I'm Moving!

So sorry for the long gaps in between posts! I'm so totally sucking at the blogging right now. But in other news, I'm packing up, and moving!

Well, the blog is. I'm headed over to Wordpress, so please bear with me a bit longer while I transition :)

Weekly Random Rollup

#1. This week's been a little wonky. Here in Utah we've got this little holiday called Pioneer Day. It's basically the day the pioneers decided to settle what would come to be known as Utah. July 24th every year. And in Utah, it's like Christmas and the Fourth of July put together--except BIGGER. Which is all fine and dandy, except when it falls in the middle of the week, as with any holiday falling in the middle of the week, it throws off all the routine of the entire week.

#2. The holiday's nice, leading to a 2-day work week at the day job, and while much of the rest of Utah is off gallivanting with me, I forget that it's not a holiday anywhere else in the world and that stuff still needs to get done. But now that it's Friday, let's get us back to schedule with a general Friday, Happy Dance!

#3. The Avengers is on Netflix. Do you know what this does to my productivity? Revisions seem to be taking just a little bit longer, because I just can't pass up hanging with Iron Man and the gang! I thought I was doing pretty good since I finished watching all the available episodes of both Supernatural and Fringe in the last few weeks. 

#4. Something awesome: sharing eats with friends! The lovely Nichole Giles is visiting from Texas this week and we had a chance to get together for dinner, share some food, and just catch up in general. Thanks for making some time for me in your busy visiting schedule, Nichole!

#5. I've finally discovered the delicious properties of steamed artichokes. I've never made them before and was a bit nervous as to how to go about it, but thanks to some helpful friends and easy to follow web instructions, the family and I have found that we LOVE artichokes, especially dipped in melted butter or a yum mayo+balsamic vinegar sauce. Oh, the goodness...

All right, well hope everyone has a great weekend! 

Weekly Random Rollup

#1. Didn't I swear I was going to be a better blogger? It would be nice if I actually, yanno, followed through, huh? It's almost halfway through Friday and I JUST realized I didn't have this post up yet! Ahh, silly me.

#2. I think tattoos are cool. Not all tattoos, and not on everyone. I just think the ones that have special meanings are the best. They can be sweet and simple, or amazingly detailed. The talent that some of the tattoo artists out there have is astounding. But, alas. I will never get a tattoo. Why? Because I'm a chicken. There, I said it. So in the lieu of actually going under the needle, I've started doing this to myself and my children. A red heart on the side of a foot and a promise on a pinky! Gotta love fine point sharpies!

#3. We have a dog. She is a boxer. Her name is Lucy. But we had an "incident" yesterday, so for the foreseeable future, she shall be known as The Damn Dog or TDD for short. The incident, you ask? The Damn Dog ran away. So we moved a few weeks ago and we've not done a great many walks in the new 'hood with TDD, given that she runs around like a maniac in our huge backyard nowadays. Yesterday, she slipped out the door and took off. She is Husband's dog, but conveniently Husband was at work when this happened. So 3 miles, 4 parks, 2 neighborhoods, and 7 really nice strangers later, 2 chickies and I finally caught up to her. Ugh. Don't let that cute face fool you. She's trouble.

#4. Speaking of moving, this is IT! Tomorrow is the DAY! By that I mean, we'll finally have finished getting all of our crap out of the old place and either over to the new one or into the trash. I CANNOT wait! We've unpacked all the stuff we need to live on, but there's all the stuff that makes a house a home that's left and I am just looking forward to making our new house more homey! Also, in case any of you didn't know, moving sucks. And I don't think I ever want to do it again.

#5. Blogging's kind of tough, isn't it? Over the years since I started in ... 2008, Holy Crap! I've been blogging on and off for FIVE years and I didn't even realize it!! ... Anyway, I've sort of been wondering what do you like to hear or read or discuss on a blog? I mean, there's so much information out there on the interwebz, what do you find interesting? Open forum, kids, voice your questions, concerns, any bloggy thoughts you may (or may not) want to hear from me, or even just share any emotional outbursts you may have! I'm open ears!

Listening from Utah... Have a great weekend!

Weekly Random Rollup

#1. I swear I'm going to be a better blogger. Said me, for the billionth time. This is one of the things I miss most, though, the sharing of randomness of my week. So while I'll try to be better blogging during the week, I'm going to commit to this! I've even decided it needed a new snazzy name, the Weekly Random Rollup. (Okay, maybe not that snazzy...) AKA, stuff that happens that doesn't get its own post and may have been mentioned in 140 characters or less at some point during the week.

