Month: June 2008

Washington D.C.

D.C. Trip – Day One

Karen

Day Two
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five

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We’re here, it’s gorgeous and I’m pooped.

We caught our flight out of town at 9:45 a.m. Everything ran like clockwork and we didn’t have any problems on our way to St. Louis. There were only about 12 people on board so it was like we had the whole plane to ourselves. It was a quick and uneventful flight. We arrived in St. Louis, had just enough time to grab a soft pretzel, make a bathroom break and then we were boarding a plane for Washington D.C.

The plane was packed. And the ONE baby on board? Sat directly in front of us and whimpered and wailed the whole trip.

*SIGH*

Finally, a flight attendant gave the man (it was a single father traveling with his son) … something to help the baby’s ears from popping. I couldn’t see what it was, but whatever it was did the trick and the baby stopped screaming.

My ears were grateful. Poor little guy.

When we landed, we had to wait on the runway for about 15 minutes because our gate was having some sort of technical difficulty. The baby started getting restless.

I started praying.

Finally, the tower re-routed us to another gate and we disembarked. We stumbled our way down to the baggage area, retrieved all of our bags (we were glad to see our bags made it) and we walked aimlessly trying to find the rental car agency.

We looked … and saw nothing. Finally, the husband spotted a sign – a shuttle bus would take us to our car rental place. We hopped on board (well, I say hopped, but we had four large pieces of luggage and three carry-ons slowing us down) and we drove another mile to rent our car. We ended up with a white Dodge Journey. This thing is a monster. The seats are hard and the air conditioning sucks, but hey, we had wheels.

And then? The REAL fun began. We exited the airport and PROMPTLY took a wrong turn and got COMPLETELY LOST … in a town where the streets that run north and south are named after states and the streets that run east and west are letters of the alphabet, literally run in circles and where NOTHING makes sense … yeah, that one.

I’m afraid I got just a TAD cranky. Word is, I got juuust a BIT irritated because I had visions of us ending up on the wrong side of town, out of gas and living in our expensive, but useless rental car.

I mean, you MIGHT hear that was the case but the fact was, I laughed it off and said, “Oh well, kids. This is a part of Washington D.C. I bet you never thought you’d see.”

Or … that could have been the hubs talking. That whole episode is a bit fuzzy, if you want the truth. 😀

Somehow, the hubs, through all of my bitching helpful navigational tips, finally got us back on course and our trip to our hotel, the trip that was only supposed to take us four minutes, actually took us 40 minutes.

I have to be honest. I was a bit freaked out and was, er, maybe, but I wouldn’t swear to it, just a tad … er … difficult to be around at that time period.

*blush* I’m not proud of my behavior. I have a tendency to be a little … tense whenever I go someplace new. But I’ve since calmed down and have gotten my bearings.

This is not say that I understand this place, but I’m certainly learning.

Our hotel room is nice, but certainly NOT worth the money we’re paying for it. I suppose the real reason for the price is because it’s in the HEART of Washington D.C., just down the street from The White House, as a matter of fact. We have a pretty nice kitchenette and an awesome view from our balcony but we’ve stayed in better places.

The first thing we did after checking in, was search for a grocery store. We arrived at our hotel room about 3:00 and were ravenous. We asked the valet, who directed us to Trader Joe’s.

It was like entering a foreign country. For those that don’t know, Trader Joe’s is an organic grocery store and everything costs about three times more than we’re used to paying. But we were starving and ended up buying some breakfast food, some deli meat, juice, bread and a couple of pizzas for dinner.

I about had a cow when our total rang up. Uh yeah, we’ll be hunting for another grocery store tomorrow.

After eating our pizza (that was actually pretty good, quite frankly), we left our hotel room to locate the Foggy Bottom Metro Station. After taking a few wrong turns (the streets here – they are INSANE), we found it. It’s literally just down the street and will be VERY CONVENIENT to use for the next several days. In fact, we won’t even have to drive most days – it’ll be great. The boys are looking forward to riding the train and I’m looking forward to not having to worry about getting lost.

Again.

We plan on heading to the National Museum of Natural History and the Old Post Office Tower and Pavilion tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll have lots more to talk about then.

