Wednesday Writer’s Update 11/16

~ tahenryauthoress ~ Leave a comment

Greetings and Salutations my dear readers. I have been busy. Busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. Moving faster than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Saturday was Bard and Starlet. People say it went well. I nod. It was pure torture. And then when it was all over I got to see the video of me. Fat video of me. Bleh.

Sunday was writing on the road. I am half astounded at how many words I am pouring into my spy novel. And on the other hand, I knew it needed some help in the back half. I guess I am astounded that I am finding so many words to add. But I am.

Monday was a day of chaos at the coop. Half the school was out sick, leaving to few of us to do a lot of jobs. But Monday’s over and I think I have some good classes lined up for next session.

I am painting all the trim in all the rooms now that the painters are finally done with their part of the job. I am trying to get it all arranged before the Sinterklaas party we have every year. That’s the first weekend in December for those of you who aren’t Dutch.

I think that about covers my life. How are you? Drowning in Nano? The second week slump should be about up now right? Tell me all about it.

Book Review: Meternity

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

I grabbed Meternity by Meghann Foye off the readers choice shelf on a whim. Emily Giffin gave it a positive review on the front cover and I like Emily Giffin. Meternity kept me occupied in the airport and on the plane on our way home from SoCal.

I have super mixed feelings about this book. The premise is hysterical. A woman working at a mommy magazine is irritated that she constantly has to pick up the slack for working moms. That her opinions are always discounted because she doesn’t have any kids. Then at a meeting with her bosses she vomits and they think she’s pregnant so she goes with it. The idea is she will use the “maternity” time to launch her freelance career.

The vast majority of the book is about all the complications she runs into while lying for months on end to her employer (and the federal government). As well as all the opportunities that come her way, now that she is pregnant, from her employer.

I don’t want to give away the ending. But there’s all this build up and pop. In like two pages, the denouement. It was unsatisfying. Lie and commit fraud and magically you’ll get all you want? WTF?

And I think what bothers me most, is through out the whole book the main character blames everyone else, not taking responsibility for her own actions. And in the end, she is handed everything she wants. She doesn’t work for it. She doesn’t earn it. She’s still just a passive object in her own life.

This was super hard to rate, because I read it in one day and quite enjoyed it for like 250 pages and then disappointment began to set in as I didn’t see any growth or consequences.

Sunday Sup: Cheddar Bacon Bread

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

It’s cold out there and that makes me want to bake. I made this bread for the first time last Christmas, in cute little snowflake covered paper rounds, then froze and shipped them to friends with cookies and fudge. Yeah, I’m one of those. LOL

I don’t know where this recipe came from. I found it on my recipe shelf, scribbled on a piece of note paper. shrug. So here’s my version.

Preheat to 350.

Grease or butter your loaf pan, unless using those cute paper cups then you’re good.

In a large bowl combine:

1 cup flour (if going Gluten free, I love Trader Joe’s Gluten free flour blend for this, Pamela’s is also good. If you use Bob’s Red Mill be aware that the bread will have a grainy texture although still taste good.)

1 teaspoon baking powder. Stir.

In a medium bowl, melt 2 tablespoons butter, then add one egg, and 1/2 c milk. (Don’t use non fat, use 2% or whole.)

Add the wet to the dry, stir until incorporated.

Now add at least 2 big handfuls of shredded cheese. I use a 4 cheese mix but you can use anything that goes with bacon and apples. Now add cooked and chopped bacon, 1/2 c maybe? But how can you go wrong with bacon? Now throw in one peeled and minced apple.  img_20161020_183410

Scoop the batter out into your baking dish(es) and slide it in the oven for 20-30 minutes depending on the size of the dish. A toothpick inserted in the middle should come out clean when the bread is done.

Slice and eat. Repeat. Sorry I couldn’t help but take a little bite before I got the shot off.

Fiendish Friday: Cheating

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 2 Comments

Spoiler alert: this is not about marriage infidelity.

