Happy New Year!

"borrowed" from Despicable Me's Facebook page

Have a happy and safe New Year. See you next year!

KC

Merry Christmas

I wish you all a very merry Christmas filled with family, friends and lots of love. My gift to you is my very favorite version of my favorite Christmas carol.


Merry Christmas.

KC

Fingers Crossed

The weather forecast is predicting snow tonight. Apparently this will be the first white Christmas in Colorado Springs since 1987. At first I thought that wasn't true but looking back, I'm pretty sure it is. I remember leftover snow but not fresh snow. So I really hope that Santa brings us a white Christmas.


Some of my favorite childhood Christmas Eve memories are of tracking Santa. Take a few minutes with the children in your life (even if it's your inner child) to track Santa with NORAD. Visit NORADsanta.org or call 877-Hi-NORAD.

Have a happy Christmas Eve.

KC

Writing Update

Paul via FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It's just been one of those weeks. I didn't work on my novel so I didn't get to 20,000 words like I had hoped to. It's not that I wasn't unproductive; I was working on making Christmas presents. But nothing got written on the novel.

So I decided that because I have Christmas projects, and I'm behind where I want to be on my A to Z stories and embroideries I'm going to put the novel to the side. Definitely until after Christmas, possibly until after New Years. So no more writing updates for a week or maybe two.

KC

Bad News and Good News

Stuart Miles via FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Well it's weigh in day. There's bad news and good news.

Weight: 256.6 lbs
Pounds to Goal: 6.6
BMI: 40.28

So the bad news is that I gained 0.2 pounds.

The good news is that I gained ONLY 0.2 pounds.

I could sit here and make excuses all day but I'm not going to because it's not fair to you the reader and it's most definitely not fair to myself. I didn't get my act together last week and the scale reflected that.

I'm struggling with my options. Every book, website and person has different advice and I'm not sure what is going to work for me. Do I jump in with both feet and really push the exercise and diet, or do I focus on either exercise or diet and let the other happen a little later? Do I slowly ease into exercise or jump right in with walking, twice-daily yoga, strength and cardio? Do I go straight to restricting my calories to around 1800 or slowly decrease my limit to get there?

So I'm spending today mulling over my options, figuring out what my plan of attack is. I've told myself that I have to be decided by the time I go to bed so that I can get started first thing tomorrow morning.

Can We Just Stop For A Moment

I may not be the most religious person outwardly. I don't attend church. I don't preach about my beliefs to other people and I've never read the Bible all the way through. But I do consider myself to have a solid and strong faith in God and Christ. Hearing news that more than twenty people, most of them children, were slaughtered at a Connecticut elementary school shakes everything up and makes me temporarily loose my spiritual footing.

How can it not?

It shouldn't be this way. Children should always return home from a day at school. And it follows so quickly on the heels of the Portland mall shooting. The nation is still reeling from the shock of that and now we have this tragedy added on top.

It's shocking. Confusing. Terrifying. And absolutely heartbreaking.

Added to all that, I'm saddened by the fact that this country can't even manage to unite in its grief. Right away this was politicized by all sides of the political field. It's disgusting that we're unable to open our hearts and arms to these shattered families without making them the newest poster children for our political stances. Could we discuss gun control, school safety, public security AFTER we have an accurate death toll?

So after the shock and my anger at the political extremes lessens somewhat, I turn back to my faith for comfort. There's a lot of things that I don't know about God and the way He works but I know these two things with absolute certainty. God will never test us with anything that He knows we cannot handle and He will never take someone before their time is done. I have to believe that or this is all just too sad and heartbreaking to comprehend.

I think all of us can learn a lesson from this. We need to spend more time cherishing our loved ones. As Dumbledore says in the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban movie (yes, I'm quoting a fictional character) "Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light." We each  need to find our own light.

By spending more time with the people, animals, and activities that bring us happiness, we'll put the joy and light back in a season that has been darkened so tragically this year. We need to spend the time putting effort into our loved ones because they may not be here tomorrow. But also if we allow the darkness to completely close in and we lose hope, we might never find the light again.

