Monday, January 28, 2008

Wedding Bells and the Nobel prize for literature

The "sisters before misters" club lost another member to matrimony yesterday. My cousin Shelly married Jon at a little conference center tucked back in the woods in Canby. It rained all day and froze too, but anything less would have been disappointingly un-Oregonian, so touting umbrellas and dodging mud puddles just added to the fun. We're thankful nobody slipped and fell on the slick sidewalks. This is my second cousin to get married so far, which leaves a potential 19 weddings left to go among my first cousins--the fun is just getting started!

I've been working on several project this week, including getting ready to submit some writing to publishers. I've been researching publishers and learning about the process off and on for several years, but haven't got around to (or felt confident enough) to submit anything, but I have one that is ready and a couple of viable ideas now, so I'm going to do it blitz style and try to make some real progress on it in the first quarter of this year. And now that I'm telling you all, I'll have to follow through...

I've also been working on my German. They say it's good to use vocabulary words in a sentence to help it stick in your memory, so yesterday I came up with a way to use all 30 of my verb vocabulary words in one sentence. Sure beat writing 30 sentences.

Thanks to all you who voted on the alligator bag polls. I have decided to abide by majority rule in this case and keep the bag (I liked it all along anyway), and it's been in service now for over a week. It's working out quite well, and it's a good thing it's not any bigger since I've inherited a disposition to pack a purse to capacity.

So other than my cousin's wedding, here's the most exciting stuff that happened this week: I bought a pastry blender, the most important item on my list of things to buy for Europe since they are impossible to find over there. I knew my brothers had been in my room when I found wads of paper stuffed in the toes of my shoes. I got some new running britches (inspiration to run!) and went shopping at the craft store--the huge, wonderful, bursting-with-creativity craft store to which nothing in Basel compares! :) And even though I went in to "just look around" I came out with 6 packs of scrapbooking stickers, some die cuts, some paper, and some acid-free pens too. As I was perusing the paper aisles (yes, aisles plural) I overheard two other girls talking, and one complaining, "oh, why did you make me come with you!?" as she put more paper in her basket. The store is that powerful! It makes us do all kinds of things we don't want to do. Scrapbooking for instance? Totally a soccer mom kind of activity. I do it utterly against my will.

4 comments:

  1. Viel Glück mit der Schriftstellerei - ich würde gerne mal eines Deiner Werke lesen. Ich hoffe, diese Verben gehören zu Deinem aktiven Wortschatz, und werde Dir gerne das zeigen, was ich von der Basler Bastelszene kenne - denn basteln heisst mehr als nur Krimskrams in Alben kleben!

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  2. tut mir leid, aber ich verstehe nicht deutsche (or at least that's what I like to keep people thinking....)

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  3. Much luck with the Schriftstellerei - I would read gladly times one of your works. I hope, these verbs belong to your active vocabulary, and you gladly that will show, what I know from the Basler tinkering scene - are called more than only Krimskrams tinker in albums to stick!
    [courtesy of babelfish]

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  4. I think Google's translation was better... :)

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