Happy Holiday Weekend

For those of you enjoying the Memorial Day weekend, have a great one! I'll be around sporadically and trying to blog when I can.

The kids have five days off [the school board, who refused to give them snowdays in the winter when they needed them] tacked on the extra days to this weekend, so they have Friday and Tuesday off as well.

Yesterday much of my day was spent in the car - a 15-minute ride to the dentist with DD, and a 90-minute ride home [seriously] thanks to mid-day, holiday weekend, lunch-time traffic. Later we piled into DHs CRV and went off to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls. I'm a long time fan of both crystal skulls and Indiana Jones. It was a nice diversion, though the movie wasn't an ethereal experience. We had dinner out and then stopped off at Borders so I could look again at the Sony eReader they have on display there. I think I'm going to get one - though I'm going to look for a deal. Sorry Kindle, you're just too expensive.

Today I need to brave the crowds at Shop Rite, then hunker down with a LOT of editing and reading. Ursula has two projects to work on. Bernadette is kicking around an idea to turn a novella into a full length novel and I've got some excellent feedback on Hunk from my agent and need to do some quick edits so she can start sending the ms out next week.

Not to mention the cat pan needs a good cleaning and I'm waaay behind on the laundry .

Did someone say holiday? Or weekend? Couldn't have been me. LOL.

Have fun!

It's a worse omen when...

it turns out it wasn't actually a fire at the restaurant. I guess I imagined the smoke. It must have been fog since it was cold and rainy.

What really happened was they found a body in a parked car in the parking lot. Somebody had been shot.

We don't get many homicides around here, so it's big news.

Is it a bad omen when...

...the restaurant you pick to go to dinner at is on fire when you get there?

This happens at an alarming rate in my family. Twice in Florida, once down the shore and now in the next town over. DD arranged dinner out with my parents last night and we decided to meet at the local Bennigan's because it's 2.5 minutes away. When we got there the parking lot was packed with police cars and fire engines and a faint haze of smoke.

So through open car windows, and the rain, we conferred and decided it might be a good idea to eat someplace else.

The outside walls of the local diner are made of that shiny metal stuff, so we figured that might be a safer bet since it's probably less flammable.

Stick a fork in it

...it's done!

I finished my gargoyle themed single-title paranormal at 11:46 on Sunday night. At my agent's adamant request, I sent her the full draft with fingers crossed. I don't like to send things to be read by anyone else until I've done at least one full read-through and there are some scenes at the end that have only been looked at once, but as I said on RD this morning, what agent wants, agent gets.

Now let's hope an editor wants too.

I know I should probably schedule a serious day off loafing as a reward for finishing, but that's hard to do. You know me. I'm just now taking the master class in relaxation and learning how not to obsess every minute of every day.

In honor of my accomplishment, I'm taking tomorrow as a fun day. Jen Elbaum and I are going out to lunch to toast our projects. [She's finishing revisions on her suspense novel]. Later on I told DH I want a ride to AC Moore so I can spend my Mother's Day Gift Card on something frivolous and fun.

Today, I'm cleaning the bathrooms.

[shrug] Hey, at least I've scheduled the fun day. Next I work on having fun without scheduling it. That will be a tough one.

What's on deck now that I'm done with my WIP?

* Editing, editing, editing

* Polishing up the revisions to my upcoming Samhain release Strange New World

* Revamping the story that was the original plot for 'Going Deep' my current EC submission. I was halfway through this when I got the 'better idea' and wrote GD. Now I have half a story leftover that needs a new title and some reworking and may end up being another EC submission if I can flesh out the second half of the plot.

* Diving into my next Forbidden World story for Amber Quill

* Revising Matchmakers based on notes from a CP

* Deciding what my next Single Title will be. Witches? Vampires? Leprechauns? or MIBs? Too many ideas floating around, not enough hours in the day.

Off to scrub tiles and scour sinks.

Kickin' butt and takin' names

I'm over at Star-Crossed Romance today talking about the most kick'ass heroine I know of. Come take a look.

Make me an offer

No, that's not directed at my publishers or future publishers. [Well, not really.]

That was the theme of today's garage sale. I spent the day lounging in the driveway amid tables of junk hoping people would give me money and then haul it away.

Amazingly we had to drag a lot of stuff back to the basement at the end of the day. Even some brand new, never played with toys didn't get any interest, but we sold old stuffed animals by the bag full, Barbie's in desperate need of a day at the spa, children's books my son's old bike and an old curio cabinet.

We walked away with enough to go out to dinner [at the diner]. The kids were happy. They got the equivalent of a couple weeks' allowance out of the deal and I got them to clean out their closets of the stuff they never play with.

What's up for tomorrow? Absolutely nothing. And I'm looking forward to it.

And yes...ARF

What is the deal with rain on Friday?? And why would the Middle School schedule a field trip to the Bronx Zoo on a day that is destined to rain?

Yesterday's afternoon Middle School Announcement: [Source DD]: Attention all Seventh Grade students attending tomorrow's field trip. The Field Trip will be Tomorrow.

Collective response from students: Duh!

My tax dollars, hard at work.