Countdown

This moment is exactly like any other moment, in terms of the physical moment itself. A single still-shot of time that never really exists; it comes and then it is passed.

10

The entire planet goes through this moment, but only for one segment of the world does this moment hold any significance.

9

For everyone else, this moment is just another fraction of a second that mean no more than the one after it.

8

Perhaps an hour from now another part of the world will anticipate a different moment. Or maybe an hour earlier the same had happened.

7

Held breaths, beating hearts, excited smiles, broken hearts, new resolves, depressed reflections  anticipations, quiet pray, loud proclamations  regret, hope, fear, love, hate, and counting, a counting of moments to this moment. 

6

Why so much emotion for a single moment?

5

The world doesn't shift, the stars don't realigned, hearts are the same hearts despite resolutions.

4

Why this moment? Why not the one before it? Why not the one after?

3

This moment means nothing. So the clocks blink a different number, and a new calendar must be put up. These are human things. 

2

A moment, the moment, plugs along the same regardless.

1

People kiss, people scream, people cry, people laugh, people die, people live, some for the very first time.

This moment is passed...

...and another one follows it.

A Thousand Days

Welcome to part two of A Thousand Days. The post is really long, so I'm thinking I'll probably go to every ten days, or even once a week or something. 

Day seventeen: I don't mean to sound like a humbug...but really Katy? Why can't you just wait until after Thanksgiving until you play Christmas music? I know that Thanksgiving is less than a week away but still. She's been playing all day today. Tender Tennessee Christmas over and over again. One the upside my mum bought me some lovely curtains for my room.

Day eighteen: Only one more episode of Firefly left. Katy and I are watching the series on Netflix and we only have one left now. Oh why did it have to last only one season?! I finally unpacked my books today, took only about a quarter as long as it took to pack them.

Day nineteen: Bugs, bugs, bugs!! How and why are there so many bugs in frickin' November? They're everywhere, and bigger than they were in Bend. How numerous and huge they are going to be in the summer is only for the realm of my nightmares. Huh, such a culture "shock." It actually makes me feel somewhat like a wimp, knowing there are people out there who on a daily bases deal with huge bugs, and don't even have the ability to go inside away from them.

Day twenty: I'm actually really nervous right now. This morning a sent in an application to JCPenny and not more than two hours later they called me back, and now I have an interview 10:30 tomorrow morning. This is way further than I ever got in Bend, and in Bend I was applying to places like crazy, and now the second place I apply to is interesting? Is it a sign? Or luck? Perhaps a less depressed job market? I kind of psyched, but mostly nervous. Gaaaah. Why am I so nervous?

Day twenty-one: I think I have the job. At least at the end of the interview Amy, the person who interviewed me, said "Well as long as the background check clears out, welcome to JCPenny." So, I fairly certain that means I have the job. And the interview was only five minutes long. She asked me why I wanted to work at JCPenny, and that was it. So yea...now my nervousness seems a little ridiculous.

Day twenty-two: Happy Thanksgiving!! Ate turkey, will eat pie. At Thanksgiving we have this tradition where we go in a circle saying something we're thankful for. I was last so all of the good general ones were already taken, "I'm thankful that we got here safe," "I'm thankful for this house," "I'm thankful for family."  I was sure that I was going to sound like a lame copy-cat. Then, when it was my turn, inspiration struck! I sat up a little straighter, cleared my throat, and eloquently said, "I am thankful for this moment."

Day twenty-three: Didn't the people in this house believe in real light bulbs. I am dead certain that every single light fixture in this house is some weird shaped florescent light. It wouldn't be bad if they were regular florescent light, but they're in the shape of a hoop, or a long flat rectangle, or a pancake.

Day twenty-four: I THOUGHT I WOULDN'T HAVE THIS PROBLEM WITH SHORT ENTRIES!!! I don't know what to write!!! You know what annoys me? The fact that when I turn caps lock, I still have to press shift to get the exclamation point.

Day twenty-five: You know, come to think of it, it is amazing how many things I'm not writing about because I'm planning on posting this thing on my blog. Anyway, I guess Jacob doesn't read this so I go ahead and talk about that. I finally got the stuff to make his Christmas present (I've tried to make all the Christmas presents this year) after I have already been done with everyone else's for over a month. I am making him a sock monkey. Jacob really loves sock monkeys.

Day twenty-six: Guess what I did today. I turned a monkey right side out through its crotch. Bet you can't say the same. I finished making Jacob's sock monkey today, and it looks a little creepy. Jacob probably won't want it, but for now I'm calling the monkey Bert. If Tim Burton ever made a sock monkey character, it would look like this monkey.

Day twenty-seven: I think I am finally getting into the groove of writing this thing. I hope that soon it will be a habit. I finished the outline for A Land Not so Far Away, and man, I got chills writing it. I know, I'm a little conceited when it comes to my writing. 

Day twenty-eight: So yesterday I was called from JCPenny to arrive today at the store at 2 'o clock. I just thought it was going to be a couple hours at the most, just an orientation. Well, the first two and a half hours were, but then the rest of it was training. Quite honestly I wasn't expecting it to take that long. And now I am to go back tomorrow. I have serious mixed feelings about this.

Day twenty-nine: Work, work, work. Why? Why must something that is vital for my existence make me feel so tiered? It isn't that I hate the job, or that it is even hard work, nevertheless the idea of it just makes me want to lie on my bed and never get up.