So the kiddo and I belong to a homesteaders club. The idea is to learn to do some of those skills that have fallen out of the main stream now that society can run to Whole Foods or Home Depot at will. We went to a Beginners Archery Class for example. The kiddo and I had a great time and decided to take part in a special tournament the club puts on every year at Halloween. Essentially it’s a newbie tournament. An instructor takes each group through a walking hunt course and helps you figure out where to shoot from, how to improve, etc.

So as we are making our way around, I notice I’m not doing as well as I thought I was. Everyone takes turns shooting. Then we all go to the target and figure out our scores. And I just was scoring not quite as well as I thought I was when I was doing the shooting.

At the 8th or 9th target I had this huge ah-arrownadsha moment. See the target was a werewolf and my second arrow had hit him in the nads. Everyone made jokes about it. But after everyone finished their shooting and we went up to score our arrows, this girl claimed my arrow as hers. And I knew it was mine, because HELLO, nads.

After that I started paying really close attention and she was doing it every target. Every time she could get away with it (if both her arrows hit the hay bale, she didn’t try to claim mine).

Really? Really? This is a newbie tournament where the prize is candy. Candy.

On the plus side it lead to a super interesting discussion on cheating with the kiddo.

Oh and I still had the high score for the group. na na na na na. LOL

Wednesday Writer’s Update 11/9

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

The kiddo and I have colds. This is not good for a number of reasons.

A) We had to cancel our trip to the Pac Sci to see Sherlock Holmes exhibit.

B) We had to cancel game night. bard-starlet-radio-hour-flyer-2016-ghosts-final

C) Saturday, in addition to writing one of the scenes, I am acting in two of the five vignettes at Bard and Starlet Radio Hour.  I don’t know how that happened.

Actually I do.

I said I would help at the first read through because we were short an actress and then the others decided I should keep doing those parts for the show.

slaps forehead

 

 

 

“Don’t anything great if you can’t handle the congratulations.” Free tickets to the show if you can tell me what movie that line is from.
Ahh who am I kidding, the show is free either way. Come on out if you’re local and enjoy my extreme discomfort.

Book Review: Maphead

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 2 Comments

I adore Ken Jennings. He has the same geeky sense of humor I do. I always find myself laughing in his books. Sometimes laughing so hard I can’t even explain to the hubs what I am laughing about. Maphead is pure Jennings amusement.

I picked this up thinking I might get a few nuggets of interesting information for the kiddos in my Geography class. I did that and a bit more. I was reading this in bed one night and I come across a paragraph where Jennings is interviewing someone. The interviewee says his wife is Afrikaner. And Jennings parenthetically comments, “I wonder if I would be able to resist the temptation to tell people my wife is a Boer instead.” I was rolling laughing. Laughing so hard my hubs had to take the book to read the joke himself because every time I tried to tell it I started with the laughing again.

It’s a geeky book. There’s no way around it but if you’ve ever been interested in maps, they fascinate me, then you’ll love the book. It has a total plethora of minutia and new things I didn’t know were even things. St Valentine’s Day Road Rally Massacre. Done completely in an atlas… The National Geographic Bee, did you know Washington State has won a full quarter of the time. It rains here, what else you gonna do…LOL

℘℘℘℘ – I’m torn between four pages and five. I did love this book and often completed more than 50 pages a day but at the same time it was thick and required processing, so I read other things in between my 50 pages a whack. But I adore Jennings and read everything he writes. 4.5 it is.

Sunday Sup: Quiche

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

This is another recipe from my childhood that I have played with over the years. Ham quiche. I don’t make it often, because hello calorie bomb, but every now and then the hubs gives me the big sad eyes and asks if it’s too soon for quiche. LOL. He’s a big man, he can consume a calorie bomb and keep on smiling.

Ham Quiche

Preheat your oven to 375.

Dice a small sweet onion. Toss into a skillet to saute in olive oil.

Chop 6-8 mushrooms depending on size. Add to pan.

Dice some ham steak. Add to pan.

