Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Pine Creek and Refinancing vs. Library charges




And now for something completely fine. The twins and I go to the creek down the street from our house often, but I never think to bring a camera. We were doing a report for Jr. Rangers and needed a visual.
So, here are the girls slogging around. It's more of a stinky marsh than a creek this time of year. But we love it.
On another unrelated note: We just refinanced and I have a lower credit rating than my husband. The only credit card I've ever had was the one we've had together for the last ten years. (And we never carry a balance from month to month.) Peter looked into the factors used for credit scoring and one was library use. So, maybe I had too many late charges or just the fact that I check out books weekly, but that must the what put me below him. Strange. I'd never have thought of that in a million years. No problem, though. We were able to refinance.
Oh, and Bane read the last entry and he was almost flattered by my description of him. Oh goody. :/



Thursday, May 14, 2009

Novel Titles, Embarrassing Words, and Star Trek

We saw Star Trek last night. Yeah! It was even better than we expected and we're eager to see it again.
So, in honor of that, here's a Nerf Herder video called Mr. Spock.

I looked up a few of the title choices for my novel on the Lulu Titlescorer .
The best was The Whimsicality of Perception. It had a 69% chance of being a best seller. Take that oh you people who hated that title!
Syzygy was second.
Misperceptions came in third.
To Be Human came in last.

Lulu didn't take into account cover art, but I happen to know that teens browsing a bookstore take the cover into account when they're making their choices. They also take into account whether or not the title is embarrassing (at least the girls do) and Lulu didn't have a category for how embarrassing a particular word might be.

So, what are some embarrassing words? I'll have to guess, as my teenager isn't around at the moment:
Banana?
Bra?
Rutabaga?

I wonder if the difficulty some may find in pronouncing Syzygy would deter possible readers.

Friday, May 8, 2009

It's been a Mr. Toad's-wild-ride of a week. Last weekend, the twins made their first communion. That was soooo wonderful.

















Then I my heart dropped to my stomach when my 17 yr old sneaked out of the house in the middle of the night... twice! Sorry, I don't have pictures of that. :P I'll post pics when I hang two particular nameless people by the toes over a vat of ravenous sea monsters.

Then my 17 yr old passed her State Board esthetician exam. Yippee! She wouldn't let me take a picture of her holding the license, though. I was her model. I got one brow waxed, one tweezed, a dermal light facial, make-up, two kinds of false eyelashes, and booties on my feet. Not sure what that was for, but they were a nice touch.