Last weekend...and the start of this week...have been sheer madness. Some good, some bad, heavier on the good. The week ended with the sudden and unexplained death of our ancient TV. On the other hand, I guess the mere fact that it was ancient makes its demise explainable. The bad part was the timing. It seems smaller televisions are a rare commodity these days thanks to distribution chain issues. Normally, I'd research online, make a decision, and click BUY.  I will say, having no TV resulted in a couple of productive days. It also made for a grumpy and bored husband. By Saturday night, I'd tracked down what had to be the only set matching my criteria within several hundred miles. I clicked BUY along with the option to pick it up the next day. (Seeing the words "last one in stock" tends to nudge me to stop researching and show them the money.) Sunday morning, my no longer grumpy and bored husband and I drove to Oakmont PA and Mystery Lovers Bookshop to attend a perso...

As we mourn the passing of one of my favorite actors, James Garner, I find myself remembering the time I ALMOST met the man. He and Joanne Woodward were filming a movie for Hallmark— Breathing Lessons —in our area. And by “in our area” I mean if front of my house. We spent an entire afternoon sitting on our front porch watching them “drive” up and down our road. Actually they were in a mock car being towed and filmed by a camera car. At one point, the producers stopped at my mom and dad’s house and asked my dad if they could use their home as one of the locations. My dad said NO. WHY? I have no idea. In hindsight, I think the early stages of dementia may have been at play, and he simply didn’t understand what they wanted. He LOVED James Garner! If I’d been there, things would have been different, I guarantee it. As is, much of the landscape through which the car is driving is from our stretch of road. In one scene, if you look fast, you can see one corner of my...

Meet Kensi. I wrote about her last Wednesday on Working Stiffs . Back then, she didn’t have a name. Nor did she have a home. Now she has both. The name I’ve settled on is Kensi after the character on NCIS Los Angeles . I just like the name. It’s different (There will probably be 4,000 girls named Kensi starting school five or six years from now and my unique name will be as common as dirt.) As for her home… Yeah, everyone guessed it. She’s not going anywhere. There are details to be worked out. Hubby’s still resisting the idea of another cat in the house. So I’ve moved her into the basement. My excuse is that leaving her food out on the porch at night draws raccoons and I refuse to feed good cat food to the wildlife. Ulterior motive? Litter box training. A must before any kitty, cute or not, can move upstairs. It took her a couple of missteps, but now she’s figured out how it works. My other ulterior motive is quarantine. Until she’s had her shots and been tested for kitty diseases, I ...

The problem with Christmas falling on a Thursday is that now I don’t know what day it is. Wednesday was Friday. Thursday was Sunday. Yesterday? I don’t know what yesterday was. I’m not sure about today either. Besides the confusion over the day of the week, I’m confused over time of the year. A few days back, it was three degrees in the morning and didn’t climb out of the teens. Today, it’s 66 degrees outside, flirting with 70. Is it any wonder I’m confused? At least the heat wave has given me an opportunity to walk off some of those cookies. And I may not know for sure what day of the week yesterday was, but Hubby and I took advantage of it and ventured out to buy our new TV. Just in time. The last few times we turned on the old one, we had to turn it on about ten times before it STAYED on. Here’s a picture of the new set. (Yeah, I'm still on an Alias Smith and Jones kick.) I find myself standing in front of it, just staring at it. Reminds me of getting new eye glasses and suddenl...

I tend to get cranky when I don’t write for more than a few days. And I mean “write” as in creating a story. Not just blogging or updating my Facebook status. Working on a nonfiction article will do in a pinch, especially if it’s one that might produce income and therefore support my writing habit. Let me just say…I’M CRANKY. I put the novel on hold a couple of weeks ago so that I could work on the short story that’s due the end of February. Then I had to put the short story on hold to spend all my computer hours working on the 2009 Pennwriters Conference . I’m Conference Coordinator in case you’ve missed my earlier posts on the topic. Registration opens January 2nd. That’s less than two weeks away. There is sooo much I wanted to have done by this point. None of it is. My list of agents and editors seems to be in constant flux. Someone drops out. Someone new offers to come. And I still have some voids in the editors department. I wanted to have a fair grasp on workshops by now. I’m a b...

Any fans of HOUSE might be interested in my post today over at Working Stiffs . Come on over and join the conversation.

