Doodle Party

Today's Doodle Week theme is Party.




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Doodle Something Yellow

Today's Doodle Week theme is Something Yellow.  I couldn't decide what yellow thing I wanted to doodle, so I created two yellow doodles. One is a doodle in the more traditional sense, meaning it was drawn, and the other is a text doodle. I really do doodle with words a lot.





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Doodle Air

Today's Doodle Week theme is Air, which continues the theme of the four classic elements.



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Doodle Fire

Today's Doodle Week theme is Fire, which continues the theme of the four classic elements.



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Doodle Water

Today's Doodle Week theme is Water, which continues the them of the four classic elements.



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Doodle Earth

Today's Doodle Week theme is Earth, as in one of the four classic elements (or like the planet, if you want, but I was thinking element).



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Doodle Sunflower

It's Doodle Week again. It's been turned into a monthly occurrance now, so plan to see doodles regularly.

Since I planned ahead and did some advance doodling, my doodles were created using Paint Shop Pro and all have a very similar abstract feel about them. Sorry, I just can't seem to wrap my head around creating story-type doodles yet. That's something to work on in the future. (I really admire the doodlers who can put a doodle story together.)

Today's theme is Sunflower.



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Wordless Wednesday: Celebrating

A friend celebrates his horse finishing first during a race at Arlington Park on Friday. This is one of those photos where I wish I'd had the focus set differently and the smaller lens on. Oh well. I live and learn.

Click here for more photos from our excursion to the racetrack.

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Meme time: Seven facts about me

It's taken me a little while to get to this meme. Fragileheart tagged me over a month ago. Thank you Reggy. Sorry it took me so long.

Here’s the rules:
1. List these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

Seven Facts…

1. I like to go to lunch alone. Not that I'm against socializing with people at lunch, but for the most part I prefer to go alone. Then I can read the newspaper, write or balance my checkbook. It's my time. It's me time.

2. I haven't balanced my checkbook in like two years. I really need to get back into the swing of that. I do, however, closely monitor my checking account balance on the Internet.

3. I once hit my best friend over the head with my Bionic Woman lunch box. Needless to say, my mother received a phone call from her mother, and I got a talking to.

4. I once had a foot-fetishist ask if he could admire my feet. I was wearing sandals and sitting on a bench in the middle of a shopping mall. I told him he could look, but he couldn't touch. After about 30 seconds of that, I realized I was too creeped out by the attention. I calmly told him, "Now that's enough," and I fled (by which I mean I hurriedly got in the elevator to meet my husband upstairs at his office, which was above the mall).

5. I hate surveys that make me name my favorite things. It's like I'm making a lifetime commitment. Want to cause me anxiety? Ask me my favorite color.

6. My favorite colors are burgundy and black. Sometimes you can include green, yellow and orange in that. For the most part, I don't like blue and pink (even though I'm wearing a hot pink tank-top right now).

7. I once watched a man randomly strip off his clothes and dance naked in the basement lounge of a bar. He was not a stripper and it was not a strip club. He was not a person you would want to see dancing naked. We affectionately referred to him as "Dancing Naked Man" while he quietly put on his one-man show in the corner, which lasted a good hour or so. No police were called. No bouncer put a stop to his antics. It was a bar where this kind of stuff was tolerated. He was harmless. (While this was up there on the strange scale, it was by no means the only strange thing I ever saw at this bar.)

I'm turning this into a self-tagging meme. If you want to participate, feel free to grab it. If you do participate, leave me a comment, and I'll edit this post to include your link.

August EntreCard Link Love

I usually try to do this on the 15th of the month, but I'm a few days late with it this time.

A big, hearty thank you to the 10 sites that dropped the most EntreCards here in the past month:

On the Bricks
Mama Flo's Place
1 Blog and 2 Sides
Better Information, Better Health
Blogging MoRe
Passport2Cruising
Cromely's World
Everything Has A Reason
Zental Floss
Not Your Average SuperGoddess

If you can, check out their sites. Tell them Haley sent you. Or don't. :P

Skywatch Friday: At the Races

Planning a day at Arlington Park Racetrack today to celebrate my husband's birthday. We got there early to buy the boxseat tickets. Looks like it will be a gorgeous day.

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Wordless Wednesday: Rita

Once again, I'm not so Wordless about my selection this week. Here's another photo from my recent trip to San Francisco.

This photo features my colleagues Sherry Weddle and Jennifer Greene from my Windy City romance writers group. In the photo, they're talking about the Rita award that Greene won from Romance Writers of America. The Rita award is given by members of RWA for outstanding work and is one of the highest honors. Greene won the award for “Born in My Heart”, a novella she wrote for the Harlequin anthology Like Mother, Like Daughter.

Greene's acceptance speech was the best of the night, literally bringing people to tears. I hope I'm remembering the details correctly. Here's the quick version: The novella was published to coincide with Mother's Day. Her own mother was in the hospital and asked her to read the story out loud to her. When she finished, her mother told her how proud she was. Two weeks later, her mother died.

Click here for more on the books nominated for Rita awards this year and for a list of the winners.

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A Ruby Tuesday update

I've never participated in Ruby Tuesday before. Looking at my Flickr photostream, I realize that I don't really take a lot of photos of things that are Red or Ruby. I don't know why, because I love the color red. All you have to do is look at the color scheme of this blog to know that.

So why Ruby Tuesday this week? Because I couldn't stand to see this blog update from Wordless Wednesday to Wordless Wednesday without a post in between.

And until I get this current fiction project I'm writing polished and out the door, photo posts like Ruby Tuesday and Wordless Wednesday are all I'm allowing myself. Call it channeling my creative writing energies. I'm working really hard on the spit and polish. I hope to have a non-photo post explaining it soon.

Meanwhile, click here for more about Ruby Tuesday and to see other Ruby Tuesday participants.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, these photos were taken in my garden. They're just some simple knockout roses, but I have the hardest time photographing them. Their color comes across as so incredibly vivid in some photos, it hurts my eyes. :)

Wordless Wednesday: More San Francsico

Here are three photos from my trip to San Francisco last week. The first is of various mushrooms inside a store at the Ferry building. The second is of the Bay Bridge taken from behind the Ferry building.



This last photo is of the fortune cookie factory in China Town. It's a little hole-in-the-wall place off a back alley. You literally walk in the door and you're in the middle of the factory watching this lady make cookies.



To see more photos of my trip to San Francisco, visit my San Francisco set on Flickr.

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Home

Just a quick note to say I'm home from my writers conference in San Francisco. It was a fun and educational trip, and now I'm exhausted. I have a lot of write about and hope to get it all posted in the next few days. Lots of photos also.