Today I took the kids to Baskin Robbins after Princess' dance presentation at school (more on the drama/trauma later). Usually Buddy will eat about 3/4 of his ice cream and then declare that he's done. I looked over at him today and he was almost all the way through - including eating the cone.

"Buddy! You're almost done! You usually don't eat it all!" I declared.

He looked at me with ice cream dripping of off his chin and said, in all seriousness, "Just doin' my job."

rkimedes sent me a present via texanfan (thank you again!). It is the book "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor" by Bruce Campbell. It's perfect! I've been wanting to read it for a while, I've just been lazy about going and getting it. Now I have something waiting for me when I finish "The Kite Runner".

I have a hard time referring to it as "If Chins Could Kill", though. I keep thinking of it as "Chin of Death". Chin of Death is big at the Cabin.

When Princess was about two years old, I had a special tickle that I developed just for her. I would grab her, put my arms around her and say, "Oh no! Oh no! It's the . . . " then I would spin her around to face away from me, bury my chin in the small of her back and continue "CHIN . . . OF . . . DEATH!!!!" and then I would rub my chin up and down her spine saying "Ya ya ya" with every *dig* while she squealed and giggled.

I remember having to explain that to her Mother's Day Out teacher when Princess ran up to me, turned around and yelled, "Chin of death!" Her teacher was less than amused, as I recall. I guess I can understand why. Nope. I can't. The lady needed to lighten up. No matter. Chin of Death is a staple of tickle time around the Cabin. That and the Tickle Pretzel.

Instructions on the Tickle Pretzel to come in a later post.

Yesterday I had lunch with texanfan. Since we got to know each other through our mutual friendship with incandragon, our conversation naturally turned to her. We both marveled at her story-telling abilities and her talent for surrounding herself with interesting people. I told texanfan that I was always in awe of incandragon's friends because they were all so diverse and fun and how at some point my confidence level shot up because I realized that I was one of her friends! I was in that group of "interesting people"!

Texanfan and I also talked about incandragon's seemingly unlimitless supply of stories from her family, but how when she sits down to write (not to blog, mind you), she really prefers writing fantasy or even horror stories. We came up with a solution to keep us (the fans of her family stories) and her (wanting to write fiction) happy. She could write the stories about her family, but in the stories, her dad is a zombie. He'd have to be a different kind of zombie - one who retained his ability to reason and carry on conversations, but he'd still exist on brains. Now the game of Silly Buggers has more at stake! Losers get their brains eaten!

When can we expect the first story?!

I have a scene stuck in my mind.  It happened one night when I was at a friend's party.  It was completely visual - no one said anything.  I burned it into my brain because I thought it would make a perfect scene in a movie.  The challenge for me now is to relate the scene in a non-visual way.  Since my medium of choice these days is writing, I thought I'd try to meet that challenge.  Input is highly appreciated - but only of the constructive sort, please!

 

This was WAY too much fun. And I did very well, thank you!

A belated happy Mother's Day to all!  I was busy all day with Mama's Day stuff and just didn't really make it to LJ.



Now I would like to take a few moments and wish a belated Happy Mother's Day to all the moms I know - whether your children came from your body or not, whether they walk upright or on all fours, you have taken little beings into your heart and called them yours.  Thank you for all the love you pour out.  The world couldn't turn without you!  I hope you all had a wonderful day!

The Nightmare Factory was very busy.  It was Halloween weekend so the house was rockin.  I made my rounds and noticed that our chainsaw wielding maniac (affectionately  known to the staff as "Animal") was just not up to par.  Oh, he was scary, but he wasn't up to HIS standards that night.  In my five seasons with the Nightmare crew I had never seen Animal off his game.  He assured me that he was fine, just suffering from a bad taco or something equally benign.  He did NOT want to miss out on the best weekend of the year.  I told him to call us if he needed us and that I'd be back to check on him later.

Not too long after that I heard a frantic call over the headsets.  Animal was down.  In no time we had a replacement maniac on the chainsaw and Animal had been taken out into the fresh air.  He was in pain.  His face contorted as he doubled over holding his abdomen.  Steve, the owner, turned to me and told me to take Animal to the nearest ER, which just happened to be down the street.  We loaded him into my car and I sped off.

I am not a large person.  Animal is.  I did my best once we got to the hospital to support him as we walked through the sliding doors into the emergency room.  I have never seen ER staff move so quickly.  I didn't realize until they burst into activity and started yelling, "Where was he stabbed?  Where's the entrance wound?" that Animal was covered in stage blood and I was dressed like a vampire. 