In the meantime?

The Most Uncomfortable Chair in the World

I need to tuck someone into bed. 😀

Life

Damn Weather

Karen

Oh. My. Freakin’. Gosh.

What the hell is going on with our weather? Excuse my profanity (trust me, I’m holding myself back here), but seriously, WTH? We received three more inches of rain last night. I’ve heard thunder rumbling the heavens for 48-straight hours now. If you watch our radar? Ugly little green blobs keep REFORMING, just one on top of each other and right over Springfield.

HELLO?! *knocks on heaven* It’s now officially summer. Could we please have some summer-type weather? I mean seriously, what is up with this cool, moist air? Do you NOT realize that I just paid $50 on swim coupons and that I only have until August 17th to use them? That works out to 10 swims for me and the kids – 10. And if this stupid weather continues it’s spring-like behavior, I’ll be lucky to MAKE three trips, let alone 10. Which means I won’t be able to cash in those coupons … and that money will be wasted because the coupons are only good for this summer only …

And we all know how CRANKY I get when I pay for something and then don’t get my money’s worth. *major, scary growl*

I seriously need to stop watching radar because it’s seriously pissing me off. Want to know what I’m talking about? Go to Accuweather.com or weather.com, plug in Springfield Missouri and just WATCH the radar – you’ll see what I mean! It’s maddening to get my hopes up because things LOOK like they are clearing away, only to check it ten minutes later and WTH, where did that angry green and red blob come from?!? And … and … is that *gasp* THUNDER I hear in the distance … AGAIN?!

AARGH!

And yet … and yet … I sort of HAVE to watch the weather right now. Why? Because we’re leaving for Washington D.C. tomorrow and I have a schedule, a touring strategy, that MUST be adhered to because God forbid I have to rearrange our sight-seeing schedule.

Here’s our TENTATIVE touring schedule:

Saturday: Arrive in late afternoon (to isolated t-storms – OF COURSE!). Settle into hotel room, hunt down a grocery store and stock up on breakfast and lunch foods to put into our kitchenette. Get our bearings, recoup from traveling all day.

Sunday: Go to Arlington Cemetery at 8:00 a.m. (the earlier we arrive at these places, the less likely we’ll have to wade through a sea of touring bodies). Tour the cemetery for about two hours. Cross the Arlington Memorial Bridge (and this is assuming pedestrians can cross the bridge, if not, we’ll take the Metro) to the Lincoln Memorial, then the Vietnam Veteran Memorial, then stop somewhere for lunch (hopefully we’ll find someplace cheap), see the Washington Memorial and the White House, head back to our hotel room. Notice that Sunday will be spent all day outside – there is a 40% chance of rain Sunday, so I’m thinking I may have to shuffle some days around here.

Monday: Get in line at 8:00 a.m. at the Bureau of Engraving and nab tickets for a tour between 5 – 7 p.m. (The Bureau of Engraving only holds tours in the morning and evenings and if you don’t grab a time ticket, you don’t get in). After we get our tickets, head over to the National Air & Space Museum and spend a few hours there. Go back to hotel room, have lunch, rest up and go back to Bureau of Engraving for our evening tour.

Tuesday: Sleep in. Go to National Museum of Natural History at 10:00 a.m. Spend a few hours touring the place and then go to the Old Poll Office Tower to see the tower and have lunch. After lunch, to go the International Spy Museum (because I will most likely reserve some 3:35 tickets and we’ll need to go at that time).

Wednesday: Sleep in. Go back to the National Air and Space Museum (because apparently this place is huge and this is the ONE place my husband really wants to spend time at so I want to make sure we see everything) and spend a few more hours. Then head out to the National Geographic place because I think the boys would really enjoy walking through the exhibits.

Thursday: Is open. We only have the morning to do something as our flight takes off in the afternoon. So we might not really get to do anything other than check out and head to the airport, but we’ll see how it works out.

Friday: Unpack, do laundry, catch up on email/blog/sleep.

We actually have quite a few gaps between exhibits that we can probably squeeze in some other stuff, but I don’t want to make this trip TOO taxing so we might just head back to our hotel and veg by the pool. We’ll see.

