Snowmageddon!

Being that it's the middle of January, and the east coast has just seen the worst mega-snow fall in almost a century, I thought I'd do a post with snow images. 

The east coast really has no bragging rights.

Winter beauty at its best.

Enjoy!

(all images taken from pinterest)

Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control...

I was without Internet for a few days, and so, I wasn't around... in case anyone wondered, asked, or even missed me?

It actually made it easy for me to get something done for a change.

Edits on Vampire Caprice is still in progress. I will be sending a section of chapters to my second beta reader to go over them. Meanwhile I have been using the saved PDF's from Grammarly. I'm finding that in some cases it's not fool proof, and it doesn't know French at all. But when it catches something, it's a good thing I had it. I will go through it using these various editing devices, and then my last editing will be me doing a find & replace, or whatever, when I'm ready. After that, I read through it TWICE. So, that being said, it might be April when I've got this bad boy out. It is a long book. 343 pages, as a matter of fact.

Meanwhile work on Dhampir Legacy is suspended until I have finished with Caprice, or, I'm letting the manuscript sit a while between readings.

Work on my large afghan (granny square), is coming along. I have placed a number of the squares out on a sheet on the floor to see how I want it, and where I want the colors. It also lets me see what colors I still need to make before I go ahead with stitching them together. And a friend is having a June baby, and I want to crochet a baby blanket for the bundle for her shower. So, I'm busy.

Despite the fact that it is March, we still have snow--piles that have been here since January, in fact--and are expecting more. But the weather prediction is for 40's coming in soon. Could we actually see some melting and thawing soon? We were discussing that perhaps we should bet on our last snow event, or the last day we see snow on the ground. I'm going with April 8th--on the snow sticking around. March 25th for the last snow flying.

So, there you have my updates. I'll be posting irregularly until further notice.

COME ON SPRING!

SNOW, SNOW, SNOW!!!!

Yeah. In case you haven't heard we've been hit by the winter from hell here in the mid-west. But we are dealing.

The water pipes in our laundry room have been frozen for about a week--which meant we had to fill buckets and gallon water jugs up in order to fill the washer. Interesting note: the thing takes at least 16 gallons each fill and will not do a partial load.

My husband has plowed at least every other day these past weeks. Did I mention that there is no where for the snow to go anymore? We've thought about doing snow sculptures just for the hell of it, except it keeps getting too cold to do much of anything outside.

This morning we had to drive our transit buses in this crap. Well, I simply decided I would not be able to keep my bus on time. At least our company is understanding about that. There were no good roads until much later on. And I was happy to see that for the most part everyone knew to go slow. The ones who didn't, the ones who thought they could drive like they always do... well God save anyone in their way. I saw plenty of those today. One guy couldn't stop for the red light and slid right through the light I was waiting at. I know not to jump the gun at the light. These guys are nuts.

We have begun putting out seed for the birds and critters. Today one of the squirrels was sitting by the truck on it's haunches looking into the picture window, his head moving to eye the porch. That they are looking for us to feed them is both cute and almost sad. The snow is too deep for them to dig in to find anything to eat. Besides, it's fun to watch the different birds and squirrels come in to eat.

I've been busy on the manuscript. It's a slow go. I get home, have lunch, and try and get a few hours in, if that's possible, of writing. Then, I'm brain dead, or just dead from my day. But I'm having fun getting this book put together. Realized I was still on the "crisis" part and I'm building toward the climax. I've decided that I'm going to be like warm weather, and come late. Maybe in May we'll see this snow all melt and be gone. So, there isn't much time for much else. Including blogging.

My treat of the afternoons has become a mix of hot cocoa with a half teaspoon of instant caffeine free coffee and vanilla flavored creamer. It almost makes my day. That and my hot bath were I can warm up and see my toes turn pink again.

But we are at the crux of winter, now. The days are getting longer, and the sun's angle is better. So, there's hope.

And my granny afghan is coming along. I need more yarn but I'm working on the colorful squares. I've got 148 so far and I need 324 for this large afghan. I do this in the late afternoons to relax. It doesn't require much brain power and I'm not straining my eyes reading something. I've actually become crochet happy. I've actually discovered a whole community of crocheters and a bunch of FREE sites where I can grab some patterns. I downloaded a free ebook for these things. I don't know if I'll make them all, but there's a few in there I'd like to try.

