Potluck Like Whoa! :) (Video)

/ aidan, books, life, videos

First of all, you can send me Virtual Valentines using this nifty little guy:

My Valentinr - lilrongal
Get your own valentinr

I won’t see anything until Valentine’s Day, but I will know how many I’ve received. Neat, huh?

Second of all, it’s SATURDAY and Aidan slept until 10am. Unfortunately, he tends to wet the bed when he sleeps that late. Boo. “Don’t see it,” he commands, trying to cover the evidence. Sigh.

Last night, before we went to sleep, Aidan made a really loud fart sound with his mouth and yelled “MOMMY! YOU FARTED”! I’m sure the neighbors had a field day with that. For fifteen minutes, we made fart noises and yelled out “_____, YOU FARTED!” It was great.

I finally emptied my memory cards! One had 850 photos on it, the other had about 150 plus videos. Now they’re clean, and all the pictures and videos have been moved to CDs. YAY. I feel accomplished. Kind of. Plus, Time Warner came and got the old cable modem. All my bills are paid or accounted for, and I don’t have to go anywhere until Monday. I was getting collection calls, and I finally called the number back to see what the banana they were calling me for, and it turned out they were for the person who had the phone number before me. So now, I don’t get collection calls anymore. 🙂

I like having loose ends tied up.

Yesterday at work, we got called into an impromptu staff meeting at 1:30pm. There was no meeting–there was ice cream, cherries, chocolate sauce and other fixings so we could build our own sundaes! Plus, Cheryl & Co. delivered Valentine cookies. YAY for sweets! YAY for thwarting the 2:30pm slumps. Last Friday, there were two cakes and fruit. The cakes said “TGIF” on them.

Just now, Aidan was starting to get really fussy and kind of mean, and it finally dawned on me that the child needed lunch. Now he’s happily eating a chicken pot pie and watching Cars.

I got an email from an old college roommate whom I hadn’t heard from in YEARS. I also heard from one on MySpace not too long ago. It’s amazing when people come back, you know. Exciting, too.

It’s gonna get REALLY COLD here in a few days. Highs in the single digits. I’m getting the deep freeze I wanted, but it’s not fun while going through it. Looks like only a few days, though, so that’s good. Hopefully just enough to kill those mega-mosquitoes that were probably trying to breed when it was unseasonably warm last month.

I finished The Last Days by Scott Westerfeld yesterday during lunch. It was really good. A definite page-turner. I started on Sloth by Robin Wasserman, but I’m having a hard time getting into it. I also had a hard time with Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. Just renewed the Playlist one, will try it again a bit later.

Hmmm. What else? Oh yeah. Here is a link to the list of books I’ve read in 2007. It’ll be updated every time I finish a new book, so check back there often: [2007 Books]

And finally, a video demonstrationg Aidan’s smarts again.

more Check it out!

See ya!

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A Dream Deferred

/ sad, writing

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

– Langston Hughes

Got an email from my agent. Only Yours has officially been rejected by every publisher. Every single one.
A year of submissions. A year of roller coaster emotions, wild hope, then hopelessness. Who wants to read about an REAL Christian girl with REAL struggles who may or may not make the right choices in the end? Certainly not the Christians. And certainly not the non-Christians. No audience. No sale. Another book, pushed, no SHOVED, maybe even kicked, under the proverbial bed.

On the one hand, I want to get back on that horse and show them. On the other hand, the odds against me seem almost insurmountable.

Right now I feel so many emotions. Sad, relieved, determined, tired. Nothing I can actually describe.

I’m sure the tears will come at 2am, when I’m wide awake, thinking of how much of a failure I am.

I know what you’re going to say. You’re not a failure. You’re going to make it. You have to keep trying. Keep believing. Keep focusing. JUST DO IT.

My dream is officially deferred.

Now what will become of it? Of me?

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Lists & Such

/ life, ronni, to do, work

It’s February 1, 2007, and I have a few resolutions for this month.

1. Write something, even if I ultimately deem it as crap.
2. Reduce fast food intake. I was “treating” myself twice a month or so, but I think I want to stop it all together.
3. Eat more vegetables.
4. Read four new books.

I also made a few decisions.

1. I am going to start using Mane N Tail products on my hair.
2. I am going to use my Barnes & Noble gift card to buy a copy of adamselzer‘s book for my mom, and I’ll have him autograph it for her.

Chores I did today:

1. Tidied up my room.
2. Washed (most of) the dishes.
3. Got a few groceries.
4. Did a load of laundry.

Interesting things I found out:

1. It’s VERY possible that it wasn’t the Ramen at all that made me so sick earlier this week. At least two other people were struck with it this week, and I remembered that I also threw up Saturday night. But I’d swallowed the wrong way and was coughing my head off, so I figured that was what had caused me to puke. As for the Ramen, I may wait a while before I actually test that theory…
2. The Columbus Metropolitan Libraries now have free wireless internet access!! Can I get a whut-whut??? As if I needed another reason to love the library. 🙂 🙂 🙂
3. A .54 lb steak does not need five minutes to defrost in the microwave.
4. Aidan plays VERY nicely with Play-Doh! 😀

* * *

I got to see Aidan today, which was a treat! Chris had to come by and pick something up and he brought Aidan along. Aidan’s such a good little boy, so funny and cute. Tomorrow I pick him up and we get to spend the whole weekend together. I think he’s excited. Especially since he discovered the Play-Doh. I’d like to take him to the library at some point, and maybe teach him some handwriting.