While this all caramelizes a bit, put a couple of store bought pie crusts on a baking sheet. If you’re an over achiever who makes their own pie dough, what the heck are you doing at my site reading how to make quiche? Post your own superior recipe in the comments. LOL

Where was I? Oh yes, crusts on a sheet. Take a 1/4 of a block of cream cheese and squish it up semi flat. Lay the pieces in the bottom of a pie crust, sprinkle with a mix of shredded cheese. Repeat with the other crust.

Add Worcestershire sauce to the meat mix in the skillet, give it a good stir to coat the ingredients. Give it a minute then remove from heat. Spoon the meat and veg mixture into the bottom of crusts. Make a nice layer 1 inch thick.

In a medium bowl, crack 5 eggs, add a splash oh half/half, whole milk, or cream. If you have only nonfat milk in your house skip this step and add an extra egg. Whisk til creamy. Pour into a crust. Repeat for the other crust.

Use the other half of the block of cream cheese, divide between the pies, smooshed and laid on top of the egg mixture. Top liberally with more shredded cheese.

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Bake for 50-60 minutes on average. Start checking at 45 to be sure. When the pies are all brown and domed up and a knife stuck in the middle comes out clean, they’re done.

 

 

 

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Eat up!

Fiendish Friday: Nanowrimo

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 8 Comments

I’m sad. To be honest, I’m not sad. I’m pissed off and jealous. I want to be a willy nilly writer again. I really want to do Nano this year.

I have two great ideas on bat too. Just waiting for 30 days of insane pressure to hone them into a rough diamond.

But the grown up writer in me. The mature one that talks about my career and all that jazz, says, you need to finish editing and publish your sophomore novel or you don’t have a career.

But I wanna play…..

Because that’s what Nano is, play. It’s fun, and exciting, and obsessively insane.

Sigh. I need to keep my eye on the line now, because I let that whole drama over the summer, cough cough pool board cough cough, screw up my time line.

Thank you for entertaining my two year old tantrum. Stomps feet, spins round in a circle, jumps up and down once or twice.

The grown up is back in charge. But if you have a moment…tell me, how is Nano treating you this year?

Wednesday Writer’s Update 11/2

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

Good morning! I am not in rainy Washington right now. I am in sunny LA. Ok, yes, the smog feels almost like cloud cover but it’s warm. sigh. Brief moment of sheer pleasure that my summer sundresses are out of hiding and into the sun.

Moving on. I have a confession to make. I went to the first minute write in Monday night before we left on vacation. I’m so weak. I caved. But I must finish editing my spy novel.

Before that first minute write in, I helped my neighbors out with their haunted woods. I was a “coffee zombie.” Basically I lurched around calling fro coffee rather than brains which the adults found hilarious. One mom, on hearing my groans for coffee, shines a light in my face and asks her kid, “does she look like mommy before I have my coffee?” The kid’s eyes got super wide and she nodded all serious. Man kid you are brave. I am in FULL zombie face here. LOL

We’re in SoCal with another family this week, taking the kiddos to Universal for Harry Potter land and Legoland for well everything lego related. This isn’t really what I would call a vacation. But I won’t have to cook or clean for 5 days and a happy kiddo is about the best I can ask for at this age. sigh.

I’ve decided to report on my stated 2016 goals each Wednesday for a little prod of accountability.

 

 

– Any time I am not actively working on my 2015 Nano Novel, write 2500 words per week on my spy novel until it is done. (After four years, it’s time to put this mess to bed.)

√ Working my butt off on this. Ready for beta readers in December.

Non writing goals

– Prepare and teach two classes at the coop for the 2016-2017 school year.

√ Time is flying. I have 6 writers in my Nano class. One of them, is actually going for the full 50K. I am so excited. She has really supportive parents and I think she can actually make it.

– Take better care of my body, ie. stop compulsively painting, crocheting, and writing until my back or shoulder is so tore I can barely use either.

√ Doing good. Although kicking the hubs ass at archery this weekend but a definite crink in my right shoulder. LOL

– yoga daily.

√ eh, 4 days this week.