Today is the last day of 2007. Thank God. Yesterday, I was watching CBS Sunday Morning as they did their annual memorial to those who passed on this year. (Didn’t they use to dedicate an entire show to this? Now it’s barely fifteen minutes!) This piece almost always makes me slightly teary, but I was doing okay until Charles Osgood mentioned the World War II vets who passed this year and I realized that included my dad. I lost it. At that point I stopped watching and veered off into my own personal list of losses for 2007: my dad , my cousin John , my kitty Samantha … It’s been a really crappy year. 2006 was crappy, too. I think I’m due for a good one. So I’m saying a big ADIOS to the year(s) just past and I’m opening my arms wide to embrace the New Year. That doesn’t mean I’m going out partying. I’m too old for that. I’d have to stay up way past my bedtime. No, I’m just preparing myself mentally for new projects. I hope to clear a few things from my desk today and then take in a movi...

One of my favorite TV shows is House . This week, I felt like I’d stepped into my own personal episode of the medical mystery series. My knee has been bothering me on and off for quite some time now. Lately, it’s been more on than off. So I decided to make an appointment for myself at the same time as Mom’s appointment Tuesday. I don’t know what I expected. I wasn’t in enough pain enough of the time to warrant surgery. I hate needles. I guess I just wanted to find out what was happening in there. So off I went to x-ray. When the pictures came up on the computer screen (all digital now, you know) even I could see something weird, not in the joint, but in the bone below the knee, the tibia. Ah, I thought. That’s my lumpy shin. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had a lump on my right shin bone. I contributed it to being gang-tackled during a game of dodge ball back in bible school. One doctor told me it was a greenstick fracture. Another called it an extended tibia. No one ever x-rayed it. I...

Last month Arbitron asked us to report our radio-listening habits to them for one week. It was kind of fun, even though I don’t listen to the radio very much. That week, I made a point of listening to the stations that I especially like, just so the ratings people would know. I’m not sure if the Arbitron thing had anything to do with it, but we’ve now been chosen by the Nielsen people to keep a diary of what we watch on TV for one week. Beginning today. THIS excites me. As much as I complain about what’s on television these days, NOW I can actually do something about it. I can make a point of watching and noting the shows I like and NOT watching the ones I don’t. I really wish Big Brother were on right now. I would NOT watch it. Never have, never will. Same goes for all those silly “reality” shows. And the current glut of game shows with their harsh, hi-tech lighting effects. I won’t be watching those, either. Okay, so we will watch Survivor . But it was the first of the reality sho...

Happy Fourth of July! If all goes according to plans, Ray and I will be spending the day at Ohiopyle. We used to go there every July 4th. The last few years, life has gotten in the way, so I hope to revive old traditions today. But while we’re off enjoying the bike trails, I wanted to mention a sad anniversary. Ten years ago today, one of my favorite writers passed away. I first became enamored of Charles Kuralt back in his days of doing On the Road segments for CBS Evening News. And I rarely missed CBS Sunday Morning. Years ago, our television died and in a protest of the lousy programming, I refused to buy a new one. For five weeks, we went TV-free. During that time, I only missed one show. CBS Sunday Morning. That was the only reason we bought a new set. Okay, maybe not the ONLY reason, but it was a big one. I remember lying on a stretcher in the hospital one Sunday morning in 1993, writhing in agony from what turned out to be acute appendicitis. As I lie there waiting to be taken ...

One of my favorite actors, the late Robert Pastorelli (you may remember him as Eldin in Murphy Brown ) uttered a line in the film Dances With Wolves that could be asked of a lot of us. As Timmons, the foulest man on earth according to Kevin Costner’s character, he asked, “Why don’t she write?” Lately, I’ve become aware of a lot of writers and aspiring writers of whom I could ask the same question. One of them gave me an answer recently. She told me she was a perfectionist and nothing she wrote ever met her own expectations. So she became afraid to try. What she didn’t realize is that all writers live with the fear of writing crap. I know I do. But I’m on page 297 of my first draft. How did I get that far? By acknowledging that most of what I put down right now is going to be crap. And by knowing that there will be a second and third draft in which to fix it! Ah hah! I’ve always envied those people who can come up with the snappy retort, the clever turn of a phrase at the drop of a hat...