Geez, have I really been gone for two months!? So sorry for that, folks. I do have to say that I appreciate the constant check-in views though. 12,799 hits since I started this blog. That's so exciting. Good to know that I'm not forgotten.
Life's been crazy, and I'm sorry you guys had to pay the price of no-updates. Thankfully, Ali Luke came to my Facebook page and gave me a swift kick in the butt, so here I am! I'll touch more on that in a few, but first how about a recap of my life since last post?
Thanksgiving came and went with not much fanfare. Hubby and I had turkey sandwiches at home after working. Then we went down to my mom's to spend Saturday with her extended family - a family tradition of ours where her siblings all come together the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
Hubby's 30th that following Monday was hardly as much of a blow-out as I had hoped. Maddog24, his wife 2 Feathers and their daughters, and a small handful of Hubby's friends made an appearance. Sadly, even with a little bit of a heads up most of The Gang couldn't make it to a party on a Monday. They periodically stopped by throughout December and wished him a happy birthday when they could, so that was nice.
December then flew by in a fury of work and my crocheting to frantically attempt to FINALLY finish up the baby blanket for my niece. Guess what! I actually completed it! Sure, I was literally finishing it at my sister-in-law's house on Christmas... but it's done and my niece seemed to enjoy it!
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| Crocheting all of this was such a pain, and I had to custom design the owls, which is why they look so goofy... |
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| The owl pattern fabric I picked out for the backing of the blanket. |
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| Close-up of the owl fabric backing. Niece's bedroom is covered in these owls. |
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| The finished project on my sis-in-law's futon. Yay, finishing it at her house! :-P |
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| I flipped the backing over to make a boarder. I'm happy how it came out, even if I did have to hand-stitch the whole thing. |
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| Another close-up of the finished product. |
Random side note about December:
Just before Christmas my sister was talking to my eldest cousin who apparently told her that he reads this blog. D'aww, cool beans! <3
She continued to tell me that he finds my writing amazing even though "he doesn't quite understand it". I had to chuckle at that.
So, Cous', thanks for stopping by and reading my works, even if you don't quite follow all of my geeky references to Hey Arnold, X-Men, Legend of Zelda, or other video games/animes. The fact that you find my blog still interesting enough to read through means so much to me.
And now we're back....
New Years was quiet since both Hubby and I had to be at work at about 6am New Years day. We had the next day off though, so we celebrated by going to a local showing of Frozen. I'm obsessed with this movie! If you haven't seen it yet and have an opportunity... do so! I've listened to the soundtrack just about daily since. I also managed to watch a second showing with my sister and my very pregnant bestie!
Clearly, that hasn't happened yet. But Chinese New Year is this upcoming Friday, and I like to use that as a "take two" on the calendar new years. With Ali's help - as well as an equal amount of prodding from ChibiSunnie and DarkAngel1326 - I'm sure I can get back on track.
So let's backtrack to the 21st of this month. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, Ali had stopped by my Facebook page.
Ali: *prod* Hey, we're missing you in the Huddle's Winter Challenge! No excuses --
I'll accept a teeny tiny weekly target if needs be...How could I turn that down? So, for the first time since the summer challenge I made my way back to Writers’ Huddle. I decided that my weekly goal for the next six weeks is to get 8hrs of writing in a week, some of which would be used to start doing these weekly updates once again - the rest obviously used for fiction work. I think I aimed a touch too high though. This week I only managed about five hours. I'll have to try to rework my schedule for this upcoming week, I guess.
As with the summer challenge, the winter one also has weekly mini-challenges to try to help shake things up. This week's mini-challenge is to "get comfy". You guys know as well as anyone that I'm constantly complaining about just that. One of the main reasons my writing - and beta reading - took a nosedive last year was because my netbook died on me, and I'm just not comfortable writing at my desktop.
So this past Thursday when Hubby went to use my desktop to play a computer game that his laptop couldn't handle I decided we could just switch. I curled up on the couch with the intent to work on this blog - or any other sort of writing - on his laptop. Well, earlier in the week I had a dream based on X-Future. I'm obsessed, I know. Over the course of the week I was writing out what I remembered about the dream, and I wanted to finish that off first. I broke out the journal I was writing in during work breaks and about 2 1/2hrs later I had a completed one-shot based off of that dream. I ended up not using the laptop, but I was still comfy and I had over two hours of writing. The last time I did that was when I updated as Willow on January 8th: 3hr writing session on the forum! Yes!
Want to see the fruit of my labor? It's spoiler-free and you don't really need to know much about X-Future to get the story! WIN! Anyway, you can check it out on DeviantArt here, or on FanFiction here.
I tried the "get comfy" again yesterday. I swiped Hubby's laptop and curled up in bed for about four hours. I managed to type up the handwritten dream-inspired story. I then sat un-inspired to write. I finally gave up and went over to the couch again. That's where I wrote this. I guess the "snuggle in bed to write" bit only worked with the netbook. The laptop is too big I guess.
With any luck I can use this winter challenge to get back in to that much needed rhythm and routine. Catch you guys next week. For Reals.
