I bring my mom breakfast from Panera Bread for her birthday. She is on the phone with my grandmother. Let’s see what happens next…

Mom: Hillary brought me breakfast from Pandora.
Me: The planet from Avatar?
Dad: Isn’t there also, like, a box called Pandora? Pandora’s box, something like that?
Mom: *into the phone* Oh, nothing. They are just making fun of me because I said Pandora instead of Pantera.

(Pantera is, of course, a heavy metal rock band.)

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You just have to look at the picture. I have to keep this thing in my office until someone buys her!

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Boy, were the last few days rough. It was a good two plus weeks of ailing relatives, family drama, violent insanity, a funeral and just plain stress beyond compare. There some good stories to be had from all of that (good as in interesting, not good as in anything good happened in them) but none of them can be shared on this blog so you’ll just have to accept my word that its been a hell of a time. (On the plus side, there was one nice, normal day in the middle of all the chaos where we saw a some very good friends and that was lovely.)

But as we emerge from the drama overload (hopefully!!), I realize that May is now just about half-way over and I haven’t even gotten to start anything I set out to do in the beginning of the month, I’m behind on lots of things and my brain is just plain not in the mindset of my routine. I’ve been keeping up on my day to day work, that’s for sure, but there’s been no new writing and definitely no progress on the ridiculous challenge I set up for myself to do this month. I was discouraged at first by that but I’m trying to remind myself that, sometimes, life happens. You have to roll with the punches and come back up swinging!

It’s finally getting back into awesome nice weather and since I run on photosynthesis, a few days of working outside in the sun should recharge my batteries nicely. The rain wasn’t helping the situation at all.

But in addition to getting back to my routine I have a rather exciting announcement coming up in the near future. I hate to tease you like that but until it is finalized, I don’t want to say anything definite but it is something at once different and cool. I am, at once, excited and terrified.

So here’s to a brighter and better tomorrow, no matter where you are or what you have planned!

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Me: I’m having trouble with this part [in my book] and I need some advice.
Husband: OK (Starts to read what is on my computer screen behind me)
Me: No! Don’t read what is on the screen. Everything on the screen has already been cut out and is from an old draft where events don’t even happen in the same order. Ignore what is on the screen, it is not in the story anymore and let me tell you about the problem I’m having.
Husband: OK
(I then detail the problem I am having with my story. He does not appear to be giving me his full attention. I finally ask)
Me: So what do you think of that idea? Do you think it sounds good?
Husband: Well, what is on the screen there is terrible, you should cut all of that out.

He was serious, not trying to be funny. At this point I shrieked “I already told you that I cut that out and not to read it!!!” and highlighted all of that text in the color of poop to remind him that it was crap that had already been cut out. He then became incredibly facinated that my version of Word had the ability to highlight things in poop color while his could only do bright yellow and I lost him into the magical distracted place that men’s minds go when poop is even tangentially involved.

As a husband? A wonderful person.

As a writing critique partner, though, he’s freaking useless.

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I’m having the night from hell over here, one of those lovely hair-on-fire work crisis situations where I am sadly pulling an all but all-niter for work. So staying up really late AND getting up early. Not excited about this at all. But if there is one thing Hillary DePiano doesn’t do its let people down so I’m going to finish it, by damn it, or at least get as much done as possible. This is one case when failure to plan on their part does constitute an emergency on my part, to paraphrase the expression. I could probably rant about this for a good hour or two but I’m not going to. I am zen. I’m not really zen, I’m ticked and tired but let’s pretend, shall we?

So instead of doing prep work for Script Frenzy or working on my editing, I’m watching Turbo Lister churn and churn on this batch of listings and there is nothing I can do until its finished and I can do the next batch. I’m writing this between load times and batches to keep myself awake. This is how sad this situation is. I guess I could be editing while I wait for Turbo Lister but my brain went to sleep a little while ago.

To top things off, my husband comes in while I’m ignoring him to work like crazy and points out that today (or rather yesterday since its past midnight) is the anniversary of when we first started going out meaning that we have been together exactly 8 years. That doesn’t sound like that long, really, since I feel like there was never a point when we weren’t together but we have known each other about 4 years more than that so it’s crazy to think about.

Anyway, he comes in to tell me this and then goes to bed. Alone. While I stay up and work. No celebrating, not even a little celebratory cuddling, just work work work all night. This is very sad. This is a romance AND life fail, one of those times when I feel like I must be doing something wrong.

This work stuff is due tomorrow night and then, Script Frenzy be damned, I’m taking him out to eat or something because this a dumb.

