When it's cold outside, make like a cat and sleep.

We're in for another cold week…it's forecast to be in the 20s, but, alas, no chance of the cold white stuff of which snowmen and snowballs are made.

I washed and vacuumed my car today for the first time in a long time, and squirted Turtle Wax interior cleaner all over myself when I tried to get it on the cloth. The directions say to shake and then put about a half ounce onto the cloth. (In small print it says, Yeah, good luck with that, sucker!) My dashboard looks better now though.

I've been reading several books on writing lately and I know I need to just buckle down and WRITE. I am the worst when it comes to procrastinating. "Write" has been on my to-do list for the past three or four days and I keep thinking of everything else I could do instead. Sweep my room? Read some books about writing? Wash a load of laundry? Wash my car? (heh.) Read MORE books on writing? Apply for jobs? Watch TV? Help Mom in the yard? Pick my sister up from work? Peruse random streets on Google Maps? And don't get me started on Facebook…that site doesn't help at all. (My new self-imposed rule is not to get on until after 6:00 pm. So far I've been able to adhere to it, but the problem is that before 6:00, I don't really get much accomplished.)

Looking out front past the trio of cars, I can see two snow trees just starting to bloom. I don't know what the tree's real name is, but I've always called them snow trees because their blooms are small white popcorn-like clusters. The trees themselves are spiny, scaly things that Mom hates, but when they bloom, they're gorgeous. I'm going to get some pictures of them to post later.

Songs stuck in my head

Slow Burn / Atreyu




Mind Over Matter / First Class Fever




Forget It / Breaking Benjamin




My Hippocratic Oath / Philmont




The Haunting / Anberlin




Where We Gonna Go From Here / Mat Kearney

Random thoughts

Why do dentists ask you questions when you are sitting there in the chair with forty-three things stuck in your mouth? (And why do they have to be questions like "Are you okay?" and "How does that feel?")

Why is it so trendy to drink coffee?

More later.

…and this is why you proofread.

Ian and I saw this poster at Walmart tonight. It was funny until it lost its credibility with this terribly obvious grammatical error…

Florida, I hate you.

My fingers are almost too stiff to type, my ankles are cold (I need to invest in a pair of really long jeans for this kind of weather) and my nose is going numb. Mom covered the outdoor plants with sheets, so it looks like we have laundry gone wild, and all but one of the animals are inside. My Dashboard reports that it is 38º (it was in the 20s last night). And guess what? Not a cloud in the sky. It is a sickeningly brilliant blue day, because naturally, when it gets cold enough to snow, every cloud within a thirty-mile radius moves away. It supposedly snowed here about twenty years ago (of course, right before we moved down), but since then the area has been remarkably snow-free.

Anyway…

I spent most of yesterday staring at the monitor until my eyes bugged out, working on the redesign for my portfolio site. I hate designing things for myself. It's really hard to pinpoint what you want, and then when you do get an idea (or at least when I get one), you see 42,000 other sites whose designs you like and might want to emulate. I have three pages of mishmashed sketches that proved totally useless. But at least something is up for now that looks better than what I had. Check it out, let me know what you think. (And please, please, PLEASE, if you're using IE, do yourself a favor and switch to Firefox. I think I might have mentioned something about that before.)

"Let's go randomly sing together!" — Dylan.

We watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers tonight, and watching it reminded me of when we first saw it 11 years ago. Dad saw it on TV and told the rest of us about it, and after buying it, we went to the library (then the only internet source) to research the movie. I remember signing in at the librarian's desk and then squeezing in with Mom between two thin partitions to use the computer. The monitor was one of those mile-long, yellowed CRTs, and you used either Internet Explorer (aah!) or Netscape. I didn't even know how to go back. I'd go to a page and get stuck there. (I told Dylan about that tonight, and he couldn't believe I didn't know how to use a back button. He's 11 now, the same age I was at that time, and knows how to do a heck of a lot more with a computer than I did at 11.)

I remember using a text browser at some point too. The screen was entirely black and the text came out lime green (early Myspace anyone?). 11 years and we've gone from text browsers, IE (unfortunately, it's still around), and Netscape to IE (yeah, someone do something about this), Firefox, Opera, Camino, and whatever other minority browsers that are floating around out there. (Side note, Opera is good. Except for when it crashes, freaks out on Apple's and Myspace's CSS styles, crashes, doesn't export certain things, and crashes. I jumped ship to Firefox.)

The day of the text browser was the time when I was into acting and singing, not long before my siblings and I were in local productions of The Sound of Music and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and… (insert other random 11-year-old memory here.)

We watched a lot of musicals back then.

Here I am, cheesy blog name and all

While recuperating from the flu on the world's coldest faux-leather couch this week, watching Fresh Prince, Cash Cab, The Cosby Show, I, Robot, the Comancheros (sp? some John Wayne movie that I almost boycotted because Dad predicted John Wayne's character would be killed off), What Not to Wear, and a zillion other highly educational late-night shows, I thought about things I haven't done:

• I haven't written a book (that's been published…I have written a book, but only I and the person who [rightly] rejected it have read it).
• I haven't started a blog. (I'm remedying that now.)
• I haven't visited New York City.
• I haven't gone on an extensive, relatively fun road trip.
  

(There are other things I haven't done as well [like learn how to cook, or whistle, or knit], but I didn't think about those things then.)

It's funny how when you're sick, life slows to a crawl and you suddenly have all this time to think about things you normally don't think about. I decided I've been putting my writing on hold for far too long. I'm taking a shaky step forward by starting a blog, and then I'm going to get to work on the bits and pieces of a novel I have buried inside my writing notebook (which I really need to replace, because that poor notebook has at least ten different stories in it plus poems and random snippets in the back — I don't have room to write anything else in it, so none of the stories are finished).

In other news, Ian is sitting next to me tapping his foot with an insanely skinny yellow baseball bat while asking me questions about Facebook and wondering aloud why bowling is so cheap.

Dylan is putting together a virtual baseball team.

An insanely obese cat (ahem) is curled up on my bed.

There is junk all over my couch, proof that I've been sick this week.

It's 44º according to my Dashboard and my feet feel like frozen bricks. I like cool weather, but if it's going to be cold, it should snow or just not be cold at all.

So ends my random first post.