This one is pretty. I'd like to make it some time. But mine is
more on the traditional colors.

I haven't had much time to come around to get to everyone's blog, and afraid that facebook has also been a similar experience as well. I simply don't have time to do it all.

So, until things warm up, and I'm back in my office, or something else happens. I'm just going to ride out this winter wrapped up in my afghan, sipping my cup of warm cocoa/coffee, working on the vampire books.

POLAR VORTEX HURRICANE

WHAT?
Well, that's what one of my buds coined this morning when I picked him up on the route #7.

We've heard how Georgia got hit with an ice storm--2" of ice with 3" of snow on top of that and stranded people because A: they don't have the equipment to do what we do up north. B: They don't understand the dynamics of driving a car on ice. Uhhhmmm, yeah. You don't. They tried to tell people to stay home. You know how it is. They didn't listen. Dumb humans!

Well, enough about those people. I thought I'd stop in and give you my report from my house down here on Crego Rd., about 8 miles south of DeKalb IL. (we are about 60 miles west of Chicago, and Chicago ain't go nothing on us, believe me!)

We have mountains of snow. And it's nothing idyllic as the picture above. Wish it were.
We have been having a visitor dubbed by our meteorologists as the "Polar Vortex" and it came down to visit all of you all down south... that's why hundreds were stranded sleeping wherever they found a warm place to crash.

David Tulis AP

We have had extremely cold temperatures. The minus 15 readings with wind chills ranging around -40
Which had school closings, including NIU, which my husband and I drive campus buses for them. To give you an idea, we were not going to make it to work. There were 3,4 &5 foot drifts across our drive, across the road, and in order to move that the road commissioner's of our township brought the BIG HONKIN' ASS JOHN DEERE with three awesome blades: one in front one beneath the belly of the beast and the huge arm that extends out and pushes the snow away from the edge of the road. It took him 3 hours to remove snow from our end of the road. We were told people who drove down our road had to stop and turn around on Monday. Yeah. Gonna take your pooch for a walk in the park? I don't think so!!!

This is the first time while my husband and I have lived here that such a huge amount of snow has fallen. We've known many a snow storms and blizzards. The Blizzard of '79 comes to mind.

Sun-Times Media file
Belden Ave. just west of Halsted, Chicago January 16, 1979

In this blizzard it began snowing on January 12, and snowed for nearly three days. Almost two feet of snow fell, and add this to the more than foot and a half from before that. This is why Mayor Micheal Bilandic lost his job and Jane Byrne got the job--he didn't get the plows out there to do their job.

Well, this is all stuff that happened in Chicago. I remember that the snow was so much there was no where to put the snow. It was normal to drive down a street with the snow piled up in the center of it. People put flags or other extensions on their antennas in order to be seen by other drivers before you came to an intersection! We were sledding down the roofs because there were natural slopes. People had to shovel snow off their roofs, or they would collapse. I remember one night a friend and I walked the half mile out to the corner bar in Cortland, I think my brother made it too. There was no one except the bartender there. We saw a car driving around in a field because they didn't know where the damned road was. Snowmobiles were putting in time rescuing people from the cars--like that poor soul out there.

And I was the one who said this year was setting up to become like that one in '79/80. We aren't there on snowfall totals, but it has snowed here every other day. Sometimes it's only an inch or so. Saturday we expect several inches. And next week even more.

At the moment, we have carved out our driveway and it looks like a white canyon. The same goes for the road with 12' high mounds of snow. They're so tall, and you can't see entrances so our park supervisor put up PVC pipes with little red flags on them so you can find the entrance to the park, and to our driveway.

Oh, and last item: We were running low on propane to heat the house with. My husband made the call to our supplier. They quoted him $800 for just a partial fill-up. He's like "What?" And they said that there was a shortage of propane, and that it was all over the news and the Internet. Well, we hadn't heard a thing about it at this point. (We did hear about it later on). He told them they could kindly kiss his ass. He said he'd run it down and then we'd call and tell them they could come and haul out their stupid tank. We'll get someone else next year. We have several space heaters. Some are the little blower heaters, and we also have these radiator heaters that have oil inside that heats up. They work fine. We dress a little warmer, cuddle under blankets and boy do I look forward to my hot bath in the afternoon! My toes are really chilly by then.

