Category: My Writing

Once, when I too was a little q, I used to love my snow days; longed for them, prayed for them, maybe even did a few snow dances in hope some pagan deity might have pity on me and induce a foot or more of snow that would shut down the world for a day or two.

Even as I got older, it was nice to get those snow days. Who wouldn’t want a day off? Hell I lived in an apartment, I didn’t have to shovel the snow.

But now, well let’s just say I’m fed up with the ‘snow’ days around here.  So far they opened late of less than an inch.  Closed before Christmas for a big storm that turned out to me nothing more than rain.

Work was open when it looked like this:

 

And during an ice storm. This is the view from my back door today:

 

Today, given the severe condition you see above, they closed the government – and daycare. In theory we’re supposed to get snow today – maybe 5 inches – maybe. It’s just amazing that they close the government on the presumption it will snow, but keep it open when there is ice and snow.

So why am I being such curmudgeon? I had the day off anyway so while the office gets a free day – those of us who had scheduled leave still have to use their day off.  :-/

Ah well, at least me and ‘lil q can hang out some more.

 

 

So I’m finally digging out from the avalanche that was my holiday. One of the things I’ve developed as a result of this year is yet more new found respect for my parents. It looked so easy to do lights, shop, cooked, a tree – not to mention my dad used to set up a Lionel Train set every holiday for us. But holy moly, trying to do most of those – and travel – really took the wind out of me.

But I’ve had some time to recover and I’m regrouping for 2014. So with that, I’m looking to start booking guest posts and blog tours for the coming months.  I’m open to all types of posts – be they promos for new releases, interviews, giveaways and/or just stopping by to say hello and keep your name out there.

Anyone who is interested, shoot me an email – [email protected].

-AQG

I wrote quite a bit about the lead up to Christmas ’13, but one thing I didn’t post was that we did a bit a of traveling for the holiday. [No sense advertising our house was empty for a few days, so I keep that info until I get back.] With a family all over, we had to make time for different celebrations.

We started with Christmas Eve at our house. As a kid, Christmas Eve was spent at Grandma’s house.  The last two years we did that, but this year we had to switch things up.

The next morning – we had to leave at 8:00 am to get a flight to visit my parents. She looked so cute in her Christmas Dress, tights and black shoes – if I do say so myself.

But with travel, dinner, family, we opened gifts with my parents the next day.

We stayed a few days, but due to travel, Christmas stretched a few extra days.  We still needed to take ‘lil q to see her other grandparents – oh and we needed to let ‘lil q open her gifts from Santa and her many friends.

Then it was off to Grandma and Grandpa’s. Her ‘other’ Christmas dress was pretty cute too.

I resisted the urge to post a first of the year, state of my authorship, replete with goals and resolutions. My goals and resolutions haven’t changed since the end of last year, the turning of the page to a new year didn’t do anything to make them any more devout.  I still want to eat better, lose some weight, exercise more, do more writing, etc.  But 2013 was quite a year for me, personally and professionally and it will be hard to find resolutions and goals to top last year.  So I’ll refrain from such things.

That said, I reached a turning point with Purpose. I’d finished the story arc I started and needed to pick a new direction. When I started Purpose – A New Beginning, I expected to go back to Second Shot – The Senior Year. But this being a new year, I decided to start something totally new.

Tomorrow I’m going to start a new story during the free Wednesday Briefs Flash fiction – that I’ve titled – My Guardian Angel Is A Cockblocker. As will all things, I never know how far I’ll take it, but I have a rough idea for the story so we’ll see. I ‘beta tested’ the title and from the reaction I figure if the story gets half as good a response it will be worth the effort.  So with that – here’s to the new year, whatever it may bring.

-AQG

This weekend we did a lot of the pre-Christmas things we needed to get ready for the holiday. There have been a lot of fun times  with ‘lil q in the last 26 months, but this weekend was among the best. We started by taking pictures to send ‘lil q’s mother. (I’m not sure what else to call her – surrogate sounds so impersonal and she is not a business dealing, but a friend and I won’t name her because she deserve her privacy so she’s ‘lil q’s mother).

Despite a bit of a cold, ‘lil was in a great mood all weekend. Saturday we got up early, had bagels and went shopping. We didn’t get a lot accomplished, but we had fun poking around the outdoor mall, looking for the ‘hidden’ speakers that played the Christmas music and then getting hot chocolate at ‘the coffee place’ because home wasn’t fun enough I guess. Ultimately I had to wait until she went to sleep to go back out shopping and get a few gifts.

Today got our Christmas tree. We’ve gone shopping with ‘lil q for a tree the last three years. The first one she was barely 2 months old. Last year she could barely walk. This year – well this year she could walk and talk, but seemed less interested in finding a tree than in playing among them. Have a look: (I’ve tried to make it fit on the page, but I can’t shrink the video – if you click the two arrows in the bottom right corner of the video screen it will fit on the page as you watch.)

Fun times. Next week we make Christmas Cookies. 🙂