And no, sadly,  I don't mean these guys:



I haven't blogged much lately.  If you're a past reader of In Search of Giants, you know I don't like long posts, so let's break this down:

As if all that weren't enough, NaNo starts in just three days (see #3, above). 

In other words, I will continue to be a sporadic, MIA even, blogger.  But do stay tuned - exciting announcements from the Co-Dictators of the Universe, my first CD review, and more - sometime in the near future (ie, prior to 2011.)

Well, in case you missed the news last week, I was punished by McKoala (long story) and forced to write 5000 words by Sunday evening.  As you'll see from the post date, tonight is Sunday evening.

Here are my wordcounts for the past week:


MONDAY - ZERO


TUESDAY - ZERO


WEDNESDAY - ZERO


THURSDAY - ZERO


FRIDAY  - ZERO


SATURDAY  - 1449


Leaving one day in which to write 3551 words.  As you can see, I wrote nothing over a five day period.  Could I possibly write 3551 words in one day?  Actually, one afternoon, since Sunday is a work day for me?  Is Rosey up against the McKoala Claws of Doom?  Did I misjudge and fatally procrastinate?


NO!   I ACTUALLY MADE THE 3551 (okay, 3713) words this afternoon!  And none of them were "watermelon"!

Now, were they good words? Not necessarily. But I've never written a book in my life, and I figured the birthing process this first time would be slow and painful. I write sermons pretty quickly, now, ten years after seminary, so I think it will get easier. In the meantime, I have a story unfolding that I didn't quite expect, and I'm pleased with that, at least.

I hope the process has amused you, especially Mr. Betty Nagel who pointed out I was spending an awful lot of time commenting on blogs. That was the first time I realized maybe I should get myself in gear.  Thanks, B.

I am fawningly indebted to McKoala for being mean. I truly felt the pressure to live up to her expectations (and avoid JJdeGoblin's toenail peelers) and think this whole group-accountability thing is an excellent idea.

Stay tuned this week - I have fifteen (yep, 15) reviews to write by the end of the month.

If you're new to In Search of Giants, you might not know that the one feature I manage weekly is "Amusing Monday" - attempts at light-hearted week-beginning-ness.  Alas, you will need to wait another week to revel in a brand-new Amusing Monday post.  There will be no amusement today.

I found the site wrongcards.com when I was looking for an inappropriately flirtatious card for....well, you know who you are.  (And if you aren't Janey...uh, sure, I'm flirting with you, too.)  The tagline for this site is e-cards that are wrong for every occasion.

Here are some of my favorites:

For Father's Day

In the event of Zombies


For a New Baby

As if you needed another reason to love Amy Poehler, she's headed up this very wonderful web series called Smart Girls at the Party.    A very wise, very wonderful woman pointed them out to me, and I had to share.  Thanks, narocroc tnega!!

In my family, we have the tradition of saying "Rabbit rabbit rabbit" to each other on the first day of the month.  Our belief was that if you do so, you won't fight with each other during the month.  Here's what wikipedia has to say:

“Rabbit rabbit white rabbit” is a common superstition, held particularly among children. The most common modern version states that a person should say “rabbit, rabbit, white rabbit” upon waking on the first day of each new month, and on doing so will receive good luck for the remainder of that month.

The exact origin of the superstition is unknown, though it has appeared in print at least as early as 1954 in Bromley, Kent, where it is most commonly said to have originated, though some reports place its origins even earlier, into the 1800s. Today it has spread to most of the English-speaking countries of the world, although like all folklore, determining its exact area of distribution is difficult. This superstition is related to the broader belief in the rabbit or hare being a “lucky” animal, as exhibited in the practice of carrying a rabbit's foot for luck. Some have also believed it is representing a jumping into the future and moving ahead with life and happiness.