As a result of all this absolutely frigid weather, I've had to move my computer out of my office. It is in the west end of the house. One morning I went in there and it was 29 degrees! (Yeah I have a thermometer in there to check the temp). No way we could keep on throwing the heat in there, and still, I'd be cold!

So, I'm in the dining room typing this. Sort of like when I first started out with my computer. I'm still working on the next 2 books. The next Sabrina Strong book, and my brand new one "Dhampir Legacy"--a police procedural/paranormal-mix (yes, there are vampires in this one).

I'll be posting but not often as I work on my books... and deal with the Polar Vortex/Blizzard of 2014.

Christmas Past

I've got a lot of Christmas past to remember. The fun times as a child. I'm not sure why my parents began the Christmas Eve of gift-giving. Maybe they didn't want to be awoken by us so early in the morning making noises opening gifts, as their bedroom was downstairs. But I remember somehow they made a production of Santa coming to the front porch and leaving the wrapped presents and going "HO-HO-HO!" as "he" left. My thought was that one of the older brothers was "Santa" doing the HOHOHO-ing. The presents were probably already out there before we even knew it.

I remember a lot of snow in those days when I was a kid. There was a hill next to the church in our little town of 500 people, and they didn't have a plow, no one salted streets or sidewalks back then (yeah. I'm that old). We kids would take our sleds and we had a toboggan, and we'd have a blast sliding down that street!

On one Christmas Eve (I think), we were caught in a snow storm. I think it was in 1965 or something. Anyway we were coming back from visiting relatives in Aurora, and we couldn't make it home. I don't know where we wound up, but a family warmly allowed us to stay. Funny how my selective memory only remembers having gone into this house. Probably I was half-awake. I remember a grandfather clock. I remember it specifically because I thought that we walked into it. This may have been my creative imagination at work at such a tender age.

Later, after I married, my Christmases became super busy. There was a Christmas Eve with his family, mine, and then the next morning, we had our Christmas and then drove to Rockford to his grandmothers--a tiny house that somehow fit about 50-60 relatives--they had two hams, two turkeys, and lost of food. Gak! I was sick of all that celebrating and squeezing into the small attic at the tables they set up. It was so tight that once you got seated, you couldn't leave until all the ones in front of the door got up and left.

Eventually those days died out. One gathering of the family is now the norm. This year we couldn't go because of Dennis' back. Oh well. There's always next year.

But I do have lots of memories and pictures. I may have to pull those out and just reminisce.

I want to end this by saying THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS COME TO MY BLOG THIS YEAR!! Merry Christmas and I hope to see you in the New Year (2013!)

Happy 1st Day of Winter!

Well, you wouldn't know it to look outside my window right now that it is the first day of winter... there should be SNOW down. There isn't. You see green grass as far as the eye can see.

Well, I'd have to say that it's good in ways and bad. I don't mind having a mild winter for a change. Even a snowless one. I recall we had a very mild one back in 1999 (the year my father died), and we sat outside on New Years in lawn chairs in shorts. It was in the 70's--and no. We were not in Arizona at the time. We were right outside in our own back yard.

We don't have to drive in snow. That's one good point.

But on the other hand, having lived in the midwest all my life you sort of have the mind set that there should be snow on the ground by now and you should be freezing your assets off!

A bit of news:

Yesterday I got confirmation that the 7 books I ordered from my publisher for promotions (one is mine to keep), was sent on Monday. I got up and told my husband this bit of news--because he wants to read this next book badly and had hoped that he would be able to while we're off these next two weeks.

It wasn't five minutes later when he came to my office door asking me "When did you say the books were shipped?"

"Monday."

He moved into the door way further and held a large box in his hands. "Well, they're here!"

Weird, huh?

Because of the Christmas crush I'll wait until next week to send any books out. A couple of people won them and I need to send them out so that they can enjoy. I will announce winners then.

There really is nothing like seeing your own book in physical form. Holding it in my hands--oh, and by the way the cover is more awesome in person than in a picture. Believe me!---I read the back cover to my husband and couldn't quite finish I was just overwhelmed. A 30+ year old dream has come true. I've now got two books--a series--out there and people are buying it and enjoying it! I plan on getting the third book out next year and I'll have the fourth one ready at some point there after. I'm already getting ideas for the fifth book. It just never stops when I have developed characters and their world to such an extent that they seem real to me.