Looking back, we must have been a sight!  Here I was dressed like a female Lestat - gray coattails, black pants and a white ascot, pale foundation and ruby-red lips.  Animal was wearing old, ripped up clothing covered in (stage) blood.  I don't know if this is a statement made by any other vampires/serial killers, but after a while, I just didn't notice the blood.  I could be carrying on very serious conversations with actors who looked as if they had been working in a slaughter house all day and not bat an eye.  One just becomes blind to the trappings of the job, I suppose.

I quickly shouted that the blood was fake, that we were from the Nightmare Factory down the street and that he was an actor and had collapsed in his scene.  They were not amused, but they were relieved.  And I think that the stage blood did a lot to get Animal seen more quickly.  The staff was probably not keen on having someone writhing in pain and covered in blood (fake or not) sitting in the waiting room. 

It turned out that Animal had kidney stones.   I think he passed them that night.  I'm not sure if he returned to work that weekend.  Knowing him, he did.  He wouldn't let a kidney stone or two get in the way of terrorizing young, screaming girls. 

I love my friends!

I've been thinking a lot about why I blog and what drives me to write what I write. One quote keeps coming back to me.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to die."
Roy
Blade Runner

I don't want my memories to wash away. They may not be earth-shattering, but they are my memories and I want them to live long after I'm gone. (Although I'm not planning on going anywhere anytime soon.)

What are your earliest memories? Not just images that dance in and out, but memories where you reason, think and even talk. My earliest memories are of Athens, GA. Dad was going to school at the University of Georgia. We lived in an apartment first, and then a trailer park. I don't remember the apartment. Well, I have a vague memory there involving crayons. But that is more of an image or just a feeling. My memories of events and of being conscious of my surroundings begin in the trailer park.


These are my earliest, cognizant memories. I would be very interested to hear others' first memories! (Hint)

Taken from khereva. 

Here are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, and italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

Hubby is on his way home.  His first flight was canceled but the airline was able to get him here.  Nine hours after he was supposed to be here, but he's coming home!  Yay!

It's just been a horrible day.  The kids were at each other YET AGAIN so I took the drastic measure of telling them to go to their rooms and stay there.  Indefinitely.  For some reason, that set Princess off.  She's been alternately crying and screaming for the last hour or so.  She'll calm down and then say something really snotty or disrespectful which will extend her sentence and she'll wail again.  We were supposed to spend the afternoon at my brother's house again which we were all looking forward to.  We've had to either postpone or scrap those plans.  I told them that they were going nowhere showing the attitudes and behaviors that they've been showing. 

One of the hardest things about discipline is that a lot of the time it really DOES hurt me just as much as it hurts them.  I really wanted to go to Lance's house and hang out again.  I enjoy the company of his family.  His house is very kid-friendly and just plain fun.  But I'm not taking my two snarling pit-bulls over there.  Also, I really needed to go to the grocery store and get something for dinner.  We've been eating on the run the past few days because of our social calendar and so I wanted to eat at home.  I am definitely NOT taking them to the store.  That would probably result in CPS being called - either because of me yelling or because of them trying to kill each other.  Or both.  I am at the end of my rope.  I'm tired of being referee.  I'm tired of the constant strife.  I'm just tired.

Now I do have to say that it's not all strife.  They do get along very, very well sometimes.  They'll play together famously sometimes for hours, but then one will do something or one will all of a sudden cop an attitude with the other and the rest of the day is completely shot.  Seriously.  They cannot get peace back once it's gone.  THAT'S the catch in all of this.  Sometimes we have almost a whole day without bickering.  Sometimes it starts before they reach the breakfast table.  Sigh. 

Princess just came downstairs.  She has stopped crying and is very much trying to snap out of it.  I will give her a chance and see if she can do it.  I just pray that Buddy doesn't smell blood and go for the jugular! 

It's never a dull moment around here.

but it was too late. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The kids and I spent most of the day at my brother's house. We just hung out, the kids played and the adults gabbed. We went and got cupcakes at Hey Cupcake (Hubby will probably pull ahead of me in the contest at this point, but the cupcake was SO worth it) and then went to the park for a while. The weather was perfect today. Low humidity, warm but not hot, and sunny. Park weather for sure. Then after the park we went and got dinner at Trudy's. We got home and the kids collapsed into bed. By that time it was almost 9:30 and all I wanted to do was sit on the couch and chill out. I didn't want any output (i.e. blog), just input (i.e. watch TV).

Going out to rent a DVD was out of the question because the kids were already down. So I browsed the list of movies on demand. I was looking for The Orphanage because I had heard good things about it. Not on the list. (Does anyone have an opinion on The Orphanage?) Then The Mist caught my eye.