Today at work, I was checking some confirms/googol (which means that I’m checking revised confirm pages, even though confirms are supposed to be the VERY LAST STEP before PDFs and F&Gs and then bound book), and I found a page that I’d put a comment on. I’d requested that they put in the new SE redux, but apparently no one knew what I was talking about, because there was a self-stick note with THREE questions marks. Different colors, which means three people had no clue what I was talking about. My confusion came when I asked myself “why didn’t anyone just come to me and say ‘what do you mean put in the new SE redux? This IS the new one!'” And I could have said “No, see, the apostrophes are different sizes, and in the SE, that was fixed, but here in the TE, this SE reduced page is showing the old page with the different sized apostrophes.” Oh well. It got fixed anyway, and I got told I have a “good eye.”

And THEN I was copyediting these mazes for… well, a surprise to be launched May 31, 2007, and the instructions said “Help the gorilla find the grapes.” But at the end of the maze, there was a carton of JUICE! No grapes to be found, unless it was supposed to be grape juice, but I don’t know. It’s going to be a blackline master, so no one would have any way of knowing that it was supposed to be grape juice because it’s not in color. I love catching stuff like that. It’s fun.

Or maybe I’m just sadistic. I do enjoy making red marks all over things.

Lucy is on the floor, waiting for me to stop fussing around with stuff so I can give her loads of attention. She’s lying that way I love for cats to lay, with her front paws tucked under her. I think cats are so cute when they lie like that! 🙂

Lay/lie. God help me.

I think I’m ready to get off of the computer and read a bit. I got the sequel to Peeps out of the library yesterday, called The Last Days. I hope it’s as good as Peeps. I also just read the latest A-List novel. I swear, those books are like a train wreck. The name-dropping is sooo annoying, and the stuff that happens in them is way outlandish and over the top, but I can’t stop reading the damn things. It’s like Desperate Housewives for teenagers or something. I also read Anatomy of a Boyfriend, and that book is Judy Blume’s Forever for the 21st century.

Ta ta!

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Fascinating Stuff About Handwriting

/ work

The past two days, I attended the Zaner-Bloser handwriting workshops. Yesterday was Manuscript, and today was Cursive.

Did you know that handwriting is the gateway to learning to read? It’s true. And also, I can tell you why the letters are referred to as uppercase and lowercase!

Back in the days of typesetting, the uppercase letters were stored in a case that was up high, because they were not used as often. The lowercase letters were stored in a case that was low, and easily accessible. Hence, the names uppercase and lowercase! 🙂

I learned that it takes a LOT of fine-motor development to be able to write legibly. With a four-year old son who is an emergent writer, I am now armed with all sorts of knowledge to help those little muscles of his grow. Things such as Play-Doh, playing with a Magna Doodle, putting pennies or checkers in a stack all develop the fine-motor skills needed to write legibly.

When learning handwriting, children actually have to learn 52 letterforms, not only 26. Once cursive is in the mix, make that 104 letterforms. Children have to learn to recognize these letters, the sounds they make, and the roles they play in words and sentences. Then they have to learn to write these letters. It’s a tall order!! And a fancy one. I’d had no idea that occupational therapy played such a large role in handwriting. And that handwriting played such a large role in literacy.

I learned the proper way to hold a pencil, to position my paper (of course, I’ve been doing it wrong!!), why chalkboards are better than dry-erase boards for teaching handwriting, and the way to teach it to children using the three primary learning modalities–kinestetic, visual, and auditory. I also learned it’s best to start big, then work down to writing on paper. Teach muscle memory, so that when kids get it, they’ll have “automacity,” which means they will be able to focus more on their thoughts, rather than the handwriting process.

Zaner-Bloser has been around for a VERY long time. It was one of the first three handwriting companies. Its letterforms been simplified over the years—the cursive Q no longer looks like a big, floppy 2, for instance (this, at the request of the US Postal Service!)—but it’s still one of the very best programs out there.

If any of you are teachers of handwriting, what programs do you use? How do you feel about it?

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Love Languages

/ meme

I did a meme similar to this ages ago. Here’s my new results:

The Five Love Languages

My primary love language is probably
Quality Time
with a secondary love language being
Physical Touch.

Complete set of results

Quality Time: 10
Physical Touch: 8
Words of Affirmation: 7
Acts of Service: 3
Receiving Gifts: 2

Information

Unhappiness in relationships, according to Dr. Gary Chapman, is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. Sometimes we don’t understand our partner’s requirements, or even our own. We all have a “love tank” that needs to be filled in order for us to express love to others, but there are different means by which our tank can be filled, and there are different ways that we can express love to others.

Take the quiz

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