#2. I owe you guys a post on my recent travels. Mostly so I can share the beautiful stuff I saw while I was on the road traveling for #dayjobtrip. And I've recently been on the road far more than I like, but hopefully as we ease into the summer, I can spend less time on airplanes. We've already talked about how this year's summer plans include a big fat STAYcation. There's no place like home! Anywhere cool you've been recently, or are planning to go this summer?

#3. Over the last couple of months, I've been to so many awesome book signings in SLC! Nichole Giles, Sara Zarr, Margaret Stohl, Stephanie Perkins, Ally Condie, Shannon Hale, Natalie Whipple, and Elana Johnson! They are wonderful to meet and if you ever get a chance to see them live, you need to go! This is one of the (many) reasons I LOVE living in a writerly mecca!

#4. Supernatural has recently, like in the last year, become one of my fave shows. One of the reasons it took me so long to watch is because I'm totally chicken when it comes to things ghosty and haunting related, so it took weeks, WEEKS, I'm telling you, for me to make it through the first episode. But Dean Winchester was there, encouraging me to overcome my fear every step of the way. Oh, that smolder...


And now that I'm (im)patiently waiting for season 8 on Netflix, I've started watching Fringe. Which, to be honest, is like the slightly unbelievable and probably highly unreasonable scientific explanations for anything that would've happened on Supernatural. Plus, yummy Peter Bishop with his witty and sarcastic remarks definitely makes you want to believe.

#5. I cannot believe it's July already. JULY! How has this year flown by so quickly? I feel like we've seriously not done enough in the first half of the year and are going to spend the second half of the year making up for it! Does anyone else feel that way?

We're off to find things to fill the weekend! Have a great one, all!!

Holy Heat in July or Due Dates-How to Deal?

I just realized it's been over 3 months since my last "real" post. 3 MONTHS! The year is just slipping away and I feel like I'm scrambling to stay current!

It's been a hot, hot summer since the solstice, and I know I'm not alone in saying that. There have been a couple days where I've considered opening the fridge and building a tent around the door, a la The Simpsons.

Adding to the temperature outside, is the one inside, the one rattling in from my email inboxes, dayjob and writerly.

What am I speaking of? Oh, I'm pretty sure every single one of you knows!

Due dates. Deadlines. Drop deads.

Whether you're agented or not, on submission, querying, or simply trying to get the words out for your first book, there's something to be said about giving yourself (or being given) a completion date. And how you handle it.

With 6 months of 2013 left, I'd love to hear how you guys are dealing with the heat, both outside and when it comes to your writerly projects! Share and share alike! I'm sure there's a lot of us who could benefit from some tips and tricks!

Pots 'n Pens Posting!

Hey, I'm posting over at the Pots 'n Pens blog today about one of my fave, super easy chicken recipes that we end up eating whenever I'm in a writerly bunker (this time with revisions).

Go check it out!

The Small Victories

Happy day after St Patrick's Day! Also known (this year) as, Monday.

Speaking of St Patrick's, how did you guys celebrate? We had an almost all green breakfast at our house, with green pancakes, green eggs, and even some green milk. Once I got over the visual that made me want to yak, it was all pretty good.

Over this holiday weekend, I finished drafting on a project I've gone back and forth and sort of finished, then decided it wasn't done yet, etc etc. We'll dub this project the Carnival of Messes. Well I committed to someone that I would have it FINISHED, as far as first drafts go anyway, by the end of the weekend. And phew, I came in just under the buzzer. Literally, it was 11:59pm when I hit save and closed the file. So I didn't actually write The End, because, well, it's only a first draft and I know from experience it is so so far away from being truly done. But that's another blogpost.

The most important part of this story is that I finished this Carnival of Messes that never wanted to end. People around me always tell me to celebrate the small victories before I move on to the Next Big Project, in my case this will be Revisions v.Zillion on a different project. With as crazy of a business as publishing is, I know celebrating the small stuff should be done, but I too often am too busy and move on to the next thing.

Do you guys celebrate all your small victories? What do you do to celebrate?

Random Stuff Friday

1) It's been a while right? I've been spending lots of time on airplanes and really long car rides recently, so hopefully you didn't miss me too much while I was gone. Actually, I'm on a plane right NOW. It's also a little turbulent and I'm not diggin' the bumps right now. Makes it hard to type, fingers keep slipping to other keys.

2) I spent this week in the Baltimore area for a #dayjob training. And I swear one of our facilitators looked just like this:

Except wore pants and wasn't furry orange. It was ODD.

