13 Things: Brain Dump

1. This is going to be long. I apologize. But that's what happens when I let things collect for a few weeks. I'll try to present it in the most skimmable format I can. I've included lots of pictures, too. :P

2. We had some torrential rains here in the Chicago area over the weekend. Something like 6.6 inches on Saturday alone, which is a new record for the area. There was a lot of flooding. You'd think I might have gone out with my camera to take photos, but I didn't. The best I got was this shot with my cameraphone of geese swimming in a flooded parking lot. Fortunately, we didn't get any water in our house, although we did have a small lake form in our back yard.


3. I've been writing and brainstorming a book proposal with friends. It's an updated version of The Hunting Lodge project I've mentioned in the past. Oh, and The Viking's Tale project is on track. I'm going to work on that more as soon as I finish this post.


4. I received the best non-job offer ever. I applied for a lateral technical writing position in my company. Instead of writing documents for internal consumption, it would have been writing for users of our software. The only problem was that it was a new position and they needed someone really strong in FrameMaker and RoboHelp and with a lot more experience writing users manuals and training manuals than I have, and those factors outweighed my strong product knowledge. But they said they loved me as a candidate and that people in the office lobbied really hard for me to get the position. Basically, it sounds like if I brush up on some skills, they'd like to groom me for a second position whenever it opens up.

5. I'm thinking about applying to enter a masters degree program in New Media Studies at DePaul University. I looks like something I would enjoy, plus if I take a technical writing course there, it would count as an elective. Not looking forward to having to take the GRE's though.

6. I'm signing up for a 3-day course in FrameMaker. My boss just gave me the go-ahead to register.


7. My husband has officially been through a tornado. The village newsletter that we received last week proves it. The tornado happened back on Aug. 4 and was part of a series of tornadoes that were recorded in the Chicago area that night. In the photo below of the newsletter, the red lines mark the path of damage and the route the tornado took.The X marks the spot where my husband was at the gym.  The little twister icon represents a touch-down point. Lucklily, it was a small tornado as tornadoes go (an EF1) and it only did major damage to five houses and one warehouse in town.



My husband said that when the tornado went through, everyone was sent to shelter in the locker rooms. There were about 100 guys crammed into the room. A couple of the big, burly guys said this is crazy and walked out, only to hurry back into the locker room when they saw how badly the plate glass windows were bowing in the wind.

8. We now officially have no phone books in our house. That's OK, since we don't use them anyway thanks to Internet search engines. My husband did his Bionic Woman impression on Saturday night and tore a phone book in two. If you've watched Mythbusters lately, you know exactly where this is coming from. If you haven't, check out this clip. We also tried interleaving the pages of two phone books, and verified that you can't pull them apart, but we no longer have the books as we sent them home with our school-teacher friend to bring to class.

9. Cousin Bob sent my husband this link for Geddy Lee of Rush giving Celebrity Winter Advice. Funny in an odd sort of way.



10. These are my favorite chocolates -- Joseph Schmidt truffles. Thank heaven I don't live in San Francisco anymore and can't get these on a regular basis.


11. Eric sent me a link to this Chicago Tribune story to share with all of you -- Cubicle toys to keep the workday fun (for when the Internet is down). My husband has the slingshot monkey in his office. It shares a bunk with Bubblegum Godzilla and Anguirus.

12. I bought this really cool wrist-band at a flea market in San Francisco last month. It's made out of latex paint. Check it out at The Land of Fa.com.

13. None of the products mentioned in this post have paid for placement. I mention them simply because I think they're cool, or interesting, or they were sitting in front of me on my desktop at the time of writing.

Rolling up the newspaper and ...

*Smack*

"Bad Blogger! Very Bad Blogger!"

(That's me admonishing myself for neglecting this site.)

*Shuffles to computer
*Licks owie
*Starts typing

Here's something I started to write last Thursday. I thought it could be a Thursday 13 post. Obviously, since it's no longer Thursday, that plan had to be scrapped, but I'm staying with the 13 things theme.

13 Things I did in August

1. I neglected my blog. Yes, but you already know that because you're smart and you read the opening of this post  or you visited this site during the past month and figured that out for yourself.

2. I attended a writers conference. Went to the Romance Writers of America conference in San Francisco where I pitched to an editor and received a request to submit my erotica short story. Also went to all sorts of inspiring workshops and talked with all sorts of creative people (perhaps I'll write about that some more at a future date). I came home much recharged.

3. I worked more on that short story. A lot. There is much erotica in said short story. What's important is that I've been working on my fiction. Yay me!

4. A tornado touched down in my town. It wasn't an overly large tornado -- all we lost was a tree branch -- but it was very scary. I was driving home from work when it hit. I was listening to the radio and knew it was stupid to keep going into the path of the confirmed tornado, so I pulled over at the Oasis rest stop and waited out the storm with a bunch of other cautious (and scared) motorists.

5. I watched the Olympics. A lot of Olympics. It was constantly playing in the background whenever I was home.

6. I finally saw The Dark Knight at the theater. Excellent. I can see what all the hoopla was about. My husband still insists that Iron Man was a much better movie. Me? It's a toss-up.

7. I got to see my friend Wook when he came in for a surprise visit. It was a surprise even to him. The airline canceled his connecting flight at O'Hare, so he stayed the night with us. It took my poor dog Thor a few days to get over this visit from his own personal Satan, but the rest of us were happy to see Wook. :)

8. I enjoyed an afternoon at the racetrack. We celebrated my husband's 40th birthday by inviting a group of friends to go to Arlington Park with us. I bet the $2 minimum on just about every race, losing far more than anything I won, but I had a lot of fun. We all did. We couldn't have ordered up more beautiful weather.

9. I got to be a mock bridesmaid at a friend's mock wedding. Jules celebrated her 20th wedding anniversary by renewing her wedding vows. That's where all the "mock" business comes in. It was a gorgeous night, a very moving ceremony, and I was thrilled to be included in such an honored capacity.

10. I applied for another job within my company. It would be a lateral move to a different tech writing position, but it would be a welcome change. Let's hope I didn't just jinx myself by mentioning it here. There's a lot of interviewing still to be done.

11. I helped to run the draft for my husband's Fantasy Football league. I ran the computer, inputting the selections as players were drafted. I even remembered to wear my referee shirt from last year's Halloween costume. It was a big hit.

12. I saw Alice Cooper in concert. It was a fun show. We drove up to the Genesee Theater in Waukegan. It's an old theater with all sorts of gilded decorations inside, so it made for an interesting setting. I could imagine the society matrons from 75 years ago fainting at the sight of big, burly, inked Harley types filling the red velvet seats of this one-time posh theater. If that didn't get them, I'm sure Alice Cooper killing a babydoll and then mock hanging himself on stage would have done it for them.

I almost forgot No. 13. Seems like it should have ended on an even dozen. But yet, here I am, so...

13. Got the dogs into the vet for their annual checkups. That's actually big news for Miss Loki, who was diagnosed with a cancerous mast cell tumor during last year's checkup. She received a clean bill of health this time. Plus, both dogs were down 10 pounds. Their diets are working. (I can't say so much for mine.)

Now I'm all caught up. My blogging is back to a clean slate. Here's looking forward to a prolific September and no more swatting myself with rolled up newspapers.