Monday, July 31, 2006

Home again, home again

It's a dog-eat-dog-treat world here at home again. But after spending a long weekend with people who get it, I'm feeling like myself again. How is it that 2000 women can invade a hotel and the estrogen levels don't make me crazy? It's because we were all united by writing, The Magic of it all.

I have so many stories I'd love to share, but not nearly enough time. Why? Because something clicked this weekend. For all the time I spend in my day job, I loathe work meetings and company-sponsored conferences. This weekend, I didn't want my own personal writing/therapy retreat to end. I can recreate the feelings I had, the hopes and dreams and desires, the a-ha! moments, all of it, by writing. And that's what I'm going to do. I wrote a couple paragraphs last night. I've written a page tonight. And I'm not going to stop until I'm done, and then I'm going to edit and move on to the next story. I'm going to observe life around me, seeking inspiration in the joys and the pains of everyday life.

They say shoe, sex, and job chick-lit is a tough market now. With that in mind, I'm re-thinking MQLC while typing away at Athena's Girls. Hopefully I'll have something good to show for it in a few months. :)

In other news, look closely at this picture:

You'll see it reappear soon over at the Alphabet Girls blog, and you'll have a chance to win a book or two that I just happen to have lying around if you can correctly identify what this is (or come up with a darn good creative idea of what it might be). My fellow Nationals friends know what's hidden in the picture, so they won't be eligible to win. ;)

Posted by Honey :: 8:35 PM :: 6 Comments:

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Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Can't Sit Still

Is it time to go yet? I'm ready. Bags are mostly packed. Got a phone call appointment at home at 2 this afternoon, and then I'm heading off to Atlanta. I'll be giggling and gossiping with all my RWAOnline friends within 7 hours of typing this, and I can't wait. I've been counting down to today for almost a year now, ever since I realized Nationals would be just two hours down the road this year.

I don't have big lofty goals of being discovered in a bar by the editor and/or agent that I was meant to work with. I just want to be a part of the action, to see what goes on and learn what I can. I want to walk away with a renewed love of writing and reading, and hopefully a suitcase full of books, too. ;) I want to learn what I can while I'm there and take away the memories and lessons to improve my craft, along with audio copies of all the workshops so I can continue to learn once I'm home. I want to have a few days away from the normalcy of home, a vacation, to shake off some of the stress I've felt the last couple weeks.

Most of all, I wish ALL of my fellow Alphabet Girls were going, instead of only 4 of us. Maybe next year, right? :)

'Til next week (or later this week if I happen to snag an internet connection somewhere)...

-h

Posted by Honey :: 9:49 AM :: 0 Comments:

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Monday, July 24, 2006

Bathrooms and Lesbians

This past weekend, I went over to Savannah and met my friend Ellen. We've been online writing buddies for almost a year, so it was cool to meet face to face. I'm excited about going to the RWA National Conference later this week to meet other online writing buddies, too. Yippee!

But I wouldn't feel right leaving off details of my visit with Ellen. :) She's a wonderful person, and we had the best time. Talking and laughing and giggling and gossipping was great! She'd selected a bed & breakfast between River Street and Bay Street, which is an area of Savannah with a bit of a feel like the French Quarter in New Orleans. Lots of bars and restaurants and quaint shops. Anyway, she got us a suite adn picked the "Girlfriends Package". We realized the first night that the B&B people thought we were lesbian lovers when they turned down just her bed and laid out robes for our use across the bed. But seriously, the South I know considers "girlfriends" to be your good girl friends, not your lesbian lovers, but it's nice to know they're open to catering to a variety of clientele. I think Mr. Honey (who's currently visiting my old college town (see Honey try not to be jealous because she also has cool plans this week, and really all she's missing is the pie shop)) wished he could've been there for Girlfriend night, but it just doesn't always work out that way.

Ellen and I hung out at Savannah Smiles, the dueling pianos bar, and at Kevin Barry's Irish Pub. We took a trolley tour of the historic district, which Ellen fellin love with right away. We sat up talking until midnight or later both nights, we ate good food, and we walked a lot. It was a blast. But Ellen kept accusing me of hiring people to speak in southern accents. She doesn't hear it all that much where she's from, so it was a bit surreal for her to hear people talking like Scarlett O'Hara.