This is a tentative schedule, of course. I’m not as rigid as I make myself out to be. But I do like to have some sort of tentative plan so we’re not running around, bumping into each other, like the three four stooges and saying, “What should we do now? Where should we go now?”

I hate that. It’s such a waste of time.

I’ll be spending the majority of today cleaning house, running errands (must remember to take movies back to Blockbuster – hate late fees), doing laundry, emptying camera cards and making sure all cameras (we’re taking FOUR! Our Canon, Powershot, Pentax [I use that one to shoot short videos] and our video camera) are fully charged and have extra batteries, and of course, packing. I used to get so carried away with the clothes but HELLO, most places have a washer and dryer somewhere and it’s just so much easier to throw a load of laundry in as opposed to lugging around extra clothing. As long as I remember something nice to wear to dinner and our swimsuits, we can wear the same pairs of shorts and t-shirts all week (that sounds gross, but you know what I mean).

Uh oh, I just checked our hotel’s amenities – it doesn’t list laundry options. This could be bad. Oh well, I can’t worry about that right now *makes a dismissive gesture*.

I plan on blogging our adventures. I have a few blog entries set to pre-post, but I’m apologizing in advance now because posts might be a bit sporadic this week and will most likely not appear until the evening when we’ve stumbled gotten back to our hotel room for the night.

I’m really looking forward to our trip! I’m NOT looking forward to our flight. Though I’m not exactly afraid of flying, it’s not something I would choose to do on a regular basis. We’re flying out of Springfield, which is always sort of an iffy venture because we’re a small airport and things inevitably get delayed (mostly due to equipment problems, but we won’t dwell on that).

Oh look, it’s pouring rain again.

Damn weather. We’re going on vacation, PLAY NICE, will ya?

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Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Common Writing Mistakes

Karen

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that I have a “thing” (defined as an interest, not an obsession – though I do get pretty annoyed with people when they constantly substitute “loose” for “lose” – GRR) for language. I have an electronic dictionary somewhere on my person at all times (mostly). I routinely listen to how words are pronounced on Merriam-Webster.com because even though I know what the word is, what it means, I SUCK at pronouncing it out loud and my husband makes fun of me, (“You would think that as much as you read, you’d know how to pronounce that word.” I READ, I don’t read OUT LOUD – sheesh). I love to read the Chicago Manual of Style, when I’m in the mood to do so; I’m not a TOTAL geek. And I copy and paste my blog posts into Word to check my spelling (because, well, I really am that anal about my writing).

And I enjoy refreshing myself on language rules from time-to-time because I’m only human and I find myself either forgetting a rule or breaking a rule all for the sake of, well, breaking them (and it’s FUN). A lot of times, grammar, or syntax, rules are broken here because they make more of an impact on whatever I’m trying to say – this is assuming that the people who visit here know the rules to begin with. If not, then forget what I just said – I’m an AWESOME wordsmith who NEVER makes language mistakes. *wink wink nudge nudge*

In other words (get it?), I like language, I like language rules and I’m a bit of a snob when I read other people’s work if they routinely use the wrong word for something or misspell something (and notice I said ROUTINELY; we’re all human, we all have days when our brains shut down, I’m not talking about THOSE days. I’m talking about the material that reads like a second grader wrote it – you know what I’m saying. *nodnod*).

So, I hope posting these tips help you. I hope they don’t bore you. But this sort of stuff interests me and being the self-absorbed peon that I am, I always assume anything that interests me, interests YOU. If I’m wrong, I do apologize. 😀

I did not write these tips. These tips, and many more like these, can be found at Common Errors in English. So, if you disagree with these rules, then please, don’t kill the messenger. These are here just for your learning/entertainment, nothing more, and nothing less.

Now that you know my disclaimer, let’s move on to the juicy stuff … *rubs hands together in glee* …

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1. AESTHETIC/ASCETIC: People often encounter these two words first in college, and may confuse one with the other although they have almost opposite connotations. “Aesthetic” (also spelled “esthetic”) has to do with beauty, whereas “ascetic” has to do with avoiding pleasure, including presumably the pleasure of looking at beautiful things.

