Thoughts from a tree

Randomness

October 25, 2010

We are almost fully moved in now, with one more trip to storage remaining – this week will be a big push as we have to unload the trailer we filled up yesterday and then be ready to go again by the weekend. Halloween completely crept up on me and I didn’t realize it would be the same weekend until recently, not that we have any plans for it, since we don’t. This year we are actually in a place that might have trick-or-treaters, if people do that anymore; it seems like more and more families go for mall excursions and things like that instead of the traditional house-to-house. Some of my best memories are from traipsing around the neighborhood in the dark of Halloween (sans parents) – it is also how I met some of the nearby kids who later became good friends. I remember one year in particular when a tropical storm came through in the midst of it; we tried to outrun it and failed and I fell down a ditch in the dark and was mostly upset about the candy I lost; exciting times! I must have been a lot less shy as a kid too, for we seemed to end up talking with our adult neighbors quite a lot. One time a guy felt bad about not having candy and showed us his model trains to make up for it. Nowadays, people would freak out over that, since everyone is always at suspect for abducting or molesting children. Paranoia and over-sheltering are of course the reasons why fewer kids are allowed to trick-or-treat in the traditional way anymore, or if they do, the parents come with them. A lot of kids aren’t even allowed to walk to or wait for the school bus anymore. I don’t know if this behavior is as common in FL as it was in VA, but we could see lines of cars near school bus stops on the way to and from work, as parents watched and waited to make sure their kid(s) got on or off the bus safely. Children are constantly told to stay away from strangers, but, ironically, strangers are not usually the problem: 90% of child sexual abuse victims know the perpetrator in some way; 68% are abused by family members (http://www.childhelp.org/pages/statistics#gen-stats). Also, the likelihood of a child being the victim of a stereotypical kidnapping is about 1 in 347,000 (http://www.suite101.com/content/statistics-on-child-abduction-a147599), whereas the probability of a female child being sexually abused is about 1 in 5 (male children are 1 in 10) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse). Personally, I think the media is mainly responsible for inflating the fears of parents so much about kidnapping, and I think its sad and unhealthy in the long run. Constant supervision makes it more difficult for children to grow mentally and socially, to learn to be independent, mature, and capable of handling problems on their own.

Sorry for that long tangent. In other news, I just got and watched season 2/final of Dollhouse – It was awesome! I highly recommend it; it even has Summer Glau! If you haven’t seen season 1 (including the 13th unaired episode), get that first of course. We finally got around to setting up our TV just so that we could watch it; it’s that good! Since we setup our TV and PS3 (I got it on bluray), we went ahead and setup the other consoles and patched everything as well. I’m really excited about Rock Band 3 coming out, but I don’t know if I’ll have much time to play it before December, particularly with Nanowrimo likely taking up most of November.

Speaking of Nanowrimo, I think I’ve decided which story idea I want to pursue for it and I’ve written down a few loose notes for the plot and general ideas. I work really well under deadlines, so I’m hoping the goals and pressure of Nanowrimo will be a good starting point for me to get back to writing seriously. I’ll probably try to do daily updates on here once it starts, with the daily wordcount if nothing else.

On the income front, my unemployment funds end in January. We should be able to scrape by without them, but it will be tight, unless I start making money with my tie-dye. I have listed several things (anevergreen.etsy.com), but I should list a lot more and maybe start going to flea markets and craft fairs. On the plus side, we might actually be able to sell our house in VA, which would be such a huge stress and monetary relief! Apparently its been getting a fair amount of interest since we switched realtors, particularly for purchase rather than renting (previous realtor wouldn’t even list it for sale – grrr)

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Starting to feel like home

October 13, 2010

Most of the painting for our new place is done, and what is left either has to be done in small chunks or is waiting for something to get fixed first.  Everything is in pastel shades of blue, green, and purple.  I stayed away from dark colors because they are both a LOT harder to do and they tend to make rooms feel smaller – this house is already quite a bit smaller than our previous one and I didn’t want to increase the cramped feeling.  Some people may think its  too much color, but oh well, I LIKE a lot of color.  I will try to take some pictures soon and post them.  Also, most of the major repairs have been done, with the exception being a garage conversion that wasn’t done very well and leaks.  I’m not sure what we’re going to do at this point to fix it, especially since we’re running out of money for repairs…

We still have probably two trips worth of stuff to get from the storage unit, which we need to be out of by the end of the month (or pay another month of fees).  We weren’t able to get anything last weekend because my husband was oncall and this weekend I think he is going to be too tired and need a break from a miserable oncall week.  Plus, we haven’t even unloaded all of the last load yet (we were waiting for my painting to be done).  That leaves us with two weekends in a row that we’ll have to get a full load for each.

