Charles De Lint books

One of my goals is to read all the Charles De Lint books. It took me forever and a day to finish Moonheart, which had so many characters and plot lines I'm sure I missed the nuances.

Now I'm reading I'll Be Watching You which is about abusive men. It's depressing as hell. And it lacks the magical elements of his other books. He wrote it under an alias Samuel M Key. I'm about halfway done. It's going a lot faster than Moonheart so if I hang in there I'll finish it fairly quickly. So for New Year's I should reinact my goal to read 100 books in a year. Anyone else want to join me? Even though it's kinda cheating because it's still 2008 for a few more days, I'm going to make this number one.
So:
1. I'll Be Watching You

What are you reading?

Raisin Bread and Rainy Days

I'm happy to say I've got raisin bread cooking in my bread machine.

I got an mini article written on Steampunk Neovictorian costuming, I got the dishes done, and I'm working on a hat crocheting tutorial.

It's been raining on and off, so I try to run outside and do a few things whenever the rain stops.

My boyfriend's dad called from Oregon to say they were snowed in. I feel a little guilty running in and out of the house in a sleeveless tank top and skirt.

For dinner I'm going to cook 2 chickens in the rotisserie, but that won't be for hours. I want to take the raisin bread out first so I can move the bread machine to make counter space for the rotisserie. Small apartments equal minimal counter space. I have a tiny kitchen but I don't let it slow me down much.

Talk About Lazy

While I was standing out in the alley working on getting a stain out of some pants by our garage door, I see something sail over the fence and land in the alley. It was a dirty diaper the neighbors threw off their balcony aiming for the dumpster and missed. I have a feeling that is also how the diapers end up on top of the closed dumpster. I was out there another 10 minutes and no one came down to pick it up. Can we say ewwww? I've even found dirty diapers in my garden. Unacceptable.

Zenchantress Today

Today someone invited me to a new blogging site where at least for the first 30 days they will pay me $1. a day to blog. http://zenchantress.today.com/ So I got approved in one day even though it says it will take much longer. And I've already made my first two posts. I think bloggers should be paid and I am gradually dropping the sites that don't pay anything so I don't spread myself too thin on the non-paying sites. For example I almost never blog on Yahoo360 anymore. I think I'm also going to start striving to make each blog post 100 words or more in length so that people coming to my site feel like they haven't wasted their time. That is about 10 lines with 10 words per line.

And by the way, Wondrous Winter Solstice everyone. I hope you got to make a snow angel or throw a snowball or at least light a green candle today.

51 Things

Now that my computer is working again I want to start vlogging again. I want to make a response to this video thread http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_yzVK6JaB8&NR=1 where you show 51 things in your room. Seems like fun. A whole bunch of them are linked together on youtube. I watched the one by freakishlemon first and went from there. I love his stuff. He knits, he crochets, he goes to Ren Faires. What's not to like.
Anyway, it's 1:27 AM and the batteries in my video camera are dead, so it will have to wait until another day.

I'm not sure what to think about Yousaytoo

I joined a site called YOUSAYTOO hoping to get more readers for my blogs and more revenue as well. But some of my blog posts are very short. They are short for 2 reasons. One is I only have so much time in the day. The other is that a daily blog is more or less a project report such as 'I am knitting a sweater' or 'I finally got that yarn I needed in the mail.' But I'm getting marked down in the ratings on yousaytoo. Maybe people have different views of what a blog post should be. People complain both when they are too long and when they are too short. Then I get a thumbs down. I'm not sure if I like yousaytoo enough to stay on it or not. If I keep getting negative ratings I'll probably leave, because who needs that? I only give negative ratings if the person either spells a lot of words wrong, or says something racist or demeaning in some way. I prefer giving positive ratings if its a particularly helpful blog post, or no rating if it's just a little blurb. Some people just get off on judging others I guess.

I've added this particular blog today because I tend to write longer posts here, though they are much more infrequent. Normally if I'm going to spill my guts its in long hand in a notebook style journal. And no one reads it but me.

Sideways Photos

How come when I put photos on my computer and use thumbs plus to turn them right side up, then upload them to blogger, they are sideways again? Sorry about the sideways photos. There must be a way to fix this. Does anyone know? I hate sideways photos.

Intent, chatrooms and pointlessness

All day today I've been lapsing in and out of depression. Typical the commercialism of Christmas depresses me, but that's not what I want to talk about here. I want to talk about the power of intention. How our thoughts change our lives either for the better or for the worse. How once again for the millionth time I have to remind myself that negative thoughts lead to negative outcomes. But you can't just say 'now I'm going to be positive' and just do it anymore than you can tell a pot of boiling water 'now you are going to be an ice cube'. It's true they are both made of water, but some other processes have to be involved first. For one thing, it takes time. And it takes intent. You have to ask yourself why you are boiling the water in the first place if you are supposed to be making ice cubes. But that's how we are, doing one set of actions but expecting different end results.

I've been wasting a lot of time in chatrooms. Which isn't to say you can't meet interesting people and have some good conversations in chatrooms. But at least in the chatrooms where I've been there is a lot of down time when people are either not talking at all, not talking to me in particular, or talking about depressing things or topics I have no interest in. So for maybe 20 minutes of useful chatroom time spent, there may be 2 hours of time wasted. Or I bump into Paul for example, and Paul and I have had pretty much the same conversation the last 20 times we've talked. Do you know what I mean? It's just chit chat and goes nowhere.

And when I'm depressed the conversations go downhill. The person starts offering advice on how to fix my business, and they are all things I've tried twenty times before and I just end up more hopeless and helpless than ever.

I thought this blog was going to have some epiphany at the end, but so far I just feel more blah than ever.

Up in a Hot Air Balloon

For those of you living in OC California, you may have noticed a giant hot air balloon that looks like an orange floating within view of the 5 freeway. Well, Toys for Tots is offering a tethered ride in the hot air balloon with the donation of an unwrapped toy. I may have to take them up on that. The info is here: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/orange-county-great-park-teams-up-with-toys-for-tots,636180.shtml