Travelling

sweenytx@hotmail.com — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:16:00 GMT

Travelling

We spent this past weekend in College Station, Texas. As usual, I am posting a view from my hotel room taken in the very early morning hours on Sunday:

In other travel news, many people may have noticed that states are closing down highway rest areas right and left. MSNBC has addressed that very issue in a recent article.

Basically, in order to save money in their budgets, states have been closing down rest areas

Bugatti in a marsh

sweenytx@hotmail.com — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:12:00 GMT

Earlier this week I almost ran into a pelican who was hanging out in the street here in town. I wrote about it on Facebook which prompted a small flurry of reminisces about road kill. But my encounter with a pelican was nothing compared to what happened to this guy and his million dollar car:

Aggie Station

sweenytx@hotmail.com — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:47:00 GMT

Aggie Station

Yesterday evening we attended a "town hall" meeting at my daughter's school. We were sitting at a table with some friends of ours and their children. Their youngest little boy, who is 4 years old, was sitting directly across from me. He overheard me talking about a trip we have planned to College Station, Texas in the near future.

He jumped right into the conversation and here's how it went:

Little Boy: "Where are you going?"

Me: "College Station. It is where your dad went to college and where lots of the Aggies live"

Men's Club

sweenytx@hotmail.com — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:17:00 GMT

Last night we attended the holiday potluck dinner at our church. It is sponsored by the Men's Club at our church. The food is always fantastic at these potluck events. Everyone brings their best dish. I brought my ever-popular Hot German Potato Salad.

One item in particular was noteworthy: stuffed jalapenos. The elderly gentlemen who makes these wouldn't give out his recipe. But those jalapenos were really really good.

Right before the dinner began, two of the Men's Club members came and sat at our table with us. They were trying to recruit Dan into the church Men's Club. Their descriptions of the Men's Club meetings was hilarious.

Their recruiting strategy went like this (pretty much the elderly gentleman's exact words): "We'd like t

Food

sweenytx@hotmail.com — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:43:00 GMT

I was just reading a blog post about food that cited these statistics: Research says that we cook the same 20 dishes again and again. Well, that would not be the case at my house!

I try new recipes all the time. I am a huge fan of Food Network and watch the shows on there as often as possible. And I subscribe to Bon Appetit magazine which is my favorite magazine of all.

Each month when I get Bon Appetit, I scan through it and take in the pictures and read some of the captions. Then I decide on the first recipe I plan to try out of it. The rest of the month I refer back to the magazine and I cook as many recipes from the pages of Bon Appetit as I can fit in.

True, sometimes there are things in there that I am just not that interested in cooking and so I will pass them by. Recipes that use fennel seeds I tend to leave undone because that is one taste I have never cultivated.

What makes Bon Appetit so good to me is that many of the recipes are quite easy and healthy but the chefs who contribute to the magazine elevate the mundane to the sublime. We don't all have to live on plain grilled chicken breasts and steamed broccoli in order to eat healthy. There is a whole world of delicious food out there and most of it is good for you. Especially when you prepare it at home, from scratch, so that you know exactly what is in your food.

Day 3 of NaNoWriMo

sweenytx@hotmail.com — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:10:00 GMT

Here we are entering Day 3 of National Novel Writing Month and I will be discussing it a lot on this blog for the month of November. I am still ahead on my word count even though we are only in day 3. Sometime today I will figure out how to add the updating word count feature into my sidebar on this website.

I am on Chapter 5 of my novel. I did not completely outline the entire thing ahead of time like many writers do. I wrote out my characterizations and plot. I have tons of stuff sitting around in my mind waiting to come out. I made a list of approximately the number of chapters I plan to write and I am filling in the information as I write each chapter.

I have my usual busy week of work and personal acitvities. Having a child means that their schedule becomes your schedule and my daughter normally has a full roster of birthday party invitations, play dates, Girl Scout activities, church stuff, school stuff, and the list goes on and on. You need good project management skills to keep us with today's kids. But I am not one of those parents that over-schedules my child. She doesn't have lots of lessons and sports groups that she has to go to each week.

Halloween

sweenytx@hotmail.com — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:53:00 GMT

I am off to a smashing good start on my participation in National Novel Writing Month. I have written my quota for word count today and I am still in a writing mood. So I'll keep writing! I am sure there will be one or more days this month when I don't have the time or creativity to write so it is best that I get ahead while the muse is visiting.

We survived another Halloween last night. We took Toot collecting candy around the block and then settled down at our friend's house to help give out candy. She had a small Halloween party going on and we had good food and good fun.

One thing that continues to bug me each year about giving out candy is the advanced age of the trick-or-treaters. There were many teenagers out trick-or-treating and I feel like Halloween trick-or-treating is for the smaller children. Maybe up to 12 years old at the most.

NaNoWriMo

sweenytx@hotmail.com — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:18:00 GMT

This has not been a good week for my personal productivity levels. I am simply not getting anything done as can be noted by my poor lack of posts on this blog over the past week or so. Normally autumn is a great time for me. I seem to fall into a good rhythm when fall hits. Of course, this year, we've had the Never-Ending Summer with 103 degree heat index in October. So it is no wonder that autumn productivity hasn't visited me yet!

I am, however, getting geared up for National Novel Writing Month. I signed up and everything...

NaNoWriMo can be found here and I have linked to the page that lists how it works. Basically you sign up to start writing on November 1 and write yourself silly. You try to write 50,000 words during the month. The NaNoWriMo website helps you along by giving you encouragement and letting you connect with other writers who are attempting the novel-writing feat also. You can update your word count daily and at the end upload your work for verification.

You don't win lots of money or new cars but you will get recognized on the winner's page as having written a 50,000 word novel in one month. And....you will have a novel of your very own that you can work on having published!

Pumpkin Mold

sweenytx@hotmail.com — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:27:00 GMT

This is what happens when you carve a Halloween pumpkin and set it outside for just 2 days in south Texas:

The heat and humidity here prevent any sort of autumn weather. Therefore we can't really carve our pumkins and have them for longer than a couple of days. Even uncarved pumpkins start to mold pretty fast around the stem area.

Power Outage

sweenytx@hotmail.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:18:00 GMT

This morning at 7 am I was sitting at my kitchen table reading through the latest Facebook postings on my account.

Suddenly there was a loud boom from outside somewhere and the power went out immediately. My father-in-law who is visiting from out of town walked in from the living room and said that he thought a transformer had blown.

I called the power company and had a nice conversation with their automated phone system. I am convinced that Centerpoint Energy only employs two people to answer all the phone calls for the entire Houston region.

Only a portion of our neighborhood lost power. So I spent the first half of the day working from my laptop at the local Hastings coffee shop since they have convenient electrical plugs for laptops and extremely nice baristas working behind the counter.

Power was restored around 11:30 am. I meandered back to my home office where I proceeded to work the rest of the day. And that was the extent of the annoyances for the day. Hope everyone else had a good. day.

Julie