We switched realtors in VA, so I’m hoping we might actually get the house sold or rented someday.  Here is the listing for anyone curious.

I just realized that Nanowrimo is coming up fast and I’m wondering if I should participate (probably) and what story idea I should use…I also really need to get on the ball and start posting stuff for sale on etsy!  I quit facebook games (finally), which means I also pretty much quit facebook itself, and I still don’t ever seem to have any time, where does it go?

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Many Changes This Year

September 24, 2010

Whether you knew me before or not, I figure that a wrap-up of this year’s events (so far) might be a good idea, to give people an idea of where I am and what I’m doing and why.

At the beginning of this year, both myself and my husband, Gary, worked for AOL (I had been there 6 years and he had been there 10) in Dulles, VA.  Both of us were laid off as part of a *massive* reduction in force.  Since I already wanted to leave VA (the weather there is ABYSMAL, all year, and it only proved it even more this last winter), it seemed like a good time to go.  We were originally from FL and wanted to be closer to our families and old friends, in addition to being somewhere warmer.  After several months, and a contract job, my husband was able to find a job in Orlando and he started working there June 1.  I came to FL a few weeks later with the last of our stuff, and the cats (we have 4).  We had to live separately since my family (where I could stay, with the cats) is in Gainesville and his job was in Orlando (its about a 2-hour drive).  We finally found a house to move into in late August; its a foreclosure, so needs a lot of work done, but we’re glad to be TOGETHER again, and in a place of our own.  Our house in VA is still vacant (listed for rent, but unable to sell it), sucking up most of our income with its mortgage payments.

Since we’ve been in the process of moving pretty much all of the last 8 months, I have had little access to my tie-dye supplies, or an adequate place to use them.  I’ve also been surprisingly busy for someone with no job.  However, things are finally settling down now and I’m hoping to be able to do more tie-dye soon, as well as list the stuff I’ve already made on etsy.  I’m also hoping to be able to concentrate on my writing again; maybe one day I’ll even submit something…

For those who don’t know, I’ve been making tie-dye since my 10th grade chemistry teacher (who was awesome!) had us do some for a lab.  I started selling it as a hobby during college and continued to sell it, sometimes in a store, sometimes just to people that knew me, and more recently in etsy.  I’m hoping to sell tie-dye full-time eventually, although I’m still applying to real jobs in the meantime (if anyone is looking for a Linux System Administrator, or something similar, in the Orlando area, let me know!)  It would probably be impossible for me to sell enough tie-dye to equal my former salary, however, I figure the work-from-home perks would make it worth it (as long as my husband has a job with a health plan anyways).  Part of the desire to move to FL was also to make our expenses significantly less (if we can manage to do something with our house in VA, that is).  We have no kids and I’m *really* frugal, so living on one income (if I was making NO money selling my tie-dye and no longer getting unemployment, for instance) should be doable.

Writing is something I’ve always done and loved.  I wrote my first “books” in first grade – I very carefully wrote out the stories on regular paper and then bound them together with construction paper.  However, my father drilled into my head at an early age that I would never be able to make any money at it, so I never pursued it (like I did with computers) and I have a huge pile of stories that are either not finished, or need a lot of editing (its much more enjoyable creating the initial story than editing).  I’m also a bit leery of actually trying to submit something because of all the horror stories you hear about hundreds of rejections (even for stories that eventually became best sellers or classics).  But then something happens like “Twilight” and I think “if THAT can sell…surely my stuff can too.”  So, we’ll see, maybe one day I’ll get brave enough.  If anyone is interested in reading some of the stuff that is mostly done, and giving me an honest “this is awesome!” or “this is crap!”, let me know – it’s mostly fantasy novel type (the kind with things like unicorns and fairies), though my most recent project is a re-telling of The Little Mermaid, which will be much shorter.

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First Post!

September 15, 2010

OK, it feels a little lame to be using wordpress.com to host my blog, but it just doesn’t seem worth the expense and effort to do it myself, at least at this point.  I created this mainly to try and promote my tie-dye, but also to encourage myself to do more writing.  I guess we’ll see whether either works out as expected, or not.

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