So anyway, my issues aside, Script Frenzy is starting at midnight tomorrow. This past NaNoWriMo, I had two relatives competing with me, my aunt and my cousin, but this one is just little ole me and the thousands of random people on the internet. Or is it? My brother may be joining me and writing a comic book but he was Captain Waffle on the phone today so we’ll see what happens with that. I hope he at least writes up an outline, it sounds like he has a really good idea.

But have I finished editing my Mistress Novel? No, not yet. In fact, I am in the dead center of the book. I don’t want to stop and then take forever to get the thread of the story again so I’m going to just have to edit it while I write my script. These things happen.

The bigger problem? I put a *ton* of big stuff off in March to give myself more time for editing so April already is extra filled. But they say that the busier you are, the more you get done so I’m going to just roll with it!

So what am I writing for Screnzy? How’s about I write that up while Turbo Lister churns away tomorrow, eh?

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We were out of town Friday into Saturday of this weekend. We got home late Saturday and then Sunday we went on this epic marathon hike on Turkey Mountain. Now, Turkey is next to Pyramid Mountain which is where we usually hike but we decided to mix it up a little. Now, we’ve hiked Turkey before but took a short hike and this time it was the world’s most glorious day out and we had nothing planned so we decided to just really go for it.

So we just picked a random path and every now and then we’d be like “You tired?” “No.” “Ok, then let’s keep going.”‘ This was cool because we got to see a lot of stuff on the mountain we’d never seen before but the downside was that when we did actually get tired we were in the middle of nowhere and still had an hour walk back to civilization. All told, the hike was a little over 4 hours, half of which was straight uphill.

We were so dead when we got home. I mean, literally, no part of my body worked and my head felt like it was going to explode. I was exhausted. But it was so worth it, we had a ton of fun. My husband picked out like 5 places on the hike he wants to go back for a picnic so I am confident we’ll be back. Hopefully next time with water.

He also wants us to join an orienteering team, which he was very good at doing when he was in high school. I am all for a scavenger hunt in the woods for fun but its usually a race and I am a slow damn beast with busted knees so I am not thrilled about that element of the plan. But I told him that as long as we do it for fun and don’t have to run, I’m all for it.

But since this is something totally random that I’m a little scared to do that I agreed to do for him, I told him that the exchange for this is that, if I join with him, he has to do either NaNoWriMo or Script Frenzy. Before you scoff that this is unreasonable, before my husband was an engineer, he was originally going to school to be a journalist so he can write and, on top of that, he has a story he’s been working on and it’s awesome. So just like I like to hike so orienteering is not that far of a stretch for me, its not an unreasonable request for him. We’ll see what happens there. He would prefer to do NaNo than Screnzy, he says, because the script format freaks him out.

So anyway, Monday we were going to see my grandparents and my father insisted we needed to leave at 9 AM. This meant that I had to get up before 7 AM so I could do my day job before we left for the day. There was some amusement where I told my mother to roll her eyes at him for me for this plan and she did so effectively that he changed it to 9:30 which was a small triumph.

It went kinda like this:
Mom: Dad wants to leave at 9 AM.
Me: Here’s what I want you to do. Walk into the room where Dad is and say, “This is a message from Hillary. Then roll your eyes as dramatically as you can and leave the room.”
*I hang up the phone. Time passes. Mom calls me back laughing hysterically.*
Mom: I gave your father your message and he gave you a half hour so its now 9:30 AM.
Me: Well, I thank you for your half an hour worth of eye rolling.
Mom: My eye sockets kinda hurt now.

Other gems? My grandmother referred to my grandfather as a “Bossy Ass.” That is my new catchphrase.

Either way, dead from the hike, I still had to get up at half past dawn.

It was very good to see my grandparents but…heavy, you know? Lots of stuff going on there and even when its a good day, it makes you worry about the big picture for everyone else and I came home that night a bit…out of it emotionally not to mention tired as hell. So I hid that evening and played a computer game for many hours which is a luxury that I haven’t really taken since college.

Of course, playing a computer game meant that I didn’t work at night like I usually do so I had this master plan of all the work I was going to do on Tuesday.

So I wake up at 10:30, sleeping in like a total slug because I can on Tuesdays. I literally stand up out of bed and, boom, the power goes out. I have breakfast, make the bed, generally putter around hoping the power will go on any minute now. It doesn’t. It is remarkable hard to do an online job with no power, let me tell you.

Finally I get out my laptop figuring surely there is something I can do without power. Of course, my laptop isn’t charged and it only has about 45 minutes of power left on it and no internet. So I decided to make this my own private version of Write or Die where I have to write as many words as possible before my laptop battery dies. This was kind of fun. I wrote 2K ish words, the exact number is on my laptop, but I outlined an entire new novel I have been thinking about lately so its good I got those ideas down if nothing else.