After dinner on Saturday night, we slipped into the little girls' room, as women are known to do. I have a picture that I'll post later if I have time between packing for Nationals and running around like a chicken with my head cut off (manicure? pedicure? crap!). Anyway, in this bathroom, there were two stalls, one sink, and five soap dispensers. Five. Why in the world does one bathroom with one sink need five soap dispensers? Okay, two I can understand, because it is reasonable that two people who know each other well (and are probably related) would be willing to share a sink, but demand their own soap dispenser. But 5 pump bottles, all half-full? It was the funniest thing I've seen in a bathroom in a long time. And I told Ellen I was going to blog about it, and now I have. :) Here's hoping you had just as fun of a weekend, regardless of where you got your chuckles.

Posted by Honey :: 11:30 AM :: 0 Comments:

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Friday, July 21, 2006

Short break...

This afternoon, I'm leaving to hang out with one of the Alphabet Girls in Savannah for the weekend, and then next week I'm meeting a few more in Atlanta for RWA's National Conference. It's been a bit of a rough two weeks on this front, so I'm thrilled to have some "vacation" coming up. But it'll be quiet in the blog for a while. If I'm not completely overwhelmed by the Nationals experience, you can find something new for sure around the first of August. If I am overwhelmed, you'll probably still find something here, but I can't guarantee it won't be gibberish. Hmmm... I wonder if babelfish has a gibberish translator? I think I'll go look and see.

Here's a quick story for you, just so you don't feel cheated. My baby sister, affectionately called "Mini-me" here, has a myspace page. So my alter ego signed up for a myspace account so I could be her "friend" and see what she's got going on in her world. Wouldn't you know it, she picked a very unique screen name. She goes by "Yourself". So when she invited me to be her friend, my email told me, "Yourself has invited you to be her friend!" And now I'm getting emails that say, "Yourself has left you a comment on your myspace page!" That's one creative little booger there. *sniff* I'm so proud.

Have a great weekend!

Posted by Honey :: 7:53 AM :: 1 Comments:

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Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Is That Your Phone?

Oh, no, I'm sorry, I was mistaken. That wasn't your phone ringing. It was my bullshit meter.

I was surfing the news this morning when I came across this. It seems we have a new form of addiction to worry about: cell phone addiction.

Children are being neglected because their parents spend every waking minute on their cell phones. Productivity at work is falling. People have separation anxiety when their cell phones are surgically removed from their hands. These poor people! We must do something for them! They're unable to help themselves!

What's next? Twelve steps to kick a cell phone addiction?
Step one: Admit the cell phone rules your life.
Step two: Believe in a power greater than the cell phone.
Step three: Decide to devote cell phone time to a greater good (like blogging, or watching DVD's, etc.)
Step four: Take a moral inventory of your electronics
Step five: Admit to our neglected children, families, bosses, and that guy we ran over while text-messaging an entry to a contest, that we need to stop trying to look like cyborgs
Step six: Be ready to surgically remove the microcircuits from our ears
Step seven: Ask the robotic surgeon to do a nip and tuck on our less attractive parts while under the knife for electro-suction
Step eight: Create a database on our pda's of all those people we have offended with our cell phone use
Step nine: Send a mass email apology using the database created in step eight, promising to never again use the cell phone to cyber-live.
Step ten: Continue to update our database, adding names with each call that we take and answering the phone with "I'm sorry, I was weak! I can't resist when I hear Jingle Bells toll on my phone in July!"
Step eleven: Pray to the electronics gods for something to replace the cell phone addiction we've almost kicked.
Step twelve: Share our journey with other cell phone addicts through the ever-present voicemail message left on our phone: "This is Honey. I can't take your call because I've kicked the habit. My brain cells are recouperating from the microwaving they've gotten over the past (fill in the blank) days/months/years. If you'd like to hear more, visit my website and blog, download my podcast, and tune in to public access channel 386 for my video presentation on the twelve steps to freedom from cell phones in a cell phone age. May Sony and Toshiba bless you."

Argh.

In other news, as my friend PJ Trader posted earlier this month, Sprint has declared July to be Cell Phone Courtesy Month (and mixed some marketing in with their "be courteous" message, of course). Check it out here.