I'm thinking, then that the "not fighting" bit was invented by my parents to keep us four kidlings from arguing, wrestling, hitting, and in all other ways hurting each other.  Some months it worked.  Some months - and years - it didn't.  Rabbit or no, the four of us as adults are very close:

1) What country would I like to live in?
a) the United States

c) Belize
d) New Zealand
e) Ireland

2) Who would I most like to meet?
a) Tamora Pierce
b) Stuart Neville
c) Brendan Fraser
d) Pete Dudley

3) I secretly would like to be ________ for a day?
a) a movie director
b) a professor
d) a librarian
e) multi-lingual

4) What is my favorite store to shop at?
a) Hallmark
b) Target
c) Papyrus
d) Old Navy

5) If I was running out of my burning house, what item would I grab?
a) my signed copy of Robin McKinley's BEAUTY
b) my baby book
c) my cell phone
e) the box in which I keep my children's artwork

6) What do I like most about myself?
a) my sense of humor
c) my faith
d) my hair
e) my parenting style

7) What is my middle name?
a) Rose
b) Michelle
c) Ditzler
e) a & c


8) What would be the perfect present for me?
a) a Barnes and Noble gift card
b) jewelry from Sundance Catalog
c) an ARC of Kristin Cashore's FIRE
e) an iMac

9) Which of the following is not one of my nicknames?
a) Sunny
b) RoseyPosey
c) Charlie
e) Addy


10) What would I dress as for Halloween?
b) Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty
c) Wendy from Peter Pan
d) Belle from Beauty and the Beast
e) Elphaba from Wicked

11) What is the number of schools I attended from Kindergarten thru Sr. Year?
a) 3
b) 4
c) 5
e) 7

12) What is my favorite movie?
a) Willow
b) Batman Begins
d) Sliding Doors
e) Mulan


13) What did I want to be when I was little?
a) a lawyer
b) a microbiologist
c) an actress
e) none of the above

14) Which of these people have I not had a crush on?
a) Enrique Murciano
b) Cindy Pon
c) Brendan Fraser
e) Craig Parker

15) What's my current favorite show on TV?
a) Bones
b) Fringe
d) House
e) Criminal Minds

16) Who is my favorite Disney character?
a) Mickey
c) Mulan
d) Belle
e) Gurgi

17) What am I most scared of?
a) aging
b) snakes
c) spiders
e) small spaces

18) What city was I born in?
a) Champaign, IL
c) Savoy, IL
d) Smyrna, TN
e) Murfreesboro, TN

19) What is my favorite wild animal?
a) chinchilla
c) elephant
d) leopard
e) spider monkey


20) My favorite specialty drink is ________.
a) Pepsi
c) water
d) Starbucks sweet iced tea lemonade
e) Riesling



How'd you do?

Hurrah, it's a holiday Monday here in the states!   If you goof off on Facebook at least an hour a day, you have seen the quiz going around "How Well Do You Know Me?"  (If you don't goof off on Facebook at least an hour a day, why the heck not?)  I thought I'd share the quiz I made with you.  Answers to be posted later today.  
(Why don't you make a similar quiz and put it up on your blog?  Leave a comment with the permalink so we can spread the word!)

1) What country would I like to live in?
a) the United States
b) Australia
c) Belize
d) New Zealand
e) Ireland

2) Who would I most like to meet?
a) Tamora Pierce
b) Stuart Neville
c) Brendan Fraser
d) Pete Dudley
e) Little Miss Zarin

3) I secretly would like to be ________ for a day?
a) a movie director
b) a professor
c) single
d) a librarian
e) multi-lingual

4) What is my favorite store to shop at?
a) Hallmark
b) Target
c) Papyrus
d) Old Navy
e) Nordstrom

5) If I was running out of my burning house, what item would I grab?
a) my signed copy of Robin McKinley's BEAUTY
b) my baby book
c) my cell phone
d) my laptop
e) the box in which I keep my children's artwork

6) What do I like most about myself?
a) my sense of humor
b) my intelligence
c) my faith
d) my hair
e) my parenting style

7) What is my middle name?
a) Rose
b) Michelle
c) Ditzler
d) a, b & c
e) a & c


8) What would be the perfect present for me?
a) a Barnes and Noble gift card
b) jewelry from Sundance Catalog
c) an ARC of Kristin Cashore's FIRE
d) time away to write
e) an iMac

