Life in progress

Tag Archives: writing


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Day 5 – Nano Poblano: Red Hot Chili Peppers

I don’t know if it’s the subconscious prodding of being part of Team Pepper, or if it’s the weather, but I had a craving yesterday for chili con carne. So while I was at the grocery store, I bought all the ingredients which are now simmering on my stove top, their mingled aromas wafting into my nostrils and teasing my growling tummy.

I don’t like cooking, as a rule, except when I’m making something that I can see coming together in stages. To me, making a pot of chili, or spaghetti sauce, or dish I call “slop” (which is basically all the veggies you’d put in spaghetti except without the tomato sauce but including chopped tomatoes, and chicken and rice with a dash or two of curry) is more like building a dinner than cooking it. To me it looks like life.

You start with the basic ingredient and it’s like a newly formed child. Add in the next, which may be language, and a sprinkling of different spices (which we all know are actually experiences) and before you know it, it’s turned into something entirely different, and yet the same.

And then you eat it! Which incidentally is where it stops being like a person… unless you’re into that… but we won’t go there, will we…?

Where was I? Oh yes, peppers. My chili is going to be hot and spicy. Just like Nano Poblano… and the people involved. Who I won’t eat.

nanoPoblano14

NaBloPoMo_1114_465x287_blogroll


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Day 4 – Nano Poblano: Invasion of the Teeth Eating, Six-Legged Creatures!

My pumpkin had pointy teeth.

 

CAM00463

Then the ants came. It’s the same every year; the infestation begins the moment the pumpkin goes outside. I know, I know there are ways to prevent this: I just wait until the last minute to put them out.

What really amuses me is the large chunks of skin the ants manage to throw out. You can see them on the step… and if you look really close you can see all the ants. Most of them were sleeping. Pumpkin must be to an ant like turkey is to a human.

So I propose the name of a new band. Who needs the Smashing Pumpkins when you can watch the Slowly-Being-Eaten Rotting Infested Jack-O-Lanterns?

nanoPoblano14NaBloPoMo_1114_465x287_blogroll


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Speaking of Masochism

Why do I set such high goals for myself? Okay yes, it feels great when I achieve them, and usually I do because I don’t like giving up on a challenge I set for myself. But the downside is that I end up getting stressed when I have too many things to do.

The latest goal of course is NaBloPoMo – write a post every day during the month of November. Together with Nano Poblano which gives me the extra challenge to make my posts spicy, I’m thinking by the end of the month my posts will be unreadable garbles of swear words. That should be fun!

Yet there’s something extra I’m contemplating to drive myself crazy reach for, and that is to extend my Scenes from the Second Seat on the Right series to 365. An entire year. I’m working on getting ahead of myself to cover the period in December when I won’t be around. They’re already scheduled a day or two in advance, so what’s two weeks? Nuthin’! My eventual goal with the series is to turn it into a calendar. I’m not sure exactly how that would work as an e-pub, but I’m sure I can figure something out. The idea came up a while ago, and I spoke to another blogger about possibly animating it, but that sorta fizzled out into nothing. So far. I should re-visit the idea and see if there’s any interest, though the 365th episode is still 300 away from being completed.

Any thoughts? Anyone who’s reading it think it might be a good idea? Click here for a link to one of the scenes that stands alone (meaning it has no back-story nor any follow-up so far) if you’ve never read one. You may just be amused.


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No More Slacking!

It’s true. I’ve been slacking off on my blog. Two days this past week I failed to post. My excuse? Life. What kind of excuse is that? A terrible one, if you ask me.

So I’ve decided to join in to not one, but two events to keep me on track for the rest of the month. I won’t be able to participate in Every Damned Day December this year, so I’m gonna make up for it ahead of time.

So what, you might ask, are these events? Let me show you.

The first is NaBloPoMo (or National Blog Posting Month I assume, since NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. …shouldn’t that be INTERnational by now?). The sign-up form can be found here if you’re interested in joining me: http://www.blogher.com/joining-nablopomo-november-add-your-blog-2014-blogroll-now Here’s the official logo:

NaBloPoMo_1114_465x287_blogroll

Nice, eh?

The second event is Nano Poblano, hosted by Mr. Mark Bialczak. Join Team Pepper, here: http://markbialczak.com/2014/10/27/team-pepper-gets-spicy-right-here-nano-poblano/ and get the cool banner!

nanoPoblano14

To be part of Team Pepper, we have to include the tags, Nano Poblano and Team Pepper in our posts. As well as NaBloPoMo of course.

So that’s that! I have my work cut out for me for the rest of the month. How about you? Are you up for a little spice and a couple of tongue twisters?


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The Friday Reminder and Prompt for SoCS November 1/14

It’s Friday!! What with Hallowe’en and the chaos that comes with it, I totally forgot about your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt! Thanks so much for the reminder, John! So what to do…? Oh, I know!

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “memory.” That’s it! Have fun!

After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at this week’s prompt page in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Anyone can join in!

To make your post more visible, use the SoCS badge! Just paste it in your Saturday post so people browsing the reader will immediately know your post is stream of consciousness and/or pin it as a widget to your site to show you’re a participant. Wear it with pride!!

socs-badge

Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

Here are the rules:

1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.

3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”

4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours.  Your link will show up in my comments, for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.

5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.

6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!

7. Have fun!


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Followers vs. Readers

Okay, so you have a WordPress site of your own and your site has followers. When you started out, you got your first few notifications that someone had hitched their wagon to your blog and you thought, “Great! I have someone reading what I write!” But then as time went by, you realized that maybe they weren’t reading after all.

Fast forward to where you are now. You have tens if not thousands of followers. How many of those numbers do you figure actually visit your blog?