So could we take a few minutes (or days), to offer up our thoughts and prayers to the grieving, be thankful for the many blessings we do have and spend some time with our own loved ones before we return to the vicious fighting and back-biting that has become the norm in our society lately? Please.

KC

50,000 Words Didn't Happen

anankkml via FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It's been a couple weeks so I thought I should check in about writing.

As far as my stories for the 2013 Blogging from A to Z Challenge goes, I'm a little behind. I had scheduled myself to do one a week, so along with this week's I have two others that I didn't get done in their assigned weeks. But I'm not stressing out about it yet.

I did not finish NaNoWriMo. My novel still sits at a little more than 7,500 words. When I realized that I wasn't going to be able to get to 50,000 words, I just stopped writing. I'm disappointed with myself for not getting to 50K or even attempting to get closer but I'm done beating myself up over it. I'd never attempted NaNoWriMo before so we'll consider this year a learning experience.

The biggest thing that I learned is that I shouldn't try to force myself to write in a method that's not comfortable for me. A couple weeks into NaNO, I was already behind and then I saw a tweet that totally messed up my head. I saw a tweet about how this person was already 17 chapters into their novel and they had another 10 or so outlined and plotted. My reaction was "Oh shit. I haven't outlined. And I haven't designated any chapters. I'm doing this all wrong." And then I freaked out, got stuck and was unable to pull myself out of the hole.

You know what? It's okay that I don't outline or designate chapters. It's a first draft, a very rough draft. It doesn't have to look like a finished novel. And it's okay that I sometimes write things out of order. It works for me. I know my Point A (the first page) and Point B (the end) of my story and have an idea of what's going to happen in between. I also know the Point A and B of each of the main characters and a few of the minor characters. I need to not worry about how other people write their stuff and worry about writing in a way that works for me. I need to get this story and these characters out of my head and onto a page. Otherwise, they're just going wither away in my brain. And what good does that do anyone? Chaptering can be done in a later draft. But I have to write a first one. And it's never going to happen if I keep stressing myself out.

So I'm just gonna write as it comes to me. My goal is to get to 20K words by next Wednesday.

KC

I'm With The Grumpy Cat

GrumpyCats.com

It is totally shaping up to be one of those days.

I woke up at 1:30 to the disgusting smell of burnt plastic. My fan had decided to die. I keep a fan in front of the window to help suck in fresh air because my bedroom has absolutely no air flow at all. And at some point between when I went to bed and 1:30, it had crapped out. It was making a humming noise but the blades weren't turning and it wasn't oscillating. Just stinking up the bedroom.

I unplugged it and checked around the house to make sure it was truly just the fan and not that the house was on fire somewhere. Opened my window several inches to try to get the smell out and then I went back to bed. And laid there. And laid there. And laid there.

I didn't fall back asleep until well after 4. It was one part worry that there was an unseen electrical fire somewhere, part inability to find a comfortable position that shielded my face from the stench and part worry that Noel was going to get sick from fan fumes. She slept all the way through the ordeal though and seems to be completely fine this morning.

The smell was cleared out by the time I got up this morning but I have a horrible neck and back ache now. I ended up falling asleep in a weird contorted position. Ugh.

KC

Yeah I'm Starting Over Again

Stuart Miles via FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So the last few weeks I've been back to my normal routine of not doing anything to lose weight. I've been eating poorly and not exercising. As a result, my weight's been fluctuating between 255 and 260. Luckily I never went above 260 but it still wasn't pretty.

Shocking news...

I'm starting over, yet again, trying to lose weight. Rededicating myself to it. Last night I figured out my plan. Because my ultimate goal is 145 pounds I decided to split the amount I need to lose in half. So my first goal is 200. When I reach that, I'll focus on getting to 145. I think that when I've concentrated on achieving the 100-plus pounds it's too much, it's intimidating to know that I need to lose that much. But on the flip side, when I focus on smaller goals, like getting to 250, I allow myself to slack off. I reason that it's okay to blow off this week because it's "just" a few pounds that I need to lose. Hopefully breaking the large chunk into two almost equal chunks will take away the intimidation but keep the slacking off at bay.

