irrelevant (and sometimes questionable) ramblings

We here at Clan Starr are temporarily a family of four (for the next four weeks, or so), as the Step-Offspring has arrived for her stay!

Along with that, day camp starts, so the Offspring will be busy having tons of fun (at least, I hope so)!
Unfortunately, it doesn’t really feel like the end of June, as temperatures have dropped, and there’s supposed to be rain for the next three or four days. Oh, well. It will get better. I’m certain of that!

Have a great week, all! I’ll be around and will attempt to regale you with tales of all sorts of foolishness. (Key word here is “attempt”…)

At the risk of tooting my own horn too loudly, I have to admit that sometimes I’m a rather witty writer. (At least, my old posts make me laugh. I can’t vouch for anyone else. )

Along that vein, I bring you a goodie that was originally posted February 3, 2007. Some of the answers are really amusing now, lemme tells ya!

Hat-tip to Ann.

1. Hi my name is… Slim Shady? or Felicity Shagwell? What about Pussy Galore? No? How ’bout Sybil?

2. Never in my life have I… danced the Watusi.

3. The one person who can drive me nuts is… me.

4. High School… Best left unmentioned.

5. When I’m nervous… I can’t sit still

6. The last time I cried was… what time is it now?

7. If I were to get married right now my maid of honor/best man would be… absent. ‘Cause that’s not happening.

8. My hair is… on my head, silly (oh, and okay, my crowning glory, if I may be so bold…)

9. When I was 5…. it was 1977. I think that was a good year. I dunno. I don’t really remember it.

10. Last Christmas… I gave you my heart / but the very next day, you gave it away (damn you, George!)

11. I should be… on the cover of the Rolling Stone.

12. The craziest recent event was…  I haven’t been crazy lately. That I know of. Damn, we need more crazy in our lives…

13. If I were a character on ‘Friends’ I’d be… in New York right now. Cool. That’d be worth putting up with Ross…

14. By this time next year… I’ll be another year older. And if I’m still living at home, I shall commit hara kiri.

15. My current gripe… Boys.

16. I have a hard time understanding… almost anything nowadays, but especially Boys.

17. There’s this girl I know who… one time, at Band Camp…

18. You know I like you when… a) I clam up completely or b) flirt outrageously

19. If I won an award, the first person I would thank would be… God only knows. I think I’d make my speech up on the spot.

20. Take my advice… if your gut says no, listen to it.

21. My ideal breakfast… would consist of lots of coffee, toast smothered in butter and jam (just no marmalade), a chunk of cheese, and a big bowl of fruit salad. It would be served to me in bed, and I wouldn’t have had to make ANY of it.

22. If you visited the place I was born… You’d be in my neighborhood right now.

23. I plan to visit someone… wearing nothing but a trenchcoat and stilettos. Someday.

24. If you spend the night at my house… be prepared to share the bed with a rolling and kicking Offspring. Oh, but I’ll make great coffee and fantastic crepes to make up for it.

25. I’d stop my wedding if… what wedding??

26. The world could do without… Arrogance, violence and greed.

27. I’d rather lick the belly of a cockroach than… Ew. There’s nothing I’d not do in that instance.

28. Most recent thing I’ve bought myself… a SWEET MP3 player. Yeah!

29. Most recent thing someone else bought for me… erm…nothing since Christmas, that I can think of.

30. My favorite blonde is… me. (Oh, all right. The Offspring.)

31. My favorite redhead is… I don’t think I know any redheads. Hm.

32. My middle name is… Sweet Thang. (Seriously. You think I’m joking?)

33. This morning I… really, really, really wanted to sleep some more.

34. Living things I would like to see flying besides birds are… pigs. Now wouldn’t that make some people eat their words?

35. Once, at a bar… I danced on the bar top. While sober.

36. Last night… Boy, do I wish I had something juicy to put here… *sigh*

37. There’s this guy I know who… I’d really like for Christmas. Or my birthday. I’m not picky.

38: I don’t know… the square root of 43672668343276. (I made the number up, people. Please don’t give me a hard time in the Comments…)

39. A better name for me would be… Gwyneth Paltrow. Or Cameron Diaz. Or Renee Zellweiger.

40. When I go back to school… I’m going to get out of homework and exams by sleeping with the prof. (Sorry, Ann — I just had to steal this one because it’s the perfect answer. )

41. My birthday is… usually a bit of a letdown.

42. What I really want for Valentine’s Day is… see #37.

43. I’m wearing… out my welcome.

I wonder if they’ll turn Neverland Ranch into some sort of weird Michael Jackson museum-slash-amusement park.