I also totally lucked out in that just when I was like, my laptop is going to die, I should shut it off, the power finally came back on some time after noon. So I tried to get as much work done as possible before husband came home but, of course, my mojo was all thrown off.

So then we were sitting there having dinner and discussing our theories for LOST which was going to be on at 9. We were reading our favorite theory sites and discussing and totally pumped for the new episode. So we sit down the watch it and the sound isn’t working (likely because of the morning’s power outage) but we can get the sound to kinda work so we are like whatever, let’s just watch it like this. Then, about 20 minutes into the program, the freakin’ power goes out again. Not only is it annoying to lose power, in the middle of a new episode of LOST is just freaking cruel.

We call the power company and they say it will be back on at midnight. So we decide that its a sign from God that we should go to bed early
and get all ready for bed. And, of course, once we have committed to sleep, the power comes back on at about 10 PM. Now, we can’t watch the rest of LOST until tomorrow when ABC posts the episode online and, while I was going to stay up and work, we are already in bed so we were just like, screw it, and went to sleep anyway. So an annoying evening, to say the least.

So, all in all, this week has totally messed me up. I am not only out of my routine, but I’m mentally all weird up since I don’t trust the power to not die at any moment. Also, rain is not my friend, I run on sunshine.

That said, today, I got up at 7 AM (my usual time) the power was on and it looks like the sun is coming out! Looks like today is already nearly back on track!

Now I have to somehow avoid all discussion of LOST until we have an evening free to see the episode we missed.

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This was going to just be a Facebook status but Facebook said it was too long so I’m posting it here instead.

So, I’m up for a free upgrade on my cell phone a full 2 years ago. Still haven’t been able to find a phone I like even after 2 years, they all have those stupid keyboards that make them twice as thick. Whatever, my old phone is still awesome, so it’s not a big deal, I can wait.

My phone finally breaks (volume button breaks off but the thing is 4 years old and that is the only thing wrong with it so I don’t blame it) so I concede to get a new phone. After many many hours of research, I finally find a phone I like but it’s out of stock. Come back in Feb, they say, we will have more. I look today and the phone is back in stock, alright, but now requires a freakin’ $10 a month data plan it didn’t before.

So I say, fine, I will get a different phone. Yeah, they pretty much *all* now require the stupid data plan. Including the one my husband owns and was able to get without a data plan a few weeks ago. They went in and changed the requirements on a bunch of phones pretty much overnight.

I am so furious right now.

Has anyone successfully circumvented this or been grandfathered in by calling and getting angry? I am interested in trying it.

I haven’t screamed at a customer service rep in many years. It may be time to bust that out.

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OMG, you guys, I wrote a book! Remember that? It’s actually mostly terrible but parts of it are awesome and I know how to fix the terrible bits. I think.

You guys! I wrote a book that has the potential to not be terrible once I work on it a whole lot. How cool is that?

My To Do list today says, amongst other things “Frankenstein Mistress Novel.” My husband looked at it and asked what the heck that meant.

It means: Take all the random hacked up bits of Mistress Novel that are in all different documents and files and combine them into one latest and greatest draft. In other words, take some random parts and reanimate them into one glorious story.

And let me assure you *lightning crashes* It’s alive!!!!!

So I started this book before NaNoWriMo and then continued it during NaNoWriMo. So the 50K words I wrote during NaNo only counted new material which means it was the rest of Mistress Novel and then some of Mistress Novel II: Why haven’t you gone back to your original novel yet, you freakin’ hussy?* (*=not the real title)

I work on my books in sections, meaning my book is never one single document. I have hundreds of documents all over the place that are often individual chapters or scenes. I also always lose track of chapter numbers so after a while the documents are named after what happens in that scene and I end up with several chapter 10′s or something.

Also, during NaNoWriMo I got a bit off my outline in the middle there and had to literally rewrite chunks of book without going back and looking at the old. So you have things where I wrote myself a note like, “She still opens the door but now…” and then a new segment starts to replace what I originally wrote and then it reads “until he comes in, then you go back to file x until the part with the headlights when….” and another section. It was very confusing but I think I have put everything together in order now. I tried really hard not to read much of it so I don’t get obsessed with editing right now.

So for the first time in the recorded history of me, I actually put this entire book in the same document. I’m hoping this will make it less confusing. We’ll see. The elements I don’t like about it are: #1 if I lose this one document, I lose everything and #2 its so big, it is really really confusing and intimidating to work with.