I created an exercise schedule for myself. I'll start off every day by doing yoga than follow that up with some cardio four days or strength training three days. I plan on walking Noel five days (weather-dependent) and finish up every evening by doing some more yoga before bed. I've put in so much yoga for a few reasons. First, when I do yoga I physically feel better. And second, I feel more focused mentally when I do yoga regularly. I'm hoping by doing some yoga right before bed that it will help me sleep better.

Food-wise my plan right now is just to log everything I eat. I want to focus my energy on exercising first and will sort out my food issues in a few weeks after I get the exercise routine established. I'll deal with that hurdle later.

I guess by now you're probably wondering where I'm starting at this time.

Weight: 256.4 pounds
Pounds to Goal: 56.4
BMI: 40.24

There you have it. My new plan and where I'm starting at. I really hope this is the last time that I say I'm starting over.

KC

Changes

So, a few weeks ago I was reading some tips for authors and I came across two tips that really stuck with me: Brand your internet presence for the author you want to be and Don't be boring. Those tips have been rattling around in my brain for a couple weeks and I've been turning a critical eye towards my blogs, twitter, facebook, etc.

There are some posts that I look at and cringe and think were possibly a bad idea. And I admit, I'm not exciting and quite a few of my posts probably fall into the boring category. So I think there should be some changes around here and across all of my internet presence. Including being a better commenter on other people's blogs.

Please bear with me during the changes. Hopefully, I'll be a new and improved KC when it's all said and done.

Another Week of Watching

I thought for a while that I wasn't going to have any movies or Netflix dvds to post about but I managed to watch five, well four and ten minutes of a fifth, on Saturday. Ha.

Game of Thrones season 1 - Okay so, I'm done now. Hm. I liked but didn't love the book because A: the ending isn't happy and B: it was hard for me to feel a connection to the vast majority of the characters. After watching the show, I did feel a little bit more connected to the characters that I had developed a connection to (Robb, Arya, Jon, Tyrion, Bran) and liked some characters a little more than I had (Daenerys, Catelyn, Sam) I still freaking hate the Lannisters (Tyrion excluded) and still think Sansa is responsible for her father's beheading. I got the feeling she was definitely the queen's eyes and ears and kept running back to her with everything. "Arya picked her nose today..."

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - I put this movie on my list only because of James McAvoy. I tried to read the books as a kid but never got very far. I didn't like them. I still have no interest in them. I know a lot of people will scream at me for that but I don't. And the movie was the same. I watched about ten or fifteen minutes before I decided to end my misery and just not watch it.

Saving Grace - I'm not sure why I put this movie in my queue but the dvd has been sitting here for a couple weeks waiting for me to watch it. A movie about a woman who grows pot doesn't really appeal to me. But then I was bored enough to give it a shot so I put it in. It was pretty good. The funniest part is when the two old ladies drink tea made from the leaves without knowing that it's not tea.

The Italian Job - The remake with Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron. It was pretty good. I liked it well enough.

Planet Earth - Started watching this documentary series. I sort of tuned out the narrator and just watched for the gorgeous shots of animals and scenery so I didn't learn much. Some really adorable clips of pandas (Yay!) in the episode about mountains. They also do a small segment in each episode about the making of the show, which was pretty interesting to see.
 

And now the current television shows...

 

Bones - I hope the restlessness that Angela's feeling is just temporary because I really like her and Hodgens as a couple. I'll be sad if they break up.

Hawaii Five-O - Steve was a flipping moron this week. I can't stand his mother. I'm sick of that story line. She's ruining Steve's relationship with Catherine and is, in my opinion, the reason for Steve's boneheaded actions this week. So she's also going to ruin his career. Fun times.

Leverage - It's back! Aw yay! This is my favorite show so I'm a happy girl. I hope that Eliot finds a way to make peace with his dad. That'll be sad if they don't.

Modern Family - Man, poor Alex. She has to take so much shit from Hailey. Why doesn't Claire and Phil put a stop to her?

Suburgatory - Not thrilled about the grandmother thing. Just not feeling it. And there was a severe lack of Alan Tudyk in this week's episode. Hmph.

Malibu Country - There was no Jai this week. Excuse me while I go sob uncontrollably till Friday.