Readathon Intro Meme

Blrrrrg...so early...props to the kiddos who woke me up with their argument over which dvd to start the day (Star Wars vs. Angelina Ballerina).

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? Rurality of Dripping Springs, TX. It's cloudy and should rain at some point today.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? Mirror, Mirror, by Gregory Maguire. I think it's the only one of his fairytale "series" I haven't read yet.

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? There are some chocolate shortbread sandwich cookies from IKEA, acquired from a friend, that may not survive the morning.

4) Tell us a little something about yourself! I'm a SAHM to Boy, 7, and Grrl, 4. Boy is working on expanding his functionality on the Autism Spectrum. Grrl is working on her overlord (lady?) destiny. Helping them with their respective goals is my first priority, but I have been making more and bigger efforts to write.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to? This is my first Readathon...so glad that it's still here! I'm looking forward to the time alone to concentrate on the writing aspect, and to venturing "out" to visit new friends.

And now, it is time to get everyone dressed and head over to the YMCA so I can listen to my first book of the day (Mark of Athena), do my qigong practice, and start this week's reading assignment for The Graveyard Book.

Readathon Plan, Wrenched but Salvageable

For me, the biggest impediment to participating in events like this, is childcare coordination. One of the tough things about living in the country is the dearth of teenagers who offer sitting services, and also the scarcity of other moms who are willing to have my kids over for a playdate. My best hope for the next Bloggiesta is that my daughter will finally be out of diapers, which will mean sleepovers at the grandparents place (in theory, anyway).

So, my 24-hour time slot runs from 7 AM on Saturday to 7 AM on Sunday. My husband will be attending a memorial service for a cousin who passed this summer. I'll stay home with the kids and grab what I can in terms of time. I'll have a little reading time after my qigong class while the kids use up the rest of their 2-hour limit. Depending on husband's return time, I might fit in 2-3 uninterrupted hours before dinner. The kids will get storytime before bed, so I guess I get to count that also.Depending on when I crash, I should have between 4 and 6 hours of uninterrupted visiting/blogging/reading.

Morning and afternoon selections:

The Graveyard Book,for post-qigong

Mark of Athena, for the car

Angel of Music, at the playground

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, at bedtime, for the boy

Evening books:

Mirror, Mirror

Sweet Potato Queens' Big Ass Cookbook

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff

Fifty Acres and a Poodle

Confessions of a Slacker Wife

Hags, Sirens, and Other Bad Girls of Fantasy

These are just books that caught my eye. All have been languishing in the garage for at least a few years (I've been using my public library and getting many free Kindle and iBooks titles). I will just have to see what I'm in the mood for, and whether I feel a need to finish the Kindle read before I start something from the big pile.

Wherein I am officially sucked back into the book blogging community

Surprise! Another event looms, and I can't resist:

This doesn't come at the most ideal time in terms of our family schedule (we have a memorial service that day and a visit to the Matriarch on the next), but I will do what I can in terms of reading, blogging, and visiting. Part of me wishes that this didn't fall so close to the Bloggiesta event, but I'm sure that debate has raged often enough that my opinion isn't going to sway anyone.

I have a rough schedule in draft at the moment. I'll incorporate it into my first post at 7 AM (start time for my zone) on Saturday. If all goes well, and my husband is up for a little support re: childcare, I should have at least 6 good blocks of time to read that day, even if I opt to catch 4 hours of sleep near the end.

A little blog-hopping, a little cleanup...

More visiting, until I can get the kids into bed.

D.Ann

And, even though it wasn't an official goal, I purged a few things from the sidebar. Will do more next time.

It's a Plan!

Per Trish's tweet about Wine Wednesday, with the Hump Day erotica addendum, I'll be settling into 50 Shades of Alice in Wonderland and a glass of Merlot after I get the kids into bed.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Weekly Wrap, Edition #1

Here's the abbreviated (yes, really!) compilation of what I've found on the 'net this past week. Let's start with books from the Kindle store. I don't have a Kindle, just the reader on my iPad. For the most part, I grab freebies, and most of these will probably have reverted to buy-only If you're lucky and have a Kindle and a Prime account, many of these are free to borrow.

Strictly G.I.: The WWII Letters of Cpl. Wanda M. Renn

River Ghosts

Running Barefoot

Goodnight Dear

Retro Family Recipes

Demon Hunter and Baby

Among Women

Hand of Fate

Amazingly enough, I pinned only one item, a recipe for Apple Pie French Toast Casserole.

A few of my facebook "likes":

Painted Bees, my qigong instructor's etsy shop

I need to do this for myself more often:

This too, actually...