Oh and remember that tightened version of the first chapter I was talking about? Just did a comparison of it and the original in Microsoft Word to make sure there wasn’t anything in the original I needed or left out plot wise. Despite the fact that the exact same things still happen in that scene, the only words in common in the entire chapter between old and new are the following words: character names, smashed, the, in, of and the last 13 words of the last sentence which stayed exactly the same.

I was very impressed with this. No one can hack up a chapter like me, apparently.

As a bonus, I also did a good ole track changes on the first 6 chapters and got some simple typos today which is more than I ever dreamed I’d get done. (Huge props go to my cousin who helped me do some of my eBay work yesterday, thereby letting me steal a little time off to work on my book!)

Major editing starts soon. Man, do I wish there was a way to pause all my normal work to be able to do the editing all at once!

Anyway, no new words added to the count since it’s been all edits and revisions this week so I cannot show the potato with any kind of update. Hope you managed to stay on track though with whatever you’re working on!

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I have a lot of thoughts I want to blog about but not a huge amount of time so here are some quickies to hold you over. Here they are in gloriously illogical order.

• Really enjoying the Discworld series. Only on book 3 but I may have read them too fast as I totally dreamed about being a wizard last night. Also, I know people say they are the series that J K Rowling ripped off for Harry Potter but, so far, I don’t see any ripping off. That said, I am only 3 books in. I love them, they are hilarious. Comparing them to Douglas Adams isn’t fair because Terry Pratchett is a WAY better storytelling. I love Adams, he is hilarious, but his stories don’t really, you know, make sense. Pratchett is funny AND tells a good story. The first book took some time to get into but from that point on, they are awesome. I love The Luggage. I want to marry him and have little baby handbags.
• I am so loving all this new Muppet content. Please do not stop the glorious tide!
• My husband and I made all our food reservations for our upcoming Disney trip and I am embarrassingly excited about the food. I keep thinking about it at odd hours. 
• I am so glad that Facebook, Twitter et al didn’t exist when I was a teenage. I was able to make a perfectly good fool of myself in public when public wasn’t, you know, the whole planet Earth. 
• Husband and I totally downloaded ABBA: Number Ones last night upon learning they will be the band for the alumni ball at our college this year and listened obsessively. Husband is very excited. He wants to grow, and I quote, “a really bad mustache.”
• I’m trying to make a concerted effort to not say the phrase “I’m stressed.” I apparently say this way too often, according to those close to me. I’m hoping that if I don’t say it, I will, in turn, not actually be stressed. Stay tuned for if this works.
• Would a weekend in Kentucky be fun? The My Little Pony Convention is there this year, not sure if I want to go. Convince me.
• Facebook has made me very territorial about my friends and family. Whenever someone comments on something posted by a close friend or family remember and I don’t know who they are I feel all, “And who the hell are you???!!!” It’s like, they are my people, back off random person. If you were all that close with them, I’d have heard of you by now!
• If they release a color Kindle, I should totally do a Kindle version of The She-Ra Collector’s Inventory. Maybe I should do it now anyway in advance of the inevitable release. Hmmm.

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Just about every year you see an article or two going on about how New Year Resolutions “don’t work” or they “just discourage you.” I feel like the people who say that are just as bad as the people who say NaNoWriMo is no good because its “too hard and people who can’t do it get discouraged.”

Yes, setting goals and sticking to them is hard. No one said it wasn’t. But accomplishing something that is difficult is an amazing feeling and keeps us from becoming complacent in our lives. Saying something isn’t worth doing because it’s “too hard” and you’ll be discouraged when you quit is, frankly, ridiculous.

I am a big fan of New Years Resolutions and I have gotten better and better over the years of making them reachable goals and less open ended. I have several on-going goals this year (such as working on keeping a normal sleep schedule) and several reach and done type goals (finishing a long standing project or two).

As you’ve likely noticed, I am pretty big on goals (often very difficult ones) in general so it should come as no surprise that I like to give myself new ones every January. I think it all comes from that school mentality that I often miss. I need life to be broken up into checkpoints, marking periods and due dates or I just flounder around.

That said, whether you are a fan of the resolution or not, I highly recommend reading this great article by Maggie Stiefvater called “I Intend to Smack 2010 Around”. It is long but very much worth it (and it also has some funny pictures in it to break up all the text). I don’t normally give such a big recommendation to an article but I think its very universal advice that just about anyone could use this time of year told in a funny, conversational style.

I intend to write up a few of my new resolutions as I go in posts of their own but I have to ask, what are your goals for the year?

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