3) Are you a writer who cooks? Are you a cook who writes? Do you love food and books? Or maybe just food? If you fall into any of the above categories, have you checked out Pots 'n Pens? It's a fun blog about writing and food and writing about food. You can find all sorts of recipes that writers use to help get a little more time for wordage, there's author interviews with fave recipes, and did I mention I'm a contributor? Yeah ... head on over and check out the Easy Peasy Capellini recipe I shared this week, super easy and super YUM!

4) What are you guys reading this weekend? Anything good? I'm trying to decide if I want to reread something or if I want to read something new. I'm taking part in the Clockwork Prince Read Along that @MundieMoms is hosting, but I've been sporadic in keeping up since I didn't have the space to lug the big ol' fat book across the country with me. Other than that, I'm totally looking for recommendations!

5) I love naps. I think they even outrank nighttime sleep. And when you have time zones issues, they are even better! Like when you have to get up at 1am Utah time to catch a flight that gets you home at 10am Utah time, you've already been awake for 9 hours if you can't nap on the plane (for whatever reason). Yeah, so far I've been awake since 1am after only about 3 hours of sleep, a short 20 minute nap during takeoff, and now ... I'm really looking forward to getting home and crawling into my own bed for a real not-sitting-upright-nap.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Keeping Up and Turning Down

I am such a bad blogger.

Things have been busy with #dayjob and, well, with limited time to squeeze in work, family, and writing - like the for reals kind that go into manuscripts and stuff - along with trying to do the quicker, faster social networky things, my poor, poor blog has been suffering from some neglect. I've been doing my best to keep up with things all around me, but with that comes turning down a few things, including things on my own to do list.

That being said, I think I just have to arbitrarily give myself a pass here and maybe drop down to 1 to 2 days of blogging a week. Hopefully I can keep up with that. 

What have you had to do to make sure you've got enough time to do what you need to do?

Random Stuff Friday

1) The weather in Utah sucks right now. Between the inversion, aka pollution, trapped in the valley and the frozen rain, yeah, not so awesome living in Utah right now. It hurts to breathe.

2) That means lots of time indoors. Reading and writing, woohoo! But also trapping three kids inside and that basically voids out that woohoo. Boohoo.

3) Every time we drive past a Taco Bell the kidlets yell "Doritos Locos Tacos!" ... whoever named that was a marketing genius. And after so many months of this, 7yo and I finally caved and stopped by to try some. And they are everything their name screams! It's a taco wrapped in Doritos. And you can never go wrong with anything wrapped in a Dorito. Remember Doritos 3D? Yum! For reals.

4) You know what sucks? Traveling so much and being so tired that you can't even keep up with the shows you watch even though you only watch them online! Yeah, I technically "watch them at my convenience" but they're only available to stream for a certain number of days on the official websites and, uh, yeah, when you miss one, it's TERRIBLE!

5) Speaking of TV, Husband and I recently (like a few weeks ago) discovered Supernatural. And I have grown to appreciate just how delicious Dean Winchester is. Sam Winchester does this weird nostril flare thing and yeah. Totally not as delicious.

All right, peeps! Have a great weekend! Hope you have lots more fresh air than I do!

Never Enough Time

** I've been trying to post this for several days and very clearly, Blogger and I are not friends. If anyone has any other bloggy sites they prefer to this, I'd love to hear it!**

picture credit: CarSeatBlog.com

If you missed any of my tweets or FB posts, you'll have missed out on the fact that I spent 5 days on 5 different planes with stops in 4 time zones, 3 U.S. states, and 2 countries. It was CRAZY. I have to admit, there were a couple occassions when I woke up from a nap on a plane and couldn't remember where I was going. Ah, just another week on a #dayjobtrip.

Over the last year or so, my dayjob schedule has only grown more frantic, and the travel I've had to do more insane. And obviously if you're hanging out here with me, you know that dayjob is not my ONLY job. There's also the writing thing (well, duh), the family thing (of course), and I also sell some kick@$$ super environmentally friendly cleaning stuff on the side - because I totally have time to do that too (yeah, right!). . . If you're interested ... click here to check out my Norwex site!

To say I've got a lot on my plate is a bit of an understatement. I've got plenty of hectic-schedule to go around, what I don't (ever) have enough of, is time.

I've taken to writing wherever, whenever, however I can, though sometimes, especially after a schedule like last week, exhaustion takes over and I have to nap instead. It's hard to balance RL and writing life, and I know I'm not the only one who struggles with this.

So how do you do it? How do you solve the "never enough time" conundrum? Do you have a set time and space and a big giant DO NOT DISTURB sign at home? Have you resorted to heading over to the nearest coffee shop with some headphones to get it done?