9) Which of the following is not one of my nicknames?
a) Sunny
b) RoseyPosey
c) Charlie
d) Queen Aerin
e) Addy


10) What would I dress as for Halloween?
a) trick question - I don't like Halloween
b) Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty
c) Wendy from Peter Pan
d) Belle from Beauty and the Beast
e) Elphaba from Wicked

11) What is the number of schools I attended from Kindergarten thru Sr. Year?
a) 3
b) 4
c) 5
d) 6
e) 7

12) What is my favorite movie?
a) Willow
b) Batman Begins
c) Aeon Flux
d) Sliding Doors
e) Mulan


13) What did I want to be when I was little?
a) a lawyer
b) a microbiologist
c) an actress
d) all of the above
e) none of the above

14) Which of these people have I not had a crush on?
a) Enrique Murciano
b) Cindy Pon
c) Brendan Fraser
d) Neil Gaiman
e) Craig Parker

15) What's my current favorite show on TV?
a) Bones
b) Fringe
c) Legend of the Seeker
d) House
e) Criminal Minds

16) Who is my favorite Disney character?
a) Mickey
b) Lilo
c) Mulan
d) Belle
e) Gurgi

17) What am I most scared of?
a) aging
b) snakes
c) spiders
d) yellow jackets
e) small spaces

18) What city was I born in?
a) Champaign, IL
b) Urbana, IL
c) Savoy, IL
d) Smyrna, TN
e) Murfreesboro, TN

19) What is my favorite wild animal?
a) chinchilla
b) giraffe
c) elephant
d) leopard
e) spider monkey


20) My favorite specialty drink is ________.
a) Pepsi
b) a chocolate martini
c) water
d) Starbucks sweet iced tea lemonade
e) Riesling

Step #1
LIGHTNING ROUND

• Hugh: Jackman or Laurie?  Ooh, that's tough.  Jackman.  You know me & Aussies.
• Sydney or Cairns? Cairns
• Coke or Pepsi? why is this a question? Pepsi of course.
• yoga or pilates? Pilates with Chanda; otherwise, yoga
• read or write? um, I'd say read, but I'm afraid McKoala is watching, so....write!
• beach or mountains? hmm.  beach.
• Robin McKinley or Tamora Pierce? I refuse to answer that question as it violates my religious principles.

Step #2
TELL US about any of your weird habits or idiosyncracies. 

A: Um.  I eat cantaloupe with hummus?  Otherwise I’m quite normal.

K: Seriously.

A: Okay, fine.  Life is too short not to write with glitter pens; and nearly everything I write is in red or purple or blue or green glitter.

K: You are so boring.

Step #3
TEACH US one or two of your favorite vocabulary words.

amanuensis – a personal secretary or assistant, esp. of a writer.
phantasmagoria – a sequence of real or imaginary images like that seen in a dream

Step #4
BOOK BLANK

• The last book I finished reading was If I Stay by Gayle Foreman.
• I gave it 4 stars.
• One word to describe it is honest.
  

Step #5
QUESTION:  What’s one of your most embarrassing memories?

Tripping up the stairs to the altar with the communion elements in my hands.  That was in California, when I worked at Laguna Beach United Methodist Church and I was still a pretty uptight Southern girl, and I'm still mortified.  The bread went on the ground (fortunately I had finished serving), but the cup only spilled on my dress, not on the carpet.

Step #6
QUESTION:  I’m looking at a list of ways in which you made my childhood miserable.  Which would you like to apologize for first?

I apologize for being such an amazing, wonderful, perfect person who always took such good care of you that you had a hard time finding yourself.

Step #7
GIVE US THE SCOOP.  Tell us something about yourself that’s exclusive to In Search of Giants (ie, has never been publicized in print or podcast interviews.)

A: I knew you were going to ask that.

K: Dweeb.

A: Okay, well, some people know I graduated high school when I was 16.  Then I graduated college when I was 19.  I was pretty smart, but I really excelled at languages, and by my last year of collge, I was able to read seven languages with decent proficiency: French, Russian, Latin, Greek, German, Italian and - oh, right, English.  These days all I speak is Kidling-ese and SleepDeprived dialect English.