I retweet, a lot, apparently. Here are some articles, sites, and funny bits:

Reducing paper clutter

This site links to youtube videos of scrapbooking tips and tricks.

Promoting science literacy for girls through mentorship and education

One of my favorite sites is funding for a rebuild

This is the guy who is (slowly) turning me into a yarn slut. Watch the video. No, I'm not in it.

Bloggess at the TX Book Festival. I squeed.

Here are the links that made it onto my SpringPad:

2012 Stories

5 Love Languages

Texas Autism Conference

And, lastly, a few articles that I sent to Instapaper:

Productive Procrastination

Useful Ringtones/Alerts for Smartphones

Geography of Nope

And that's a wrap!

Visits and meandering and chatting it up

Books. Lists. Life. Where I committed to doing this Pinterest challenge for the month of October.

Stuff As Dreams Are Made On Where I gave the author a hard time for posting yet another interesting meme I'd like to participate in. And, I may have set myself up for hosting my own someday. EEP!

Stainless Steel Droppings Where I committed to doing this read-along.

Returned the "hello" from Maria.

Returned the "hello" from Mel

Complimented Trish on her "old-school" challenge.

Let Brianna know I was having trouble with Pocket on my iPad

Thanked Joy for all the great Evernote ideas.

Let Tanya know which of her blog topics I'd use in the future.

Took a survey!

Proposed, pie-in-the-sky blog schedule

Sunday--book review

Monday--Mailbox Monday (host changes monthly--schedule is here) October

Tuesday--On the 4th Tuesday, will do this:What's on Your Nightstand? Will do the Where Are You? meme (which used to be hosted by raidergirl3) for the other 3 weeks. Since these should be short entries, I'll also post a book review

Wednesday--Write on Wednesday (was a separate blog, now a category)

Thursday--Booking Through Thursday and Thursday's Thoughts (the latter has old posts, pre-2009, so I may find another meme)

Friday--Friday Finds Now I will have to be sure to track all those Kindle titles I've been loading onto the iPad. And, will post another review. 3 per week might be overly ambitious, but I am so far behind... it's no longer funny.

Saturday--Will post my 1-3 reviews at Saturday Review of Books just to get a little more exposure. I'll also use this day to do a Weekly Wrap-Up: posting items from other sources (twitter, pinterest, etc.). If I'm feeling super-ambitious, I'll try to complete past challenges from Weekly Geeks I've been trying to figure out if anyone took this meme over when Dewey passed. Someone please point me in the right direction if you know :)

And, here's a picture of my hardcopy schedule:

Yes, it's sideways... because I have dorktastic editing skills.

Ready, set... GO!

It's Bloggiesta time!

Let's see how far I can get while my grrl watches her favorite horse-themed dvd.

Goal list:

Get a blogging mobile app installed and running on phone and iPad. Done! Went with Blogsy for the iPad, and will use Evernote on the phone.

Do the organization and scheduling mini challenge from Amanda of On a Book Bender. Done!

See if the format of Trish's mini-challenges works well for me.

Check out Pocket per Brianna and see if I can be disciplined enough to use it instead of Instapaper for my blogging topics. Update: I downloaded it, and all it does is display 4 colored bars that do nothing :(

Carve some basic html tags into my arm so I don't have to keep tabbing over to the cheat sheet. Kidding. Really.

Try an Evernote notebook system per Joy's mini-challenge.

Use Tanya's list of topics to beef up that schedule

Give my readers a better idea of life in the boonies and fulfill Maria's challenge.

Catch up on a few reviews (there's no way I'd get through half in a few days) and commit to the Can’t Eat Just One challenge at Hannah's site.

Go visiting! Can I make 10 each day? Sheila challenges us to build community.

Attend at least part of one of the twitter parties.

Bloggiesta September 2012

How sad is it that the previous post is about the same event held 6 months ago, in which I did not get to participate? *facepalm* OK, so here I am, trying again...the weekend of Bloggiesta hasn't been booked for anything else yet. It would make sense for task #1 to be: "call dibs on adequate blocks of time to make this worth the effort." Might as well carry over my goals from last time: "do some community-building, and maybe create some real motivation to clean this thing up and start the process of bringing it up to speed. Oh, and I need to set up mobile blogging on my phone." I'm pretty sure I have enough on the account to cover the necessary app. No clue if anyone is still reading this, but here's the link to sign up, just in case anyone wants to join me: here At least this is more do-able for me than the Austin Blogathon, which is a similar, but more costly endeavor: BlogathonATX