St. Francis had an ascetic attitude toward life, whereas Oscar Wilde had an esthetic attitude toward life.

2. ADMINISTER/MINISTER: You can minister to someone by administering first aid. Note how the “ad” in “administer” resembles “aid” in order to remember the correct form of the latter phrase. “Minister” as a verb always requires “to” following it.

3. ADULTRY/ADULTERY: “Adultery” is often misspelled “adultry,” as if it were something every adult should try. This spelling error is likely to get you snickered at. The term does not refer to all sorts of illicit sex: at least one of the partners involved has to be married for the relationship to be adulterous.

4. ACCEPT/EXCEPT: If you offer me Godiva chocolates I will gladly accept them—except for the candied violet ones. Just remember that the “X” in “except” excludes things—they tend to stand out, be different. In contrast, just look at those two cozy “C’s” snuggling up together. Very accepting. And be careful; when typing “except” it often comes out “expect.”

5. AFFECT/EFFECT: There are five distinct words here. When “affect” is accented on the final syllable (a-FECT), it is usually a verb meaning “have an influence on”: “The million-dollar donation from the industrialist did not affect my vote against the Clean Air Act.”

Occasionally a pretentious person is said to affect an artificial air of sophistication. Speaking with a borrowed French accent or ostentatiously wearing a large diamond ear stud might be an affectation. In this sort of context, “affect” means “to make a display of or deliberately cultivate.”

Another unusual meaning is indicated when the word is accented on the first syllable (AFF-ect), meaning “emotion.” In this case the word is used mostly by psychiatrists and social scientists— people who normally know how to spell it.

The real problem arises when people confuse the first spelling with the second: “effect.” This too can be two different words. The more common one is a noun: “When I left the stove on, the effect was that the house filled with smoke.” When you affect a situation, you have an effect on it.

The less common is a verb meaning “to create”: “I’m trying to effect a change in the way we purchase widgets.” No wonder people are confused. Note especially that the proper expression is not “take affect” but “take effect”—become effective. Hey, nobody ever said English was logical: just memorize it and get on with your life.

The stuff in your purse? Your personal effects.

6. AFFLUENCE/EFFLUENCE: Wealth brings affluence; sewage is effluence.

7. AFTERWARDS/AFTERWORDS: Like “towards,” “forwards,” and “homewards,” “afterwards” ends with -wards.

“Afterwords,” are sometimes the explanatory essays at the ends of books, or speeches uttered at the end of plays or other works. They are made up of words.

8. ALL OF THE SUDDEN/ ALL OF A SUDDEN: An unexpected event happens not “all of the sudden” but “all of a sudden.”

9. ALLEGED/ALLEGEDLY: Seeking to avoid prejudging the facts in a crime and protect the rights of the accused, reporters sometimes over-use “alleged” and “allegedly.” If it is clear that someone has been robbed at gunpoint, it’s not necessary to describe it as an alleged robbery nor the victim as an alleged victim. This practice insultingly casts doubt on the honesty of the victim and protects no one. An accused perpetrator is one whose guilt is not yet established, so it is redundant to speak of an “alleged accused.” If the perpetrator has not yet been identified, it’s pointless to speak of the search for an “alleged perpetrator.”

10. ALLUDE/ELUDE: You can allude (refer) to your daughter’s membership in the honor society when boasting about her, but a criminal tries to elude (escape) captivity. There is no such word as “illude.”

11. ALLUSION/ILLUSION: An allusion is a reference, something you allude to: “Her allusion to flowers reminded me that Valentine’s Day was coming.” In that English paper, don’t write “literary illusions” when you mean “allusions.” A mirage, hallucination, or a magic trick is an illusion. (Doesn’t being fooled just make you ill?)

12. ALOUD/ALLOWED: If you think Grandma allowed the kids to eat too much ice cream, you’d better not say so aloud, or her feelings will be hurt. “Aloud” means “out loud” and refers to sounds (most often speech) that can be heard by others. But this word is often misused when people mean “allowed,” meaning “permitted.”