What brought this up in the first place was the municipal elections we had yesterday across the province of Ontario. Voter turnout at most elections is far below the numbers of of eligible voters. The difference between running for election and blogging is the people running for election are putting out money to advertise themselves. At least we bloggers don’t need to go to that length to have our sites viewed. But I digress.

From what I’ve gathered over the last twenty-one months of blogging, it seems that any of us are, at any given time, being visited by 10%-20% of our followers. The 20% is if you’re either very lucky or if all of your followers are friends and family.

I have just over 2,100 blog followers at the moment. I would estimate that over the course of my blogging career, I’ve had between 10-15% of my numbers actually reading my site on a daily basis. Which means that people have come and gone, and some have come back again, but on an average day I have around that many regular followers, not including those who show up once and I never see again. My regular followers don’t visit every day, but I know they’re out there by our interactions. On my fiction blog it’s even less – I have over 600 followers and would guess there only around 20 or 30 people who regularly read. That’s only about 3-5%

I’m far more frustrated with my 3-5%, obviously, than with my 10-15%, but as I said, at least it doesn’t cost me anything but the time I put into writing.

If you had to guess just going by feel and judging by the number of followers you chat with in a day, how many of your followers are reading you?


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Random Update – Doctor Fortune Cookie Edition

I love it when a fortune cookie actually tells my fortune.

fortunecookie

I did have an opportunity to edit this weekend, since the kids were with their dad. Now to play the lottery with those numbers… or did I miss it? I’ll check Saturday’s draw and see.

In other news, I went to the doctor about my shoulder and my eyes on Friday. She’s sending me for another ultrasound for the shoulder and I’m on Advil three times a day to see if it helps. Apparently if we can figure out whether it’s bone or soft tissue that’s causing the problem, she’ll know how to treat it.

My eyes on the other hand, she had no answer for. My bloodwork showed that I’m perfect – I already knew that though (haha) – so the good news is it’s not diabetes. Anyway, she said she’ll talk to an optometrist colleague this weekend and get back to me next week if they come up with any ideas. I thought of something that I neglected to mention to her since. I’ve been watching my diet, screen time, and all kinds of things to see if there was a common denominator to when I have problems, but the one thing I hadn’t watched was what I was drinking. I wonder if I get dehydrated, particularly when all I drink in a day is coffee and wine. I’ll mention that if she doesn’t come up with anything better.

Or maybe what I really need is more Chinese food to get my answer.


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SoCS – On English and Taking a Break

The English language amazes me. I’m sure many other languages are equally amazing, but English is the one I’m most familiar with, so it’s the one I’ll talk about.

When I came up with this week’s prompt, “degree(s),” I had one thing in mind. The temperature. But then I thought about how many different things it could mean and I was astounded. So many words in the English language are like this. It must be so confusing for people learning it. At the same time it opens up so many possibilities for things like the SoCS prompt.

In my mind right at this moment is the worry about what will happen with SoCS when I take some time off from my blog in December, and since this is stream of consciousness, that’s what I’ll write about.

I won’t be around for perhaps three weekends in December. I can handle this in a number of ways: I can just not put up prompts and let SoCS go for that time; I can pre-schedule the prompts and let SoCS run on its own, or I can get someone to guest-post for me. If that is the case, I can either leave it up to the guest poster to come up with the prompts or I can leave them myself for the guest to put up.

I suppose I need to know if anyone would be interested in doing it. I’m leaning toward this way of doing things, as sometimes participating bloggers need a helping hand with the pingbacks, and because I like to ensure that everything is being read. It’s a big job.

I realize that it’s still a long way off, so if you want to let me know that you might be interested, I won’t hold you to it. I merely want a feel at this point if there’s anyone at all who’s interested. Please comment below.

Thanks!

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

This post is part of SoCS – click the link and join in now! https://lindaghill.com/2014/10/24/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-october-2514/


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The Friday Reminder and Prompt for SoCS October 25/14

Friday is here and with it comes your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt! I’m hella tired today – two mornings in a row of being dragged out of bed by a grumpy kid with a sore throat at 4am will do that. So no preamble or explanation today, just a prompt:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “degree/degrees.” Have at it!

After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at this week’s prompt page in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Anyone can join in!

To make your post more visible, use the SoCS badge! Just paste it in your Saturday post so people browsing the reader will immediately know your post is stream of consciousness and/or pin it as a widget to your site to show you’re a participant. Wear it with pride!!

socs-badge

Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

Here are the rules:

1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.

3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”

4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours.  Your link will show up in my comments, for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.

5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.

6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!

7. Have fun!


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Canada – Today and Tomorrow

canada-day

In light of the shootings yesterday in the city of Ottawa, and the subsequent statements I keep hearing that our country has changed, I can’t not say something.

As a nation of people who are often accused of having an identity crisis, we ourselves wonder who we are, and how we fit in. With our English spellings and our love of American television, we have been known as the “51st State,” though when we go to court, it’s us against the Crown. When asked to define Canada we come up with adjectives like, “big,” “culturally diverse,” or “the place where poutine and insulin were invented.” We are a nation of coffee-drinking hockey players who talk about the weather and say “sorry” when someone bumps into us.

Ours is a land populated with people who care about their towns, their cities, their neighbours and their country. We’re proud of our peacefulness. So can one act of violence change that? I’m here to say, quite loudly, NO.

At the moment we are reacting, and yes, it is deeply disturbing that on an ordinary day in the nation’s capital, a soldier standing on honour guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier could be shot and killed. But while we are reacting, we are focusing on the family of the man who was lost. Because that is who we are.

It is in our nature as Canadians to pull together, to care for each other. And for all Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s statement that, “we will not be intimidated,” might refer to our government, it stands for our citizens as well. We CAN not be intimidated. We are nation of 35 million who feel the responsibility to protect one another.

That is something about Canada that will never change.