I'm free!

Captain's Log, Stardate 05.21.2005

I was supposed to accompany my husband to a youth group outing tonight to see Star Wars III. My husband, the darling man, said I didn't have to go because almost all the kids will be accompanied by their parents tonight. So instead I get to stay home and write.

I know I'm in the minority here, but I hate going to movie theaters. I have very definitive reasons why:

1) I always have to use the bathroom in the middle. No exceptions. For Lord of the Rings, I had to go twice. It doesn't matter if I go 3 times in the half hour before the movie starts, or if I don't drink anything the hour before and inside the theater.

2) Because I have to go to the bathroom, I have to make sure I get a seat at the end of a row, which stinks in terms of viewing the screen. When a theater is packed, like tonight will be, getting an end seat becomes ten times more difficult. Since I get motion sickness easily, I can't sit in the very front row and I need to find that all-important end seat in the rows at the back half of the theater.

3) Even before I tore my ACL, my knee ached when I sat for too long. My knee was always stiff and painful when I got up to use the bathroom, and at the end of the movie. Since the surgery, I haven't gone to a theater to test how bad it is. I can't think that reconstructive surgery would improve things.

My article "Writing Styles: Confessions of a Plotter Who Used to Be a Pantser" appeared in Spirit-Led Writer today. I'm totally stoked. It's the same article that appeared in the ACFW newsletter last month. These article publishing credits are so rare for me because I don't write many articles and don't have the writing experience to say anything unique or credible anyway.

Writing: Finished my suspense proposal, now I just need my friends to finish critting my manuscript so I can send it to my agent. Now I also have time to look over other peoples' writing--I've been meaning to get to Pammer's stuff for WEEKS (sorry about that, Pams), and Squirly just sent me her awesome military ops romance, Ominous Code. Woohoo! I also hope to get more serious on my Hawaii Chicklit. I really want to bust my butt and shoot for a July 1st deadline.

Diet: Had a birthday party today and didn't do too bad. Managed not to stuff myself on appetizers and limited myself to one hamburger. I also went running with the dog, although it was so flippin' hot I thought I'd die before we were halfway. My scale still says I haven't lost any poundage, but I tried on some pants today and can now button a pair of khakis I couldn't button last week.

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Toilet seat cover

Captain’s Log, Supplemental Update August 2008: I wrote up the pattern for this with "improvements"! Here's the link to my No Cold Bums toilet seat cover ! Okay, remember a few days ago I was complaining about the cold toilet seat in my bathroom? Well, I decided to knit a seat cover. Not a lid cover, but a seat cover. I went online and couldn’t find anything for the seat, just one pattern for the lid by Feminitz.com . However, I took her pattern for the inside edge of the lid cover and modified it to make a seat cover. Here it is! It’s really ugly stitch-wise because originally I made it too small and had to extend it a couple inches on each side. I figured I’d be the one staring at it, so who cared if the extension wasn’t perfectly invisible? I used acrylic yarn since, well, that’s what I had, and also because it’s easy to wash. I’ll probably have to wash this cover every week or so, but it’s easy to take off—I made ties which you can see near the back of the seat. And

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