Halloween: Twilight fangirl style

Set your water on fire

I drink vitaminwater everyday at work. Formula 50 (when I can find it), Energy, Multi-V and XXX. So when I found their new contest to name the next flavor - Black Cherry Lime - and write the copy for the bottle I was stoked. My first entry used their Mad-Lib style format to create the copy and I named it Verve. My second, however, I thought up on my drive home from work tonight. Though I can't seem to draft decent copy at work to save my life, I think I nailed this one. Maybe it's the tone. The sacrastic, snarky, wittiness that comes with vitaminwater. But I'm damn proud of Ignite and think I should win. Wouldn't you agree?

"Some days it's a struggle to do...well anything. We know you'd rather curl up with the fuzzy animal of your choice and the latest How-Well-Do-You-Know-X quiz on Facebook. But let's face it, life's hard. You have to go to school or work or whatever it is that the day demands of you. But the full range of vitamins A to Zinc plus caffeine in this very bottle can be the spark to set your world on fire. So get your mitts on Ignite and get your butt out the door."

Scanning for cats is no cheap venture

I go in for a cat scan tomorrow. My thyroid levels are off. One protein level doubled in the last six months. Not good. While a scan is better than than a biopsy with all its needles and the poking, it's not going to live up to the cost. $1,800. I'll give you a minute to let that sink in.


Long enough? They said it should only take 15 minutes or so. That's $120 a minute. Yes, that's right. A minute. The really bad part, that's the after-insurance cost. What I actually owe. And they want as much up front as I can give. Too bad I can't give anything.

A cross-country movie premiere extravaganza

Tickets for New Moon are selling out in pre-sales online all across the country. Luckily, my friends and I already have our tickets. So when I emailed Suzanne in Colorado last week to let her know, this is (roughly) what transpired over multiple emails:

Me: Tickets are on sale if you want to come with us.
Suz: I don't know if you were serious or not, but I looked into flights to Wilmington and they're not too bad. I could come visit if you wouldn't mind.
Me: Of course I'm serious. Please come visit!
Suz: I'm serious if you're serious. I'll call you tonight and we'll work out the details.

Later that night we got stupidly excited on the phone as she purchased a ticket to fly in on Thursday, Nov. 19 (the day of our New Moon midnight showing) and leave Sunday morning. She also secured her movie ticket so we can get all geeky and fangirly with the rest of the girls for drinks before the premiere. Cannot wait!

Vampires and werewolves and fangirls, oh my

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Backyard bliss

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month starts in November. And I just signed up.

The challenge: write a 50,000-word novel in a month.
The stats: 1,667-words/day or approx. 6 pages/day
The book: a story about sisters and cupcakes and the men they love

I think I'm up for the challenge.

I didn't like the wolf til now

OK. I'm kinda impressed Jacob. Kinda. Don't let it go to your head. I'm still Team Edward all the way.

I'm in love with The Time Traveler's Wife...

I cannot wait for this movie. I'm only 120ish pages into the novel and it is FANTASTIC. So fantastic that all I want to do is read. Devour it until it is done. Why have I not read this before? Someone please tell me why no one told me to read this exquisite novel?

As soon as I finish reading it I am going to see this!

Harry Potter & The Fangirls of Won Won

Man it's nice to have such dorky fangirl friends. We got to geek out over our love of "Won Won" at the midnight premiere of Harry Potter & The Half Blood Prince last night. We took pictures with our tickets, the movie poster out front, the life size display inside, and of course with Krysti's Griffindor scarf. The boys even managed to have a good time despite our craziness.

The movie itself was fantastic! They had to cut a considerable amount from the book, but they still ended up with a strong, cohesive movie that was visually stunning. And they kept one of my favorites scenes from the whole series: Hermione sicking the birds on Ron when he and Lavender hook up. Despite the dark nature of the story, the movie managed to achieve many laugh out loud moments. I kinda want to go see it again. Like now.

Book title freak out

Over the past few months, I've been furiously working on "the book". Copyediting, rewriting, cutting, rearranging. I've been reading books on structure, scene, character, how to get published, what not to do, etc. Now I've hit the proverbial wall. The book has had a name for eight plus years. And I love the name. But after all of my reading, I'm not sure the name is doing the book any favors. It may be time to edit it too. Would any of these names capture your attention on the book shelf?

• Reminders Of Them
• Dwell
• The Nature of Things Come & Gone
• Tended
• Kindred
• The Weight of Silence
• The Downside of Love
• The Color of Solitude
• Placeholders
  

We have neices and nephews?

So after traveling to TN and arriving at 3:00 am for a action-packed weekend of family fun, we ended up with more pictures of Stewart and Olive (Karen's new kittens) and fourth of July fireworks than of the family. Sad.

A Wax Lion of my very own

A few months ago I found the quirky, lovable, incredibly fantastic show, Wonderfalls. Like all of the shows I adore, it was canceled well before its time. (Only three episodes aired, but luckily a full 13-episode season was released on DVD.)

While browsing ebay, I came across a Wax Lion, one of the main figurines from the show that talks to main character Jaye and convinces her to do things to help people. I immediately plunked down the money and snatched this little gem up. Then I received an email from the seller to tell me when it would ship. This is what his email said:

"Your lion will be shipped via USPS First Class Mail first thing in the morning. However, should he start talking to you when he gets there, I would strongly suggest that you seek professional help immediately!"

Rocking our socks off

Paramore and No doubt were phenomenal in concert last night. Since Krysti was unable to go with us at the last minute, Erin had a genius idea of making a sock puppet of her to bring her "effervescent" personality with us. Thus Sock Krysti was born.

Erin, her brother Joe, Sock Krysti and I braved the mud and the teenagers to rock out to some seriously good tunes.

New Moon rising

This is how I spent my evening last night with the girls...

TBR

This is my To Be Read (TBR) pile (in no particular order):
Vision in White - Nora Roberts (not pictured)
Made in the U.S.A. - Billie Letts
Belong to Me - Marisa de los Santos
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County - Tiffany Baker
Firefly Lane - Kristen Hannah
Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld
Writing the Breakout Novel - Donald Maass
The First Five Pages - Noah Lukeman
Nineteen Minutes - Jodi Picoult
Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn - Janis Hallowell
The Bright Forever - Lee Martin
P.S. I Love You - Cecelia Ahern
Hooked: Grab Readers at Page One - Les Edgerton
Veronica - Nicholas Christopher

This does not take into account the two Jane Austen novels, the two Mark Haddon novels, Middlemarch, Anna Karenina, and Wuthering Heights that are still on my bookshelf.

Death By Demin day

I have a stack of books over two feet tall that are waiting patiently for me to read. They've been sitting there staring at me for weeks. Months even. And they'll have to keep waiting. Death By Denim by Linda Gerber came out on Tuesday and my copy arrived from Amazon today! You may remember my post from a month ago about her first two books in the series. If you haven't read them, stop reading this now (I mean now!) and go get them. They are fabulous.

The author is having a virtual release party in addition to the one I can't go to in OH. So in an effort to get more people to read these books and go to her blog, I'm Tweeting and posting to Facebook. Please check them out. You will not be disappointed.

Now my weekend will be taken up by Aphra and Seth. No better way to spend it. Cannot wait!

"You Can't Do That On Television" strikes again

Three: the number of times this week I've said "Honey, don't encourage the children" in reference to Mark meowing at the kittens in the morning when they want to be brushed.

Talk: a photo diary

We're redesigning the Talk website to better showcase who we are as a creative communications company. And Shawn and I were tasked with photographing the office to show it in all its glory. Here are some of the shots we're most proud of...

Southern Belle