13. ALL READY/ALREADY: “All ready” is a phrase meaning “completely prepared,” as in “As soon as I put my coat on, I’ll be all ready.” “Already,” however, is an adverb used to describe something that has happened before a certain time, as in “What do you mean you’d rather stay home? I’ve already got my coat on.”

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And that concludes our lesson for today, boys and girls. You can pretty much count on more lessons in the near future. Bring popcorn next time – the teacher will allow it. *grin*

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

tags: thursday thirteen

Prompt Fiction

Fiction: Hell Freezes Over

Karen

Thursday Thread
Thursday is the day I post a bit o’ fiction.

This was originally published March 23, 2007

These prompt fiction pieces were all written in a hurry and haven’t been edited (much). I’m using these prompts to free / speed write – just some warm-up exercises.

You can find a ton of writing prompts at Write Anything. Click over today and write YOUR version!

Hell Freezes Over

“So, this is what I’m thinking,” Cyndi whispered. She glanced toward the tall, lanky, dark-haired boy in the corner of the hallway talking to his other geeky friends and pushing his black-rimmed glasses back up his nose.

Stephanie impatiently tugged on her cheerleader skirt while trying to juggle her stack of books looped under one arm. “You, think? Brace yourselves girls, this outta be good.”

Cyndi ignored her friend’s waspish tone of voice and continued. “I’m thinking of asking Lane to the dance this Friday.” She clasped her notebook tightly to her chest and warily watched for her friends’ reactions.

She wasn’t disappointed.

“Girl, you have lost yer min’.” Missy said under her breath.

“You can’t be serious,” Stephanie squeaked.

“With Lane?” Tina chimed.

Nell’s eyes simply blinked, owl-like, behind her round glasses.

“But … why him?” Stephanie asked. “You could pick from any of the more popular guys and – ”

“– and be bored out of my mind,” Cyndi finished for her. “Look,” she leaned in closer to her circle of friends. “I have Lane in English class. Ya’ll know I hate English, right?” All four girls nodded in unison. “But Lane,” she suppressed the urge to sigh, “he makes it fun. He helps me understand stuff. He cracks jokes. He’s a really nice guy. And you know what else?” Her head popped up from the group for a mere second to look toward Lane before lowering once more. “He has really nice eyes.”

There was a long pause.

“But … aren’t you afraid of what people will say?” Stephanie asked.

Cyndi shrugged. “Who cares? I want to have fun and it’ll be nice to actually be myself for a change instead of someone I think everyone wants me to be, ya know?”

Again, all four girls nodded emphatically.

“Okay then,” Cyndi took a deep breath. She shoved her notebook into Nell’s arms and stepped out of the circle. “I’m going to go ask him. Wish me luck!”

“Uh … good luck?” said Missy.

Cyndi squared her shoulders, threw back her long reddish-blonde hair and began to walk toward Lane and his friends.

One of the boys, catching sight of Cyndi heading their way, was so astonished at seeing her that his gum fell out of his mouth. The other boys moved instinctively away from Lane to make room for Cyndi to join their group.

“Ladies,” Stephanie said from the corner of her mouth, her eyes trained on Cyndi, “Hell hath frozen over.”

Work Stuff

It’s All in the Design

Karen


(This week’s header – you can find an example of how this looks here. I call this “Graffiti”).

I spent the majority of yesterday exploring wordpress.com’s back room. I paid them $15 for the right to customize my CSS (if you haven’t noticed, I fixed the place up a bit) and had a lot of fun playing around with different looks. I’m a bit simplistic in my designs simply because I’m a firm believer in making the icing on the cake complement the dessert, not detract from it’s moist goodness.

In other words, I think blog templates should be attractive and eye-catching, but not distract from what’s really important, the content.

As a result, my designs are simple and usually pretty straight forward. I love designing fun blog headers and then color coordinating the rest of the blog so that it all ties together.

I’ve mentioned that I miss my old self-hosted wordpress blog, and I do. But I have to be honest with you, wordpress.com has made me feel right at home and there are only a few things I truly miss and wish wordpress.com would implement on their blogs: namely the sticky post feature. I miss the sticky posts. (WordPress people, if you read this, is there anyway you could design a widget for a sticky post? Pretty please?!)