I have other things I'd like to work on as well. Eventually I'll reveal them, but they are in planning stages, or barely a few chapters written that I can't really talk about them.

Ah... 17 days off, I will have my writing cap on and I'll be deep into the mode. Of course we'll take a few days off to enjoy together as always.

One more day to get it done with, and I'll be FREE!

No-Name Thursday ~ My Day Went Fine

I had wished for no rain today--because we'd gotten rain for two days, basically. Well, it didn't rain but we did get one doozy of a cloud burst snow shower. It lasted for about 5 minutes, and quit. We then had a couple of small showers, with peeks of sun after that.

My day went fine. I always seem to cultivate friendships from a few young college men that find me interesting enough to slouch against the front area behind me (while I drive the bus) to talk to me during the 15 min. trip from campus to where they live. Each semester I loose one and gain one or two. The end of this semester I'll be loosing one. Michah is a biology major and he's moving to New Mexico where they don't get quite the diversity of temps, and--as I stressed--more beautiful surroundings. I will miss him. We had some interesting conversations in the past. *sigh*. But, I'll keep in mind all the things we spoke of and because of one area of interest in blood, I may have an interesting thing to use in a future book.

Why is it the young men will speak to me and not so much young women? I don't know. It was like that when I was younger. Guys gravitate to me more. There are some young women who will say hi to me. And of course older women who get on my bus will speak to me, too. But then we already have a lot in common. I think it's just something about me and my ways. While these young guys know I'm approximately as old as their mother, I'm not their mother and I dont' act like it. I can talk on their level. I tend to know what makes them chuckle and I think it's what they like best about me. I think that maybe also they like to talk to me because there is no pressure. And we're just chatting. Whereas if they speak to women their age, there is always some sort of pressure.

Because of the fact I'm waiting on edits, I'm not joining in any reindeer games blog hops, or anything that asks you to write flash fiction. I need to concentrate on what I need to do for the next couple of months. Gadz am I glad I didn't go ahead with NaNo. And glad that everyone out there is sort of busy with it. I'm feeling no pressure about doing posts, no one is really coming here to make comments, but that's okay. I don't mind. I just check on things and go back to my work.

Tomorrow is Friday, and it's Veteran's Day. Be thankful toward those who have sacrificed much in the name of our country.

Have a great evening and an even better Friday, everyone!

EKK! SNOW! (Plus other things)

If you live in the Midwest (northern fringe) you know that once November gets here, you're going to see the white stuff pretty darn soon. Well, we saw our first flakes. They were innocuous things, really. It was not cold enough for it to stick, it had been raining since yesterday. The weather people WARNED us that this would happen. And it did. Figures they'd get it right this time!

But, like I said it wasn't more than maybe 30-40 min. of the flakes. Being a bus driver, I have learned to drive in it. I hate to drive in it, but with more than a dozen years of experience driving a 12 and a half ton bus where all the lives seated behind you are counting on you to get them safely to their destination--and I've done so faithfully for that long--I feel that my driving habits are top notch.

So, from that to other news.

I have a winner from the last contest over on Urban Fantasy Investigations blog, and Denise Zaky has won an autographed paperback copy of my book. Congratulations to her and I will be mailing this out soon.

I've actually won a book from VampChix.  This is the book I've won below...

I'll talk about it later when I have read it.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying Cold Magic. I'm more than half way done with it. Once I do get through this book--it's 580 pages (not counting all the extras in the back). I love a long book, as long as it is good. And this one is.

I'm looking at my calendar and realize that Thanksgiving is only 2 weeks away. Dennis and I get 5 days off (w/o pay, but he's picking up a few extra hours to help). That new oven is going to get a good work out that day! Believe me we look forward to not driving a bus for 5 whole days! And then three weeks after that it will be semester break at NIU, and we will be driving break service for two weeks then off two weeks and then back on break service. After that my head spins, so I'm just trying to keep things straight in the next two months.

And I've noticed that it has been very quiet around here. But that's okay. I know that a lot of you are busy with your NaNo, or what have you. I am awaiting my edits. Once these are sent to me I'm going to be busy too.

I'm hopeful I will be having another book signing during my hiatus from bus driving. We shall see.

If you get a chance to stop in say hi. Remember I've begun Coffee Klatch Mondays, and this seems to be a good time for a bunch of you to come in and chat.