honest scrap award

Wendy over at HorseAdventures gave me this award - thanks, Wendy! Her blog is a daily read, and I hope you'll head over and see what she's up to.

Now for the 10 Honest Things:

1. I am in the middle of a fairly major indoor clean up. My garret has been neglected for half a year, and somehow moving to a new writing project lit a fire under me to get the garret cleaned and organized. Lest you think this is not a legitimate "honest thing," I'll add that I am dealing with some dried spots of cat pee, dead ladybugs, many cobwebs, and dust that has incorporated itself into the furniture.

2. The entire barn is a continuous cob web right now. I tell myself it is cheap, natural, fly control, but alas, I need to deal with it soon.

3. My favorite alcoholic drink used to be Pernod. I haven't had it in awhile, but I can taste the anise in my mouth just thinking about it. Surprisingly it's good mixed with either orange juice or cranberry juice.

4. We are battling fleas at the moment. Only two of the animals are sensitive, but I'm trying not to use Advantage and although the alternatives are much less expensive, they are incredibly time-consuming.

5. I have not ridden at all in the month of July. Sigh. But I am doing yoga almost every day.

6. Adorable little Redford kicked the dear husband 3x today! We are hitting that point of little donkey jack attitude, and will have to manage it wisely until cool weather returns. :)

7. I have all the fun blogging about horses and donkeys and cats and Corgis - BUT - I have a husband, son, and daughter who are involved on a daily basis with the care and feeding of all of the above. I am very lucky.

8. We have a luscious, organically raised beef barbecue slow-cooking in the oven. And organic green beans to go with it. But husband and I ate lunch from the Taco Bell drive-through and then headed off on our childless Sunday afternoon (they are at my mom's house) to explore a never-traveled road.

9. About every other month, during a certain time of said month, I indulge in Lay's potato chips and French onion dip made with Lipton's soup mix and full-fat sour cream.

10. I will almost always choose salty over sweet. (see above)


Nearly everyone imaginable has already received this award! If you want it, and you're visiting here, I hereby hand it over and invite you to share some things on YOUR blog. Don't forget to let me know so I can come congratulate you and read your 10 honest things.

Thanks again, Wendy!!

and the results are...

The numbers offered were:

7
58
72
51
22
4
38
9
46


Yesterday morning I wrote down:

pony book

nonfiction book

and then went to a random number generator site and requested two numbers between 1 and 100.

The numbers generated were:

3, which I assigned to the pony book

and

57, which I assigned to the nonfiction book.

I then collected your numbers until midnight.

It was a tie until Sheaffer came along and tipped the scale toward the nonfiction book!

The most interesting part of this is that if you add up all the numbers, including the randomly generated numbers I assigned, you get 367.

If you add those numbers you get 16, and if you add those you get...

my most favorite and lucky number!

7

Which is commonly considered to be a spiritual number, and the nonfiction book is spiritual in nature.

I love it when things connect up so well.

Thank you all for helping me make a decision. It's exciting to be moving on with the next project!

finished the novel edits! now need your help!

Yesterday afternoon I finally, FINALLY, finished the edits on my third novel manuscript. As usual, I felt a little sad that I had come to the end of it, and while printing it out (I always keep a hard copy of the final draft), I got caught up reading passages as I waited for the pages to emerge from the printer.

For anyone who writes and has completed a novel or other book-length project, you know this feeling. It's an odd mixture of glee and emptiness. And it can happen any number of times with any given ms because sometimes what we *think* is the final draft isn't.

This particular ms is going off to a very particular reader, so until I actually box the thing up and get it in the mail I'm not completely done with it. And when it comes back with feedback I'll certainly be taking it up again, but for now, emotionally, I'm done.

Also as usual, about 15 minutes after I put the entire stack of pages into their box, The Next Book began to screech at me, in this case, two of them.

One is a middle grade novel that has been sitting in my head for several years. I have about 4 chapters and a lot of notes and an idea of where it's going.

The other one is nonfiction, has also been sitting in my head for a good while, and for that one I have about 150 pages done and every chapter is at least named and blurbed.

My resolution for 2009 was to go through these books, one at a time, in the order they came to me. This is murky with these two, though, as I can't quite remember which one came first, and I'm eager to work on both again. The thing I don't want to do is vacillate between them, getting a little bit done on one, and then another bit done on the other.

So today is about making a decision and then moving on with it.

To that end I'd like to do a little experiment. I'm going to assign random numbers to each project. If you want to help me out, sit quiet for a moment, let a number between 1 and 100 pop into your head, and then leave it in a comment. I'll see which one has the most numbers closest to those I assigned. I'm curious to see which one gets the most psychic "votes." :)

ADDENDUM: It occurred to me that I should probably not put the comments through until I get them all in, so that no one is influenced by reading previous commenters' numbers. I'm going to collect comments and numbers until midnight tonight (Saturday July 11) and then I'll post the comments and do the calculating. Thanks to all who have already left numbers - hopefully more folks will so I get a good "sample." :)

a long-awaited rainy day and quiet

I woke up to some rain this a.m. and was so happy to hear it. Even with the small rain we got last week everything has been dry. It's so dark out right now I have my desk lamp on!

Now if we can get more as the day goes on.

Dickens is hunkered down at the base of a tree in the front field. I'm not sure if he's guarding something he caught, monitoring something he's chased up the tree, or posting himself as a deterrent to the Cat Next Door, who sometimes crosses our field to get to the woods.

Moomintroll and Mystic are on the front porch, and the sisters are inside sleeping.

The Corgis are alternating between lying in the damp and coming in to sleep, and the horses and donkeys are in the barn munching hay after a night out on the pasture.

It's such a quiet day in this moment. The only sound is my typing.

It's rare for all the creatures who live here, including the humans, to be so quiet all at once.

marines using mules and donkeys in afghanistan

My friend and fellow blogger Kyle (visit his wonderful blog Metaphor) just posted the following in a comment on the War Horse post:


The Marines are using mules and donkeys to haul weapons and stuff in Afghanistan. There was a story in today's LA Times about them training here in California. Call me a pacifist, but I think it's time we humans fought our battles - or learned how not to - without involving other species.


I so agree, Kyle, and I am horrified. Who does one complain to about THIS?