Skip to main content

Funky Fridays: March 25th through April 1st

[caption id="attachment_4712" align="alignleft" width="300"]Image created using Bit Strips. Image created using Bit Strips.[/caption]

I'd say I'm sorry I didn't post on March 25th, but it was Good Friday and I was traveling for Easter. That said, I'll try to briefly recap some things that happened. I apologize that many of them are depressing. I put the happy ones at the beginning in case you'd rather not read about the awful things that happened recently.

  1. Relieved: I finished writing, editing, and submitting my short story Solarium, which is about a failing Mars simulation.

  2. Excited: Camp NaNoWriMo starts today! Let's hope me and my cabin mates are ready to get some serious writing done. I'll be editing The Page & The Magician. I'm currently on Chapter 7 of 24.

  3. Brave: Today also marks the beginning of April, which is Sjögren's Syndrome Awareness Month. I was diagnosed with Sjögren's recently and given the amount of misinformation there is about the condition, how prevalent yet unknown it is, and how much it affects me on a daily basis, I've decided to do my part in raising awareness. Check out my posts on the autoimmune disease with the funny name.

  4. Indifferent: The federal budget was released. I didn't see anything particularly shocking, but I didn't delve into it either.

  5. Busy: My coworker is gone to Florida for 3 weeks vacation, so I'm doing some of her stuff. I don't mind, though. It seems I have a lot more to do at work suddenly with many other projects starting at the same time.

  6. I got to watch a friend read from her novels on Wednesday evening at Ottawa ChiSeries. I really enjoyed listening to SM Carriere and David Neil Lee. David was funny. My friend was a little nervous but did really well. She had some stumbles, which I think she's being overly hard on herself about as she soldiered on and the audience was never left in the lurch. I bought another of her books, which I only do if I really enjoy the way someone writes. I'm not sure when I'll get to it as I've been talked into joining a book club, but I'll find time somewhere.

  7. Angry: There was a shooting in Bells Corners. The young woman succumbed to her injuries. There have been far too many shootings and stabbings in Ottawa this year. It used to be a safer place to live.

  8. Thankful: A man lost his life on the highway not long before I reached that section while driving back to Ottawa after the long weekend. I'm thankful I wasn't speeding that day. The visibility was quite awful and I figured it's better to take a little longer and make it safely home.

  9. Livid: The verdict was announced in the Jian Ghomeshi case. While I agree that the lack of evidence and the lying of the plaintiffs is not acceptable, there's still a problem and the judge recognized that the verdict didn't mean Ghomeshi is innocent. It's ridiculous that in 2016 people still get away with treating others in such ways.

  10. Helpless: There was a bombing in Pakistan over Easter. Whenever I hear about such things, I feel helpless. Everyone recognizes how sad it is that things like this continue to happen, but this is one of those things that doesn't have an easy answer. When westerners try to help it only compounds the problems, so some gather from afar. Just a couple of days before there was a bombing in Brussels.

  11. Disgusted: People awaiting sentencing are being forced to live like abused animals. An inmate's death seems to be the only reason anyone is trying to fix the overcrowding issue. The minister's directives seem to be falling on deaf ears.

  12. Frustrated: A construction worker lost his life when ice fell on him. Even worse? The union raised the risk prior. This right here annoys me greatly as a project manager. There was absolutely no reason for this tragedy to occur. Safety should be paramount on construction sites!


More posts will be coming about Sjögren's in the month ahead.

Ciao,
R~
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

2020 Vision

Mostly, I’ve been planning for the new year, but I discovered I know Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It was a recollection under the influence that brought this to light. I also discovered I still suck at drawing, but I’m okay with that. I used to think I had to be good at everything, and I’ve realized that’s just not so. Some friends and I recently hit up a local board game pub. It was a pretty fun night. The first game was Balderdash and I was terrible at it. Because I was the writer in the group, some of my friends thought I should be more embarrassed about it and hide the fact that I don’t spend all my free time learning advanced vocabulary. But I’m not upset about it. Why? Two reasons: 1. I now know what I don’t know. 2. If one takes a close look at the top selling novels on the market, the level of the language used is not the level of many of the words in Balderdash. Not that I’m comparing my own work to those, but audience is what matters in writing. To me, it is far better to e...
Read more

Merry Monday - A beautiful day for taxes

[caption id="attachment_4711" align="alignright" width="300"] Image created using Bit Strips.[/caption] With French done, I have a lot of other things to catch up on. It seems like I have Mount Everest ahead of me, but I'm just going through the list one at a time. I've gotten a couple of things done and some started. Renovations Before the weekend, my new kitchen floor was installed. After the credits that Jiffy gave me, install cost less than $40. The old floor was light grey peel and stick tile, which was peeling itself up on the edges. Because I couldn't get all the glue up from the floor underneath the peel and stick, I needed to put new floor in. Oh, I started peeling it up with a hair dryer. I really don't recommend that. It doesn't get hot enough to work well. It was taking around 20 minutes each tile with the hair dryer. With a proper heat gun, a couple hours for the whole floor. Old floors: [gallery ids="9630,9631" ...
Read more

Fortifying Friday - Rejection

Yesterday, I received my first rejection from an agent. It stung. It wasn't that it was bad. It was worded in a way that it may have even been personally written. Regardless, rejection never feels good unless you were secretly hoping to stay home and do nothing when a friend made plans with you. Then it feels great! I might be an introvert ;) Anyway, it hurts a bit extra when you have other things going on. Between the worries of the state of the world and being unemployed, it felt much like being kicked while I was already down. The agent said she couldn't connect with my book though she really wanted to. She also said not to take her rejection as any kind of sign that I should give up. It was nice as far as rejections go. So, I lay there for a bit. Then I let my friends know via social media. Several said that I had hit a milestone and I should try to collect as many as possible this year. Rejections, they said, were a badge of honour awarded for putting myself out there. See...
Read more