Note to self: Think long and hard about seeing any movie involving "kid peril" and a parent trying to protect a child. I should have learned my lesson with Panic Room. Being a parent myself, I now have a whole new perspective when it comes to movies like that. With The Mist I knew I was in trouble almost immediately. It was WAY too intense. And the kid in danger was an older version of Buddy. Not conducive to relaxing and having fun with a horror flick. All of a sudden, despite the man-eating tentacles, it became all too real.

I DID make it all the way through the movie. I had to stop it twice and walk around and recover a bit (it was during one of those breaks that Hubby called to tell me that his flight tomorrow has been canceled due to mechanical problems - but that's an unfolding story). During the second break I decided to check my e-mail and found ericbassrocker's comment warning me that the last five minutes might seriously piss me off. I had heard that the last five minutes made or broke the film. That is true. That is true. Um. What to say about the last five minutes?

I'm still reeling. I had to blog because my heart was racing and there's NO WAY I could try to sleep right now. I still have an upset stomach. It was a great ending. I hated it. But it was perfect. It shouldn't have happened that way. But it was the way it should have happened. If it hadn't happened that way, it would have been a cheap, Hollywood ending. But I hate it. I'm mad.  However, I commend Frank Darabont for the ending. Can you tell that I'm whirling around in circles right about now?

There were other things in the movie that I liked - I liked that one of the biggest heroes was kind of a nerdy, weak-looking guy, and I liked Marcia Gay Harden's performance (even though I do get tired of the Christians being portrayed as wackos). I thought that it was a good movie and very well done. Would I ever watch it again? Probably not. Would I recommend it to anyone? That would depend on the person. It's so intense that I would really have to warn people about it. Especially parents. I can't decide, though, if I'm glad that I watched. The jury is still out. We'll see if I can sleep tonight and what dreams come to me when I do drift off. I'm very glad that I always let Princess sleep in our bed when Hubby's gone. I need to cuddle with my kid.

So . . . I watched a movie and I blogged. Now I'll try to sleep. Yawn.

Okay! My busy week is at an end. It began with the Nebulas last weekend and it ended last night with Princess' school play. Along the way I took, went through and edited over 1000 photos. And I loved every minute of it. It was a lot of fun and I got some great shots.

Last night I was also recruited into service in helping record the play on DVD. I got to operate the "switcher" (don't know if that's the technical term, but that's what I call it) that switches between Camera 1 and Camera 2. I got the job because I was the only person who volunteered to help who had actually been to both rehearsals so I knew the flow of the show. I had one person with a script telling me when the next group of kids would come on. I had another person coaching the two camera operators as to which shot to get. Most of the time we had one camera on a wide shot and the other camera doing close-ups. It may sound like we had too many cooks in the kitchen, but it was just enough! The other two volunteers were invaluable and it went incredibly smoothly. And I completely LOVED it! I think it turned out well, although I haven't seen the final product. But the point I'm making is that I have found yet another volunteer niche. I do not ever want to organize a school event. I don't want to be on a committee. I don't want to gather anything, call anyone or arrange anything. I will show up, take photographs and help run the cameras and the "switchers". Ahhhh. It feels good to find my place and not dread picking up the phone when I know an event is coming up.

I've also learned a lot about myself this week. I had a confidence crisis at the beginning of the week, partly stemming from some attitude that I took from someone at the Nebula ceremony (still deciding whether or not to blog more in depth about that). But I talked myself out of it. I looked up some other photos taken that weekend and I can run with the big dogs!

I've also got quite a few blog subjects that are begging to be given life! I hope to be able to sit down tonight and catch up with that. Hubby is out of town so I have a free evening! So here's the question - do I blog and blog and blog until I drop, or do I rent a scary movie (Hubby's not a horror film buff)? Or both? And if I rent a DVD, what do I rent? Any suggestions?

This weekend at the Nebula Awards I had a few minutes of panic when my flash ran out of batteries.  Of course it was my fault for not keeping an eye on the charge.  But one of the "mistakes" turned out to be pretty neat.  The flash missed a beat when Michael Moorcock was introduced and I got this picture.




I like it.  It's kind of fitting!  I'm pleased with it.

Yep, I'm a space princess all right! I'm the voice of Draguna in the newest Ted Zone episode.

Check it out!


  (Oh yeah, it's rated "R".  Not my part, though!)

Wow, I'm busy! 

Friday and Saturday nights I shot the Nebula Awards events.  Today I spent about three hours photographing the dress rehearsal for Princess' end of the year school presentation.  I'm beginning to look at the world with one eye closed!  And I'm having a blast!