You know, kinda like Dollywood… but creepier.

Yeah, I know, I’m jumping on the “MJ tribute” bandwagon. But despite his later decline into extreme weirdness, he was a big part of my formative pre-teen years.

I hope he’s finally able to find some peace, and he’s rockin’ out wherever he is. Thanks for what you gave us, Michael.

(I can’t get the original video — YouTube has disabled the embed for it. But this is him in all his moonwalking glory.)

I’m tempted to say that 1,620 words in one hour is really pretty damned good.

(The stopwatch technique is working for me today, lemme tell ya…!)

Thanks to Auntie ‘Em and cousin P, I am now as hip as the cool kids, because I’ve tried out Grooveshark. Grooveshark is a cool little music player that lets you create your own playlist and customize something like your own personal little radio station (but without the commercials).

The neatest thing is, you can select the “popular” link and all the current hippest and most happenin’ tunes come up. That way, you can be as cool as any teenager, fo’ shizzle.

(Yeah, I know. I’ll stop now.)

Anyway — here’s one of my favourite new tracks (but then again, I’ve been a fan of the BEP for a while now…)
*edit — for some reason, my html-challenged self cannot figure out how to embed the damned widget. So I shall refrain. Suffice it to say, it’s the Black Eyed Peas’ new track, “Boom Boom Pow”. Use your imagination.

I think I have goofed.

The story has stalled briefly, and my gut is telling me that I have taken a wrong turn. I can’t seem to get it started again, which means I will have to change something. However, I need to make a certain connection (not connecting body parts–yet–you pervs, but a literary one) and I need to relay a certain bit of information. I will have to brainstorm this a bit to see if I can come up with something different.

It pains me to use the delete key; it really, really does. It’s like chopping off a finger. (No, I have no experience with this; it’s literary license, okay? Gimme a break…!) *sigh*

In the meantime, I’m also driving myself mad, because I know there was something I was supposed to look up online…and do you think I can remember what that was? I thought of it last night as I was lying in bed, reading, but I didn’t want to get up and go to my office. That’s what I get for being lazy.

Oh, well. I shall carry on. Stay cool, gang!

Saturday brought us one of my favourite events — Juhannus, or the Finnish celebration of Midsummer. Our version takes place at a house on a lake, and involves such traditions as having a sauna and swim (yum!), food for days (yummier!), the family volleyball game (yes, I know — not very Finnish, but it’s more fun than doing a rubber-boot toss) and the capper of fireworks and sparklers.

The weather even co-operated, and while it was still muggy and humid out, the rain held off until later in the evening. It was also great because the temperature wasn’t too high — so we weren’t dying in the heat, either.

Needless to say, everyone slept really well Saturday night.

Now we’re back to the grind once again. The Offspring is on her last week of school, and while normally this might cause some dread — facing the upcoming summer holiday — this year, she’s going to day camp for the first time. We’ll see how this goes; these firsts are sometimes iffy, but she has a couple of friends who will also be in the camp, so she won’t be completely alone. And we don’t know if any schoolmates are enrolled, either, so there might be some pleasant surprises.

In the meantime, I might actually be able to continue getting work done over the summer! W00T!

(Don’t get me wrong, I adore my child, but having a seven-year-old constantly underfoot 24/7 gets old really fast.)

Anyhoo. Speaking of grinds, I should get back to mine. Catch you on the flip side, gang!

Well, no writing steamy lesbian sex scenes for me today (at least, I can’t see it happening, what, with everything else on the to-do list…).

Instead, it’s CostCo, Sears, gym for me, swimming for the Offspring, bringing the Offspring to the Mater and Pater’s, grabbing a bite to eat, then off to our “Girls’ Night Out” event for the group of MILFs that we are. Hehehe.

(Oh, it’s not that scandalous… we’re going bowling. Although who knows what we might plan for a future GNO event?!)

Don’t worry, B.E., we’ll forego the male strippers. This time.

All right. I have a goal, at least for now.

I’ve decided which project to work on, and spent part of yesterday putting it into the correct format and doing a quick read-through. I am estimating I’ve got just under half of the story written, so just over half to go.

I’m going to aim to have it completed by the end of the month, which, while not impossible, will be a bit of a challenge. I’m aiming for approximately 30K words altogether.

After that, I am going to do something for the 2010 EC Cavemen anthologies and see if I can get into one of those again. I’ve got a couple of basic ideas that could work for that “quickie” length, so I’ll blow up that bridge when I get to it.

But for now, it’s onward and upward, a bite of breakfast and then getting some dirty words down on screen. Yee-haw.