph, but I found one worth sharing just as it is:
“Grace is when you aren’t striving or controlling or trying to change or manipulate or make something happen. Grace is when you find yourself carried along, when all that’s left to do is receive. Grace is when you know you’re loved, exactly as you are. Grace is an entirely different way of experiencing life.”
― Rob Bell, The Zimzum of Love: A New Way of Understanding Marriage
The redo
I like my laptop. No, I love my laptop, but since I bought it the years ago it’s head corrupted sectors on the hard drive. At first this wasn’t really an issue; none of my data was anywhere near it. Then it started causing crashes every once in awhile. Since August it has crashed daily, often multiple times (especially if I’m editing photos or doing any kind of artwork, or listening to music while running word, or basically doing anything except just surfing the web.) Back in August we embraced the fact that a new hard drive was the only fix, and bought one. There’s a long story that fills in the time from August until now, but it’s not conducive to family harmony, so we’ll shorten it by saying that Hubby’s brilliant plan of cloning it never panned out.
Begin March. Finally, sick of the constant freezing, I threw up my hands, had the brother physically install the new hard drive, and now I get the fun of reinstalling EVERYTHING. All the programs. All the settings. All friggin’ day and then some. And half of my programs won’t install because the license is “in use”, despite the fact it’s NOT in use. But, if I wait to call them tomorrow, (assuming I’m not a normal person who is at work during their 9-4 open hours) maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll reset it. Or maybe not. Never mind I paid 200$ plus for these programs. It’s up to them whether I get to install them or not because I *might* be cheating them. God knows there’s a rash of graphic artists stealing generations-old art plugins. There’s such a high demand for the unsupported old versions.
This is one time I have to applaud Microsoft. I got the Office license reset with no issues, and no talking to some stupid person. I hate talking to customer support people. I hate having my &%$#ing software held hostage until it’s convenient for them, after I already paid outrageous and ridiculous sums for it, because they’re terrified I might install their software twice. At the ridiculous prices they charge you should get a couple of installs! (Yeah, I’m taking mainly about Eye Candy, if you want to know.) If they want to do this to protect their keys, fine, but make it EASY to get things handled like, and I shudder to say this a second time, like Microsoft managed to do. If they can do it, surely other companies can, too.
Anyway, that’s how my whole day has been and it’s going to stretch into my whole night as well because I’m maybe 50% done not counting those that won’t install until their jailers – I mean tech support – release them.
Yeah. I’m irritated.
Hope your day is better than mine.
Jo :[ <— irritated face. Or a vampire. Your pick.
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Blogophilia Week 3.9
It’s time again for Blogophilia! What is Blogophilia? It’s the fun blog group where Marvin gives participants prompts to use in their weekly posting. This week’s prompts are:
Blogophilia Week 3.9 Topic: Selling Your Soul
Bonus Points:
(Hard, 2 pts) Quote Shel Silverstein
(Easy, 1 pt) include the term ‘rising star’
I still don’t have anything creative or clever. I am in the middle of editing some photos from 2012 that I;d planned to use for another challenge, but I think I missed the deadline on it. I also have some old photos back but there’s not much worth sharing – it’s mostly the back of people’s heads at the Ray Stevens’ show.
I guess I feel like selling your soul (not mine – I need mine!) for some kind of inspiration. I have some short stories I want to write as supplements to the upcoming book but I am totally uninspired. I tell myself I CAN do it, but If the track is tough and the hill is rough, THINKING you can just ain’t enough! It takes action, and I’m not feeling very action-y.
We did finish watching American Horror Story Hotel finally. It ended up being quite good, though I wasn’t sure about it for the first seven episodes. I think the trouble is normally we wait until they are ALL done then glut on them in two days, so we don;t have to *wait* for all the explanations, but this time we started out watching them with everyone else, once a week, and so there were too many weeks of “this doesn’t make any sense/what does that have to do with anything/god there is too much sex” until stuff finally started to make sense. One thing I enjoy with that series, besides Evan Peters (sorry, but he is adorable!!) is that they use the same actors in every season but in totally different roles, so they really get to show off their scope. More than one is a rising star, to be sure, or should be at the very least. (Did I mention Evan Peters yet?)
So, though this is a waste of space, I will close it now and collect my points.
I leave you with a photo of the awesome dolls I got in the mail today from the ever awesome Donna Yates! They are Jorick and Verchiel (from my book series) and an awesome surprise doll!
Have a happy vampire kinda day!
Jo 🙂
Chain Letter Award 😈😈
I got this from My Ambivalent Existence who I found through Just Plan Vic’s Meet and Greet post. (check it out, too!)
So , this is how this one works. I will post a list of questions. the first person who reads them comments “mine” and can then answer in the comments.
Then they get to create a post using their own questions “chain letter award 
” and so on and so forth
Do you like to swim?