Best wishes for a happy and bad-ring-tone-free day.

Posted by Honey :: 8:15 AM :: 6 Comments:

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Friday, July 14, 2006

Friday Randomness

As a result of our 4th of July trip down to Florida, Mr. Honey and I were introduced to Greg the Bunny. And through the magic of NetFlix, we're now reliving the hilarious episodes as fast as we can get the discs. The whole concept is pretty funny - it's like Real World-Sesame Street for adults.

Also as a result of that same trip, I continue to have dreams about the Pirates game. Last night I sailed into a port and got attacked by the most notorious pirate. Then he told me he was getting tired of the game. We sailed away somehow. It was weird, but I could clearly see the map as it displays in the game.

And on a random note, a black hairy spider in the shower scared the bejeebers out of me this morning. This very same thing happened to me back in March, too, but I handled it a bit differently back then. This time, I decided that as long as the spider didn't bother me, I wouldn't bother it. And it worked well, until the stupid thing fell off the shower curtain halfway through my shower. So I screamed like a girl while throwing water on it to wash it down the drain. Mr. Honey came running like a good Mr. Honey does, peeked in the shower to make sure the big old mean spider was gone, because I didn't have my contacts in and couldn't see anything more than a big black blog getting swallowed by a big white blob, which I assumed to mean that the spider had disappeared in the mass of bubbles by the drain. Mr. Honey kinda scoffed, "It's okay, you drowned it now," and went about his business. So I hurried up and finished my shower as fast as humanly possible to get away from the spider germs. Icky.

Here's hoping your Friday started better than mine. :)

Posted by Honey :: 8:50 AM :: 2 Comments:

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Thursday, July 13, 2006

Why Oreos Should Be Vegetables

Mr. Honey has this thing about Oreo shakes. He likes them. And if Mr. Honey likes something with ice cream, milk, and Oreo cookies in it, you can bet I'm going to take advantage of that. So we currently have a package of Oreos sitting on our counter at home, but we've run out of ice cream. Darn it, now I have to eat my Oreos with milk. Except we're out of milk at the moment, too. So I'll just have to eat my Oreos plain, at least until I get to the grocery store and get more ice cream and milk. And that's okay with me, too. :)

So having Oreos got me to thinking. Life would be so much better if Oreos were vegetable. Seriously. For instance...

1. Remember how your mom used to always (and sometimes still does) tell you to eat your vegetables? If Oreos were vegetables, we wouldn't have to be told.
2. Oreos require no preparation. No washing, no cutting, no tossing in a salad and covering with the right dressing. As noted above, they're perfect as is, right out of the bag. It would be a vegetable of convenience.
3. I've never gotten sick from eating too many vegetables. If Oreos were reclassified as vegetables, I wouldn't get sick from eating too many of them.
4. Craving a salad? Have an Oreo milk shake.
5. We're supposed to eat vegetables from a variety of color groups. Red vegetables, yellow vegetables, green vegetables, etc. Oreos come in a variety of flavors. Original Oreos, Golden Oreos, Fudge Mint Covered Oreo, Double Delight Oreo Peanut Butter & Chocolate, etc. Coincidence? I think not.
6. Saturday morning cartoons would include commercials for vegetables if Oreos were vegetables.
7. What other vegetable tastes so good with milk?

What do you think? What other food should be considered a vegetable? Why? I'm so very curious this morning.

Posted by Honey :: 8:51 AM :: 5 Comments:

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Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Freaky!!

Every morning, I get up, trudge to the kitchen, make myself a bowl of cereal, trudge back to the office, and try to pry my eyes open while I eat so I can read my email and check my morning comics and do my initial blog run.

This morning we were having network problems, so I checked my favorite comic from the office. I googled it instead of clicking in the "favorites" link like I have at home, and I just picked the top hit. And what do I discover? Go here and check it out.

Their eyes are moving! They're blinking!! The inanimate people in my comics have come to life. I'm seriously freaked out. Maud, my logical engineer personality, is telling me it's just a series of 1's and 0's set up to make it appear as though their eyes are blinking. But Jojo, my weird personality, is convinced I'm hallucinating and now everyone on the internet will know about my secret paranoia.

Some days you just can't win, even with 8 personalities that all like the same comic strip.