I'm also up to my ears in retouching and cropping photos.  No, I can't leave well enough alone!  I just have to crop!  So I'll probably be absent for a few days while I get caught up. 

Lots of things going on - all good!  I look forward to reporting on them all.  How's that for being a tease?!?!

Until then, you can go to www.mintlaka.com and check out the Nebula gallery.  I had a great time shooting the events.  The people were incredibly nice!  (Except for the one guy who was pretty much a jerk to me, but that's another story.  No, he wasn't an author.)

Back soon!

I'm blogging right now from my Macbook! I was able to finally get on the computer. I called AT&T tech support and we realized that I was typing in my personal password instead of the router number so that's why the network wasn't recognizing me. Simple!

I'm loving this!

My niece, Ariel Abshire, just had her first single released on iTunes this week!  It's called "Exclamation Love".  Go buy it.  If you don't have an iTunes account, get one and buy her tune!  Just do it.  It's really good! 

She's signed with an indy label called Darla Records and her CD should be out in the fall.  But her single is OUT NOW!  (Have I mentioned that?)  Yes, it's out on iTunes!  Go buy it! 

She's also got a MySpace page for her music.  You can hear quite a few tracks off of the CD on that page.  But you can OWN her first single for play anytime you'd like!  HOW?  Go to iTunes and buy it.  (I think it's also on Amazon and several other music sites, but I KNOW it's on iTunes.) 

So ends my shameless plug for my super-talented niece. 

Until next time!

Last night I covered the mass book signing for the Nebula Awards.  I also photographed the presentation of the nominees.  It was a complete blast!  I enjoyed myself so much! 

I got to meet bevhale!!!!  I have been reading her LJ and corresponding with her over e-mail for over a year now, but I had never met her in person.  She is a delight!  We chatted about Buddy and Princess and her wonderful nephew and just acted like old friends.  It was great.  I also got to see the lovely alfreda89 again and catch up with her a bit, as well as the stunning stinabat.  I love all my LJ friends!  (Thank you, incandragon for getting me into LJ.)  And, contrary to what she says, Stina does take a good picture!

I realized again last night how much I enjoy taking photos.  It was so much fun to scope out a table and try to get fun candids of people conversing, laughing, thinking, etc.  (I do try my best to make sure that I take flattering pictures, so if the subject is deep in though but actually looks constipated, I'll delete that one.)  Everyone was having a good time and the smiles were abundant.  Well, on some people.  There are some challenges to having a camera.  There are some people who get so self-conscious around a camera that they are just not able to relax and be themselves.  They try to smile, try to pose and (bless them) they fail miserably.  Thankfully, I didn't really have anyone THAT bad last night, but I did have a couple of people who quite literally became very stiff once they realized the camera was on them.  But I love a challenge!  I think I was able to get some good photos of them. 

I also learned a very important lesson.  I learned that the contact lenses I have now are definitely NOT working.  I had planned on staying for the entire book signing and then try to attach myself to bevhale and alfreda89 for a late supper or coffee or tea.  I would up leaving around 6:45 because 1)  I really had taken all of the photos that I needed - there are only so many shots of people signing books that you can take and 2) I had the makings of a splitting headache.  I was praying that it wasn't going to turn into a migraine.  I hurried home, took some ibuprofen, took OUT MY CONTACTS and lay on the couch for a while.  Ta-da!  Headache let up!  I really believe that it was eye strain.  So tonight, I'm wearing my glasses.  It's a bit cumbersome to look through a viewfinder with glasses on, but I would rather that than looking through a viewfinder AND through a veil of pain.

Tonight will be very fun.  I'm taking photos at the banquet and awards ceremony.  I'll arrive around 7:30 or 7:45 and wander around getting photos of people in their finery.  Then the ceremony starts about 8:30.  I get to take pictures of the winners!  Yay!  What fun!  AND, as a bonus, I get to go to a friend's birthday party, too!  I thought I needed to be at the Omni (where the Nebulas are taking place) around 6:30 - when my friend's party starts.  But I don't have to be there until later, so I can go!  The only bummer is that we're going to a restaurant that has killer margaritas.  I don't think it would do to show up to a job with 'rita breath.  Oh well.  Small price to pay!  And their queso will make up for the lack of margarita!

It's shaping up to be a grand day.  A cool front blew through last night and now it's wonderfully crisp outside.  The kids are hunting for ladybugs and honeysuckle.  I'm about to go put on my mommy/home manager hat and make out the menu for the week and then brave the grocery store with two kiddos.  Then, when Hubby gets home from work, we'll go to our gym and play in the indoor pool and the hot tub.  Life is really good!

Hope everyone else has a great day, too!