Have you ever killed a plant?
Do you still use a checkbook?
What is the last app you used on your phone?
Have a good one – and someone claim this though the chain is not ruined!
Discount Days for Read an eBook Week!
It’s Read an Ebook Week! To celebrate the upcoming release of Masque of the Vampire, ALL the Amaranthine books have special discount so you can get caught up before April first!
Book 1: Not suitable for tweens. Hunted by a coven of vampires, Katelina has only one person she can trust: Jorick. But when her knight in shining armor turns out to be one of the monsters she has to examine her perceptions of good and evil to survive
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SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2016 WEEK 10
My Hyacinths are sprouting!
It’s time again for Cee’s Share Your World Challenge . It’s pretty straight forward; answer three questions and participate in a tiny challenge. Sounds like fun, so let’s go!
What would you ask for if a genie granted you three wishes?
Immortality for myself and my loved ones (it’s no accident I love vampires and elves!), to have all our medical conditions forever cured, and a guarantee my home will never burn down or get taken in a tornado. Big wishes, I know.
What experiences are most meaningful to you?
The ones I get to share with someone special. Or that make awesome photos. 😉
As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was three and four I wanted to an anime animator (I watched every piece of Japanese animation I could get my hands on, and in the early 80s in nowhere rural Iowa that wasn’t easy to go for someone who wasn’t even in school yet! HINT: Coin didn’t even have cable back then, and in ’92 when we got cable it had literally 12 channels counting local ones.) BUT my dad told me how much work it was so I abandoned that and bounced back and forth between saying artist and writer from then on. I’d still like to animate – and when I retire from writing I think I’ll look into it. The new flash studios have taken a lot of the work out 😉
Complete this sentence: The best day of my life was…the day I was born. Without it I wouldn’t have all the other days.
Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?
I’m grateful for support from my mom and brother for my writing. The brother is now doing a beta read after the changes I made, and the mother will be soon. I’m lucky because so many authors out there don;t have anyone in their family who understands, and here I have two of them.
And this week I don’t know what I’m looking forward to. I don’t have any particular plans.
Have a good one!
Jo 🙂
The Coffin Shaped Box
A coffin shaped box arrived at our door.
I brought it inside, set it on the floor.
The cat howled and circled, all in a tizzy,
Round, round she went, ’til her brain was quite dizzy.
What was in that box, she wanted to know.
Perhaps toys, or catnip, or imported snow.
Why was it so big, why such an odd shape?
Did it hold a costume, complete with a cape?
Was it a new bed, a place for her to sleep?
She meowed and she called, and begged for a peek.
So we cut loose the tape and lifted the lid,
Inside was a case – oh what treasures it hid!
And when it unzipped, inside a surprise,
A new violin that brought light to our eyes.
For though we can’t play, that doesn’t mean,
We can’t bother the neighbors with screeches and screams.
And maybe someday, a real song we’ll wail,
If for disturbing the peace, we haven’t been jailed.
Full disclosure: I am not the one hoping to learn to play. That would be my brother who has always wanted a violin. Unfortunately, in his youth, some kind soul told him that in order to master it he had to start as a child, and since he hadn’t there was no point. Being the person my brother is, he listened to them, and it’s taken me all these years to convince him to give it a go anyway. We got this set on eBay (it’s a learner’s violin set) and he is going to learn or I’m going to tie him to a chair and make him. Sadly I can’t read music (I’ve tried. And tried. There was a reason I went for percussion back in school) but I teased him that if he learned to play we could get our piano tuned and stick numbers on all the keys then he could write out the music for me using numbers for the notes (like little kid keyboards do) and we’d duet. Ha ha!
And now I head to bed. Have a good one!
Jo 🙂
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Blogophilia Week 2.9
It’s time again for Blogophilia! What is Blogophilia? It’s the fun blog group where Marvin gives participants prompts to use in their weekly posting. This week’s prompts are:
I admit I yo-yo on participation. I say it’s because I don’t have time, but I do. I could take ten minutes and throw a post up. The problem is I want to do something big, something clever – something time consuming.
It’s not just blogophilia. In everything I do I feel the need to go big or go home.
And it may be no big deal to you, but it’s a very big deal to me. Even though it shouldn’t be. Because that very need for big or clever sometimes causes problems. It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish and since I *know* it’s going to be time consuming, I never start. Which means it’s never finished.
I’d like to say that life in the bleak midwinter gives me more time, but it doesn’t. For one thing we didn’t get winter this year, and for another I’ve done the same thing I do every year – procrastinated. I knew writing this book works take a long time, so I put it off and now it’s crunch time, plus everything else I need to do. You’d think I’d learn. Maybe instead of trying not to procrastinate I should just quit trying to go big all the time. Food for thought.
Have a good one!
Jo 🙂
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