Posted by Honey :: 7:57 AM :: 1 Comments:

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Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Happy Convenience Store Day

Okay, so I don't know if today is really convenience store day, but it should be if it's not. Seriously - today's 7/11. (In the rest of the world, they'd celebrate this on November 7, but do they have Seven-Eleven convenience stores in the rest of the world???)

Sorry for the long absences - there's been this extra person visiting lately, and it's not my muse. It's this person I call Mr. Stress. He's chased my muse away. But Mr. Honey and I are riding high, moving on up in the world, with our new matress set. Seriously - we're sleeping at an elevation roughly 8-10 inches higher than we were three days ago. Anyway, the new mattress is heavenly, and getting some good sleep on our nice new fluffy bed is helping chase Mr. Stress and his demon band of psychosomatic illnesses away. So hopefully I'll get some motivation to write about Pirates of the Caribbean, and then maybe talk about the book I'm reading. It's my first Woodiwiss ever. I'd say that makes me a Woodiwiss virgin, but I've seen already what she does to her virgins, so I'd rather not be one of them.

That's all for today! Catch you later. :)

Posted by Honey :: 2:15 PM :: 3 Comments:

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Thursday, July 06, 2006

Hooked on Pirates!

One of the most interesting turn of events over the weekend happened when my friend Chessie introduced me to Sid Meier's Pirates! All of a sudden, little old me who rolls my eyes whenever I walk into the office and spy Mr. Honey playing some silly computer game, wants to buy a new desktop computer system to hook up to our bigscreen TV so we can play Pirates at home. Quite appropriate, considering Pirates of the Caribbean II comes out this weekend, don't you think?

This game rocks. There's plundering and pillaging and cannonball fights between ships on the high seas. You can sword fight with the captain of the ships you attack, then go into port and dance with governors' daughters. Chessie recommends the French governors' daughters. They're hot. But aside from the fighting and dancing, there's sailing and hidden treasure and rival pirates and vengeance and reuniting with long-lost relatives. I had a blast. And twice this weekend I woke up to find Mr. Honey already up and playing Pirates while the rest of the house slept. I suspect the only issue we'll have with our plan is that only one of us will be able to play at a time. Garrrr!

Posted by Honey :: 8:42 AM :: 2 Comments:

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Wednesday, July 05, 2006

That'd be quite a sight

Mr. Honey and I spent the weekend visiting friends in Florida, which of course meant we made another trip to our favorite Greek place in Pensacola yesterday, the Hip Pocket Deli. We had a 3-pound meatball sub for lunch, and yes, there were leftovers. Have you ever seen a 3-pound meatball sub? It's huge. Like bigger than my head huge. Like I didn't have the strength to lift it to my mouth so I had to cut it into bite-size pieces to eat my part of it huge. Like my mouth isn't big enough to wrap around this sub even if I coul lift it huge. (And yes, I do have a very large mouth, so this is saying something.)

Anyway, after lunch we left for the drive home. As you probably know, Pensacola got hammered by a hurricane close to two years ago. Between road construction they were already doing when Ivan hit, and then re-construction they've had to do post-Ivan, there were very few roads we traveled in and around the area that weren't under construction. As such, there were tons of those electronic signs all over the place, too. You know the ones - they flash messages like "SLOW - LANES SHIFT AHEAD," etc. etc. Well, traveling northbound on I-110, we found a new one. It confused the heck out of Mr. Honey: "MOBILE LEFT LANES"

He glanced over at me with the most precious confused look on his face and says, "What the hell are mobile left lanes? This could get interesting."

Now, as he's the keenly observant one in our relationship, I was sure he was making a funny. But when I realized he was serious, I was absolutely flabbergasted. I'd seen the sign, too, except I'd read between the lines (noted in parentheses): "(TO GET TO) MOBILE (ALABAMA, STAY IN) LEFT LANES"

After I'd finished laughing so hard I nearly wet my pants while Mr. Honey wallowed in self-deprecation for a bit, he says, "You're gonna blog about this, aren't you? I mean, you have to. It's too funny not to." And so there you go. One of many highlights of our weekend trip. :) Hope yours were just as fun.

Posted by Honey :: 11:07 AM :: 3 Comments:

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