Hats, Boots, & Chocolate

    I promise I have not dropped off the face of the earth. I have, however, been rather busy. For your information, here is a short list of my adventures:     1. The last two weeks, I've had finals. During which time I had to do a massive overhaul on my research paper for English 2010... in two days. I also had a couple of smaller papers to write for Philosophy, some art to do for my English companion piece, and a Philosophy final exam to complete. Most of it wasn't too hard, but with it all added together I didn't have the brain cells to do all that and blog all at once. :)     2. On the Saturday my English 2010 research paper was due (April 20th), I took my sister to a play she's wanted to see for years as a very late birthday gift. However, on the way there, my car ran out of coolant, overheated, and died. Both the radiator and the head gasket were out, and there were a bunch of other repairs to do while the mechanic had the engine taken apart so we got...

    I have a reputation for being super early. It's not uncommon for me to show up at work 30 minutes before my shift actually starts, or to be in the classroom 20 minutes before my professor arrives, or to show up for a D&D session 30 minutes before everyone else is due to arrive. I am an early bird, and I've caught a lot  of worms.     Tonight, though? Tonight takes the cake.     See, there's this country-themed church dance I wanted to go to. It was to start at 8:30 pm and continue until 11:00, and I didn't decide that I wanted to go until 9:30. For once, I wasn't going to be absurdly early.     ... We're authors around here. We know that it's never--and I repeat, never --that simple.     See, I'm a tiny bit ADHD. I'm also a teeny  bit dyslexic (And I mean that quite unsarcastically). For the most part, my brain functions perfectly!     But tonight? Hoo, boy! Tonight my brain shorted out completely, leaving me ...

    Welcome back to the Frustrated Writer Support Group! If you've got anything you want to complain about/celebrate/mention about a project you're working on, a convention you're going to, etc. go ahead and let me know! Who knows, maybe I'll have something useful to say. ;)

    English grammar is a funny thing, especially on the Internet. While you may have noticed that I, and many bloggers like myself, use extremely good grammar as much as we can, comments on blog posts, YouTube videos, and Internet forums often have entertaining grammar slips. Furthermore, at least in Utah, there are even more hilarious mispronunciations of commonly-used words.     Here is a very old blog post on this topic, which is part of the inspiration for the blog post I am writing today--and it's hilarious to boot!     All right. When talking with me, please do not axe any questions. Such treatment is not very good for them, and they usually don't survive. Asking  is a much better way to use questions, as that way you will actually get an answer instead of a sad jumble of broken words. So long as you don't reverse the 's' and 'k' sounds in the word ask,  you'll be fine. ;)     Furthermore, fellow Utahns (I hear this isn't as much o...

    I started a new project last week. If you've been following my blog, you might have seen the Landsong  word-counter on the "My Books" page rising over the last nine days or so, and therefore are aware that it shot from "In Planning Stage" to "14K words" in under two days, then further grew to its current 22K+ words over the course of the rest of the week.     I attribute a lot of this sudden progress to the fact that last week was my Spring Break (and as such am eager to find out what happens when this semester ends and all I have to worry about is work and dance and youth camp and so on).     At the same time, though, I attribute a good deal of that progress to momentum.     Once I got going, the law of inertia said I wasn't going to stop for a while--and I didn't. It was only when I got a really solid night's sleep that the torrent of words slowed down, and even still, I didn't start playing Stardew Valley to recharge my batteries...

    Well, folks, I have finally done it--this morning, my mom and I dyed my hair in a jar of hot cherry Kool-Aid. Here's what it looks like:      My hair has a lot of natural red highlights already, so the dye job is very subtle in dimmer lighting, but in the sun as I am here, the color is a lot more noticeable. It also helps that the color has gotten more obvious as my hair has dried.     If you're interested in doing this to your hair, too, here is a link to the instructions we followed. The process works pretty well, just as the author of that post said it does, and I'm very happy with it! Update as of April 15th: For some reason, my hair has started leaking pink onto things. It didn't do that right after I dyed it! So, just a little warning: If you try this method, and it doesn't leak for a few weeks, still be watchful after each shower. Kool-Aid is not  fun to get out of fabric!