Any and all tips are welcome, because, well, I've got several thousand words left to get on paper and L'Agent (im)patiently waiting on a finished ms. So ... uh, HELP!

What's Your Wrench?

We're off to see the Wizard! The wonderful Wizard of -- Oh, wait.

I'm heading down to Mexico City today, will be there for a couple days, then to San Jose for a meeting with some big kahunas, before I get home on Friday.

So I'll be online, but sporadically.

I've learned over the last year or so that whenever I travel for #dayjob, I am so much more absent from my onlineyness, and I wonder, what is "that thing" that seems to throw a wrench into your normal weekday routines?

I always have a hard time staying up with all the goings on, squeezing in my word counts, blogging, tweeting, and all that jazz. I need to figure out how to take that time and make it more ... oh, I don't know, productive or something. Like maybe I should write during layovers instead of playing Facebook games... just kidding ... maybe not *whispers* >someone send me Candy Crush Saga tickets so I can get to the next level!!<

Clearly, my wrench involves getting on airplanes (and FB games) and this thing called work, *pshaw* ;) but yeah, how about you? The Children? Goats? Sparkly vamps?

I Can See Clearly Now

I've been wearing glasses since 6th grade.

Umpteen number of years later, I'm still wearing glasses, but guess what???? As you read this, I'm GETTING LASIK!! Sorry about the yelling. I'm just really excited about waking up in the morning and being able to see!

I'm excited about opening a book and not having to literally have my nose buried in it to see the words if I don't have glasses or contacts on.

Not that I'll stop having my nose buried in books, but that could actual just go back to being a saying.

So I'll be all drugged up for most of today - Valium is my friend - and then hopefully I'll be back just in time for some Random Stuff Friday, when I can see all of you clearly!

What's New?

I know, I know, I should've asked this when everyone was still riding the wave of New Year's partying, but I'm not sure everyone would've been up to responding after their night (or nights, depending on some of you ;) of partying.

So now's my question to all of you? What's NEW????

Would love to hear what you're working on out there! I need a swift kick in the pants right now to get me moving along on a project that has spilled over into 2013, but I've got a NEW project that's dying for my attention.

So what's the old project? A book about a girl, a boy, some funnel cake, and lots of carnival rides.

What's NEW? A book about a girl, a boy, white dresses, pretty flowers, and lots of wedding cake. And it's not what you think, I swear.

So what's NEW with YOU???

Random Stuff Friday

1) I have not written down any resolutions. Yet. I don't know if I'm just mentally refusing to accept any set goals (clearly I have commitment issues), or if I'm just in denial. Or maybe it's because I think resolutions shouldn't just be set in January. I'm not sure which argument I'm going with yet. Maybe it means I should just make "stop procrastinating" my first resolution of 2013.

2) Check out what the BiL gave me for Christmas: Noise canceling, sends me off to my own world, Beats by Dre. Complete with Monster cables. I don't know what that last part really means, technically speaking, but apparently they don't make them like this anymore and he had to go 3 different stores to find them. So now I will plug them in, enter the universe I've created in my head, and get some writing done! >>> Sorry I don't have a picture here because Blogger is being lame - AGAIN! <<<

3) Husband is anti-Apple products. Took years to convince him to let me get my Macbook. Let's not even discuss the iPhone. I might be possibly thinking about maybe considering getting an iPad. Eventually. Have to start the negotiations now. At some point in the future. For now, my Macbook will have to do.

4) I still have a HUGE stack of TBR books that were released in 2012 and before ... but I'm already working on my 2013 MUST HAVES. Anything out there that you guys recommend I add to my pile? A few on there already are Clockwork Princess and City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare, Icons by Margaret Stohl, Crave the Darkness by Amanda Bonilla, Prophecy by Ellen Oh, Senshi by Cole Gibsen, Pivot Point by Kasie West, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by April Tucholke, Transparent by Natalie Whipple, Let the Sky Fall by Shannon Messenger, and that's just to name a few. What else should I look forward to getting?

5) It was 16* when I backed out of our garage this morning. It was 13* when I dropped 7yo off at school--less than a mile from our house. It was 11* by the time I got the 2 younger kids to daycare. And 9* when I parked in front of the dayjob offices. Apparently as the sun gets higher today, the temperature gets lower. I think I'm taking this as a sign to spend the rest of the weekend in cozy warm sweats with big thick socks, lots of hot tea, and, of course, the laptop for writing and the TBR pile for some good reads.

Have a great weekend everyone!