K: 'M-kay.  Now.  Where’s my apology apologies?

Watch this or I will pinch you.  I have not laughed so hard since BT reported about the 911 crisis in Florida.  

I "met" Cindy via Precie and Ello, right when she'd signed her contract with Greenwillow Books.  Quickly she (Cindy) became my online crush, since she's witty, beautiful, and loves yummy desserts.  And today, her debut novel Silver Phoenix hits bookstores everywhere!!

You can find early reviews of Silver Phoenix on Goodreads, at Steph Su Reads, the YaYaYas, Presenting Lenore, and Reviewer X,

or you can watch the trailer (below),

or you can just go out and buy the thing already, why dontcha!?!




Of course, the really big news is that Ello's hosting a contest for autographed copies of Silver Phoenix (plus other fun goodies.) You can find all the information over at Ello's very cool blog.  (And mention that I sent you, or I will hurl a wet hamster at you.)

Yesterday was a fundraiser for the autism treatment center where my son has gone for the past two years.  Basically, it's one-on-one preschool with specially trained teachers.  Translation: very very expensive.  Despite the fact that the teachers and staff are fantabulous beyond compare, they don't get paid nearly enough to do what they do.

Anyway.

The fundraiser was at our local amusement park, which is decent in the same way truckstop bathrooms are.  Also, we've got typical Rocky Mountain weather, which is, in a word, bipolar.  Sunny and warm last week; frigid and rainy over the weekend.  But we'd promised the kids we go and it didn't start raining until mid-afternoon by which time we were enough covered in other-kid-sneezes-and-gummy-hands-and-sticky-shoe gunk we welcomed the cold shower.  Keep in mind, I have two preschoolers.  Amusement park=endless repetitions on the kiddie roller coaster, or the kiddie bumper cars - for all of which I'm too big. *Pout*  So I get to stand around and look pretty and make sure pedophiles aren't snatching my kids from a ride. 

I'm a people watcher; I come by this trait honestly from my hyper-judgemental grandmother.  And while I try to remin charitable in my observations, sometimes I'm just too tired and child-crazed that I turn into....

...wait for it....

Snarky Bitch!!!  (not to be confused with Cutthroat Bitch from House.)

Some of my observations from the day may amuse you, or at the least, you can have some amusement castigating my rudeness.

First ride: the carousel.  Kidlings and Mr. Aerin and I are second in line behind another family.  Just behind us come two pre-teen looking girls with heavy eyeliner and little clothing (did I mention the overcast chill in the air?)  And I swear to god, one of the girls says about twelve times in a three minute period, "I hate this music."  All right, yeah, carousel music isn't exactly the sort of thing you find on a 12-year-old's iPod.  But after the third time, I wanted to turn and say, "Then don't ride it."

That was a mild annoyance.

At the kiddie boat rides, there was a woman with high bangs (really), in cut-off blue jean shorts, a black men's t-shirt and a novelty oversized green foam necktie that said I'm with Stupid ------>.  She and her husband and her kids were walking toward the ride, and her husband stopped to look at one of those carnival game booths, which mixed up the order.  So then the arrow was pointing to her kids, and, on noticing it, rearranged herself so that the tie would still point to her husband.  Right.  'Cause wearing the tie wasn't stupid at all.

There were the waif-like goth kids marathon smoking, since obviously that's why you pay $35/ticket...to have somewhere to light up.  The packs of 13-year-olds, boys with their arms slung around the shoulders of their chattel...I mean, girlfriends.

Hmm.  I'm not really that amusing.  Castigate away.

Part of the problem is when we lived in So. Cal, we spent Friday nights at Disneyland.  Literally - every Friday night (vive la Annual Pass!).  And Disneyland is the creme de la creme of theme parks - clean, well-staffed (mostly), and without novelties like foam ties for purchase.  (Instead, purchase a single, genuine Disney golf ball, for only $24.95 plus tax!)

Then again, I may be in the minority here; oversized foam ties may have become quite popular amongst the populace.  Which is great, because then I'll know what to send Pete for his birthday.