I hadn’t really meant to bring this up right now, but since I’ve sort of muscled my way into it, I’ll share with you a couple of neat tools wordpress.com users can implement on their own blogs.

1. Polls. I used Twiigs as my poll host on my old blog. I loved how their polls were set up and they were easy for visitors to figure out and use. However, wordpress.com blogs do not allow you to embed any type of javascript or flash elements into their blogs, so Twiigs was out. I did a little research and found out that the good folks at Polldaddy converted their poll code so that wordpress.com users could easily insert their polls into their posts and/or sidebars. Hint: After you create your poll in Polldaddy, there will be an option in the right-hand column for wordpress.com users. Click on that and copy/paste that code into your blog. Works like a charm. Thank you PollDaddy! Your generosity has made me a long-time user of your polls.

2. Videos. WordPress.com already automatically converts Youtube videos into acceptable code whenever you copy/paste the embed code into your posts. However, there will be times when you would like to embed a video that’s not hosted through Youtube. That’s where Vodpod.com comes in. Vodpod is an extension for your web browser. You download the extension and it inserts the wordpress “W” icon in your browser toolbar. Whenever you come across a video that you would like to embed into your wordpress.com blog, you simply click on that icon and a pop-up window will walk you through the process. (Make sure your pop-up blocker is turned off). You will have the option of either publishing it right away, or sending it to your blog editor and publishing later. I’ve been using it for the past few weeks and it works like a charm. Thank you Vodpod!

I learned, through my wordpress.com blog experiments, that even though wordpress.com limits what you can and can not do on design, I think this is a good thing overall. I think having too much creative license tends to excite people and they go overboard on the flashy/cluttered design elements: one must be choosy when picking out cool features to post on your blog – too many things becomes overwhelming and slows load times WAAAY down. Visitors won’t generally stick around and wait two minutes for your page to load. I know I don’t.

I think wordpress.com gives people just the right amount of control so that they can personalize their blogs, but not so much that they get carried away and slow things down for the rest of the people on the server. Yet another “bravo” to wordpress.com. I truly love you guys.

Okay, so enough with the gushing praise … 😀

The real reason behind this post is to share a few of the banners I’ve been working on. I’ve taken some of the graphics that I purchased from istockphoto.com and have (hopefully) turned them into fun and unique banners for someone to use on their blogs. These banners can be customized into any size and/or into any font desired. If you would like one of these banners, just send me the exact size of your banner for your template and I’ll convert it.

Three things:

1. These banners are for sale. You can find a break down of the prices here. This would explain why the ugly “writefromkaren.com” lines are all over the banner because it’s not fair to me, or to the graphic artist, to steal it without paying for it.

2. When I purchased these graphics from istockphoto.com, I purchased a license that gave me the right to play around with said graphic for promotional purposes. Considering I’d like to sell the banners I create with said graphics, I will have to purchase the graphic from istockphoto.com again – the cost of the graphic will be passed onto the client and will be included in the overall price of the header.

3. I’m only selling banners at this time. However, if wordpress.com users would be willing to pay wordpress.com $15 to customize their CSS (this license fee is good for 12 months), then I can certainly customize the CSS to color-coordinate with the banner.

In essence, I’m selling blog templates, but on a more elemental level. WordPress.com doesn’t allow it’s users to manipulate the actual template elements, only the way it looks. But if you don’t know what you’re doing, manipulating the CSS code can be a bit intimidating.

I’m getting my feet wet with wordpress.com blogs right now. I will be offering customized templates for self-hosted wordpress blog users very soon and Blogspot users in the near future.

If you would be interested in seeing what type of banners I’ve made and am currently working on (the page will be constantly evolving as I add new banners) you can check them out here. Details on how to purchase these banners are also on this page (I go through PayPal).

If you have any questions/comments/suggestions, please feel free to email me (my email addy is in the sidebar). If you’re interested in a website, I do those, too. You can check out my professional website here. (I specialize in school websites).

Thanks for humoring me – designing is near and dear to my heart so you can probably anticipate more design talk in the future. 🙂

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(By the way, if anyone would like a Twitter button like the one I made above, just email me [email addy in sidebar] and I’ll be happy to make one for you, FREE!)