Day thirty: The men's department in JCPenny is so boring. Seriously. Nothing ever happened. I think there was like three minutes where it was busy, but that was it. On the plus side I think I've finally gotten a hang of actually working and no longer need a training partner. Once I was able to learn how to do the different things on the register it was easy to remember. Oh, I also got to use this weird new thing that is basically a portable scanner and card slider. You can use it to check people out if they are paying with any sort of card. The people at JCP call it the Libbi. I'm not sure why.

Tag-mania

I have spent all morning doing what I have intended to do for a fairly long time now. Label every single one of my posts. I'm not sure why I bothered. I guess it can help add traffic and stuff like that, but I don't care very much about that. It was fun, and somewhat interesting going through my old posts. 

Regardless, I have now done it, and I guess if you have some deep desire you to crawling through my past posts go ahead. 

Also, there is one unique label. I'm not going to tell you what it is, because then it would be easier for you to find it, (not that I think you'll look.) Do not worry about not being able to tell if you've found it or not, if you find it, you will be able to tell. If you find it and want to feel like you won or something, leave a comment in the post labeled with that special label and I'll send you prize. Or maybe not. Only if you ask me to, and if I do it will probably be something lame like a home made book mark, creepy sock monkey, or a friendship bracelet or something. It really all depends on who finds it, (if anyone finds it at all) and how insistent they are about getting a prize. 

Adventures and Experiments in Writing

Salutations one and all, in this post I will be discussion recent actions I have taken in my most riveting and startling writing career, (career used in the less popular meaning of a pursuit, regardless of your job.) Take this as a warning, or a lovely introduction to a wonderful post.

Free writing. Anyone who likes to write has probably heard of the exercise. For twenty to thirty minutes you write, free hand, not thinking about what you are going to write, and you can't stop writing. 

Sounds easy enough.

Holy cow! It was practically impossible.

This free writing is supposed to help with creativity and brainstorming, as you have to come up with something to write RIGHT THEN!!!! It also is an exercise which is supposed to sharpen your mind, to help you focus on something and not get distracted by other random thoughts. The two approaches are these: One, just start writing. Simple as that. Write blah blah blah, or jabber jabber jabber if nothing else comes to mind. Two, pick a topic and write about that. A spontaneous essay if you will.

It was so freakin' hard. I know some people have a fairly easy time just writing on and on, and at first I thought it would be fairly easy for me as well as I can keep up a monologue for a long time. I never realized though how often I paused in my writing. Not necessarily to plan in general what I was going to say, that was easy enough to do. A single topic can do me for a couple of pages. No, I realized with this exercise how often I pause for grammar purposes. I sound like a total idiot if I don't pause! It went beyond not editing. After reading through what I wrote I literally could not tell what I was trying to say. The funny thing is that I don't even notice these pauses most of the time, unless I'm actively trying not to pause.

As well as free writing, I have also finished the first draft of my most recent novel, Earthly Gods. It's kind of like Pilgrim's Progress and Lord of the Rings combined...I guess...if I had to describe it. It's about a boy, named Ashvik, who goes in search of gods who demanded him to be sacrificed.

Yeah...great stuff that. It's better than it sounds...really.

I've started editing Earthly Gods, had have even made decent head way into the outline for my next book, the third and final in a trilogy. The first was Beyond Happily Ever After, the second, Not Quite True Love's Kiss, and the working title for the third is A Place Not so Far Away.

For those of you who know about NaNoWriMo, I'm sad to say I haven't been doing it this year.. This would be my third year doing it, if I was doing it, but I am not, so it won't be my third year. I considered it for a while, but with completely Earthly Gods only recently, and the move to Tennessee there was no time. It almost doesn't feel like November without the frantic writing. Perhaps that's way Thanksgiving really took me by surprise. There was no NaNo to make it feel like November. 

The Pros and Cons of a Big House

As you all should know my family is basically all moved into our new house, (new for us anyway.) It is a lovely home tucked away into a beautiful neighborhood in the center of Columbia Tennessee. It is comprised of bits and parts from several generations of building, most of it old and vintage looking, with random modern parts stuck into it.  

The house is also big.

Like huge, at least compared to the old house. The Bend house wasn't small, per say, but small for seven, eight people to live in. While someone still has to share a room in this new house, each room is just...bigger. The fact that it's bigger is probably the most significant difference between the Bend house and this one, and has been one of the hardest things to get used to as of yet. Like with anything in life, there are the pros and cons.

The Pros: 

Of course the fact that there is just more room. What looked like a ridiculous amount of stuff in the Bend house doesn't seem quite so ridiculous anymore.

Sock sliding. There was no where to sock slide in the Bend house. There is the perfect long stretch in this house. Though sometimes this could probably be put in the Con list, considering it can result in injury, broken furniture, and holes in the wall. 

Nook and crannies. So many nooks and crannies. Such as a small attic room, a garage that has about 13,876,744 rooms in it, and an unfinished basement, really unfinished. It literally looks like a cave down there. You open the door expecting to find just another ordinary room but no, instead you're greeted by rocks full of fossils from the Triassic period and a gentlely flowing stream.

More room for book shelves!!! I know that should be included in the first Pro, but if you're me books shelves take a special priority. 

More space to get away from other people. Or, being less cramped, if that sounds less anti social. 

Cons:

Everything is fifty million miles away. Every time I want something from some other part of the house I need to pack a bag of provisions, put on my hiking boots, and bring at least two bottles of water with me. 

ALL OF THE LIGHT SWITCHES!!!! Especially since it is a new house, a light will be on in some random part of the house and I will have to spend the next fifteen minutes looking for the switch to turn it off. 

Cleaning. Enough said. (Mum is saying amen about right now.) 

There they are, the pros and cons. Not all of them, I'm sure, but enough. Do you have any opinion about big house/small house. Which is better?