Link Update

I finally have updated my links and added a bunch of writers I adore. Please check them all out!

BEDM?

My friend Jennifer challenged me to Blog Every Day in May, which is scary, you guys, because April only had thirty days while May has a whole thirty-frigging-one! That said, I’ve already skipped some May days, so perhaps I can do this. I am pretty determined to rise to challenges!

Today I am playing around with the iTunes Genius Playlist feature, something I totally love. It’s the lazy person’s mixtape. It’s a radio station that only plays for an hour. It’s Pandora but with all that crap you hate weeded out. It, unlike you, didn’t forget about all those albums you downloaded that day you were on a Riot Grrrl/old-school punk/rockabilly/Sixties/Swedish pop kick.

(Let’s be honest; I’m almost ALWAYS on a Swedish pop kick.)

Here are some other things I am thinking about:

• My hair is not THAT long and yet there is never enough hair dye for sufficient coverage. If I’m gonna have to spring for two boxes of Garnier or Feria shouldn’t I just go pay my stylist to do this for me? Why isn’t there more dye in a box?
• Does anyone know I am wearing this bandanna because I didn’t wash my hair today?*
• I don’t actually believe Cranergy gives me any energy I didn’t have before, but starting my day with it makes me feel like one of those smug juice-swilling health nuts.**
• Yesterday morning I woke up choking and realized it was because my piercing*** came unscrewed during the night. The bar section was totally gagging me, and I am glad I don’t sleep through much for once because via body modification would have been an embarrassingly 1990s way to die.
• The other day I found a picture of Gary Oldman (in filling out a very important application on Facebook to list my five favorite actors) where, in thumbnail size, it looks like he is trying out for the role of Edward Cullen:
  
  
• Tacos.

*I guess now you do.
**I’m not sure this is actually a category of people.
***Monroe

BEDA in my Blood

I thought that blogging every day of April would be impossible, but I only missed one day, and now I’m noticing I have the urge to do this on a daily basis. BEDA awakened some sort of blogging impulse in me previously undisturbed. Good or terrifying? We shall see.

Woke up early this morning to discuss rewrites with Critique Partner (who lives in The Future, i.e. Eastern Standard Time), feel like I’m really rounding the bases now, though I really have started to lose perspective. I sent off the first chunk of edits to her with an email that stated I truly had no idea if I’d even improved anything or just weeded a lot of words out. She says I have the editing equivalent of tolerance, like it would take me 50 drinks to have any idea I’d been partaking in alcoholic beverages. Let’s hope she is right with this metaphor. Otherwise, I’m gonna need me some drinks.

Tags Are Fixed!

Thanks to the genius advice of the Web Monkey, my tags now work!

In unrelated news, I am watching Ace of Cakes and therefore wanting a cake. I am also house-sitting, which means I am watching Ace of Cakes on the most giant television set you can imagine. This also means my dog is all unsettled, as she gets this way whenever it’s late and she’s not home. To you and I it may be obvious that when you’re exhausted you should just sleep, but instead she mopes around and whines until I reason with her, give up, and watch her EVENTUALLY lay down very, very, very grudgingly.

BEDA, Day 3

This weekend will be truly a test of my BEDA devotion, as my friend and critique partner will be in town. If some posts come to you straight outta Disneyland you’ll understand. (I am too big a baby to ride rollercoasters so I spend lots of time waiting for friends to emerge from Space Mountain and, therefore, biding my time via iPhone distraction.)

The good thing about this (the visit, not Space Mountain, mind you) is there will likely be lots if discussion regarding rewrites as well as Current Project (which is flowing along disturbingly easily as of now). And as motivated as I can generally keep myself, talking about my work as it’s progressing usually leads to great leaps and bounds.

But, Critique Partner, no pressure or anything.

Et tu, Coffee Bean?

OK, I’m aware I’m using a (very tweaked) free template design here, but I was still pretty wigged out while at Coffee Bean earlier when I spotted these travel coffee mugs:

I thought about getting one, but, as my friend pointed out, then I’d be the douche drinking out of a mug that matched my web site.

Happy BEDA Beginning!

I say “happy” now; soon I will wail and gnash my teeth and scream “WHY DID I THINK I COULD BLOG THIS MUCH?” Except… I’m excited! I like deadlines, I like hitting them, and I like checking things off of lists. Also I like being on teams (particularly teams that involve no athletic ability)! So let’s go, Team BEDA!

(A list of all the BEDA-participants’ blogs can be found here: http://blogeverydayapril.blogspot.com/)

Today was sort of a magical day. I have long complained that the closest library branch to my apartment has a crap selection of YA. I am not kidding; about ten hardcover books and two spinners of paperbacks. Ridic! I’m not saying I couldn’t occasionally find books I was interested in, but I feel like such a growing genre should take up more than 60 books’ worth of space. Yes? Sure, thanks to intra-library loaning I could usually REQUEST what I needed, but part of the fun of libraries is the BROWSING. Oh, and to make matters even worse, browsing the ten hardcovers was almost impossible anyway, because they were spread out across three windows with reading chairs in front of them. That’s right, I’d have to lean past some innocent soul who was just trying to relax while probably making an uggo face that translated to WHY ARE THERE ONLY TEN YA BOOKS?

Anyway, today I turned the corner from the window seats and the ten books (three of which I took! I felt weird for significantly reducing the YA section in one fell swoop) and discovered THERE WAS AN ENTIRE SHELF OF YA! Oh, heavens, I went to extremes. The librarian checking me out even commented that every book I had was YA, so I confessed to being a YA writer (something I don’t do a lot because it’s not like I’m published or anything). The librarian said she was interested because this summer she was taking a YA class, but wasn’t thrilled because she was going to have to read so much, and reading wasn’t one of her favorite things to do.

I myself am not sure why anyone who didn’t love to read would be a librarian, so I left with my huge haul feeling a little sad. But now I am happy again, because I am about to dive into an old Lois Lowry book I somehow went my entire life without reading.

WordPress: Activated!

Thanks to the divine WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin, I was actually just able to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress in less than five minutes. I can’t imagine how many upgrades I must have missed out on, because this version is slick, swank, and exponentially better.

This also means I can blog from my phone, which therefore means I’m much more likely to live up to the expectations of BEDA.

BEDA

I’m not entirely sure what’s wrong with me, but I just signed up for Blog Every Day in April. Let us see how I get through this one, people.

Thank you, Google Analytics

Thanks to their tracking, I discovered that someone landed at this page using the keywords:

adam pascal otter

I am not sure whether one would be disappointed or not being steered here by those words.