Sniglet of the Week: Greedling (greed-ling)  Pretending to read the inscription inside a Birthday card when all you really care about is how the check is!

(A sniglet, by the way, is a word that isn't in a dictionary, but ought to be.)

Since I work at a floral shop, I'm working an extra day this week making everyone else's centerpieces with candles and holiday flower greetings!

Here's wishing everyone a fabulous,
stuff-till-you-bust Thanksgiving!!

Let me note first that I've altered the link for Jordanna to "Jordanna's Gems", which now connects you directly to  her jewelry and craft site, should you be interested.

We got the new A/C & Gas furnace installed Friday. It's spiffy looking and they did a very fine job, leaving the garage spotless.

For Christmas gifts this year I've been working on my own craft project: crocheted snowflakes. I've had a white ball of twine & an instruction book full of designs, but this is the first year I've actually made any. This is my second stab at it. I tried it last year, but found it too daunting  and gave up. Tried again this year, pushed through the rough spots and finally succeeded! The little buggers are way harder than they look to make! Yarn is far easier to work with, believe me. My first practice snowflake came out completely warped looking!   But that's the you figure out the instructions on, so mistakes are okay. The 2nd came out better--just too loose in the loops, which made it too large. By the 3rd, I had the right tensile tightness going on in the loops and it came out okay. I made a 4th, then realized I'd made a mistake in the number of sides: it was supposed to have 6; I had 5; even so, still they're usuable snowflakes. (No real snowflake is identical anyway.) Finally, I made a 5th and it was perfect. Tired of that pattern, I decided to switch to a new one. I now had a rythm and was familiar with the style of how the construction works, so the instructions were easier to follow.  That snowflake came out right the first time and I've started a second. It takes less time now then the first. (about 75 -90 minutes per flake). I work them while watching my certain TV shows or general DVD's. My goal is to make a bunch for sending in X-mas cards as gifts if I want to send someone a little something special.

All I need now is to find some liquid starch to wash them in and it will be charm! (The base Commissary didn't have any--I'll have to go to a local store.)

For Thanksgiving, we'll be participating in a pitch-in dinner with our Air Force Singles Ministry up on base, but will we also have our own Thanksgiving dinner ourselves, at home, a different day. No big bird just for us: just some Turkey thighs, stuffing, sauteed sweet potatoes with scallions (fresh sweet potatoes sliced in strips) & brussel sprouts. (frozen, sliced in half & sauteed with fresh garlic!) Yum.

On Writing: I've been working on that short Xmas story with Logan I mentioned earlier. It's called "The Last Cab Ride."  It's a poignant short story, I think.  I've been prepping a couple other older chapters for conversion to PDF and posting as well. I move between them.

My friend, DG Davis, who contributes to the site (her newest story "A Matter of Conscience" is there now) also has an unfinished Christmas story project up her sleeve a that she'll eventually finish and send me. Hers is based on one of the spontaneous Christmas truces that occurred during WW1 (I thought WW2, but Dee corrected me. My mistake!) when hostilities ceased and the two sides voluntarily celebrated Christmas together.
For those of you who don't know, Wolverines healing factor conceals his real age and, according to X-men lore, he was in WW2 and WW1, apparently.  In the recent movie, he stormed the beach at Normandy during WW2.

If you're interested in knowing when X-men stories are posted in the Zone or if you just like my content here or just like my weekly "sniglets", please consider subscribing to this journal using the "subcribe to this journal" form in the upper right corner. That way you'll get an email notice whenever I post, which offers a direct link here. (I don't post daily either--so it won't overfill your email box!!) 

Sniglet of the Week: Chubble: the aerobic movement combining deep-knee bends and sideward hops used when trying to get into pantyhose.

Yes, your funny sniglet of the week to snorkel at. Be sure and check the pinecone comparison photo on the next page below.

Fiction update: I'm working on the Christmas ficlet with Logan. It's called "The Last Cab Ride." I wrote it out last year, but got stuck on an ending, but my own Nov challenge inspired me with an ending, so I should be able to finish it up. It will be my first posting of a first-person story. (Told exclusively from Logan's point of view using "I", "me", etc.)

This is "replace the A/C" week. (It's a whole system replacement including a new gas furnace.)  Standards have changed. Can't just change the A/C anymore. In our case, the coils are going bad. It has to be done and by doing it now, we'll be able to get the energy tax credit, which may prove helpful. (Did you know that 10% of the people who got a tax stimulus in the spring will owe that back? Though, I don't know that will happen to us, but still...) Anyway, the new system will reduce our electric bill around 30%. Can I get an "Amen?"   We replaced the gas water heater and dishwasher a couple years ago and the gas bill dropped around $15 dollars--which is fantastic! The new gas furnace should be more efficient then it's predecessor as well and will keep our winter heat bill low, too.

Major car repair on Friday: waterpump was springing a leak.  Fortunately, it was only a small drippy leak that left a small puddle on our driveway to alert us rather then the sudden dump of a complete burst. Of course, that meant hose replacement and we needed a new surpentine belt. I was thankful we got the signal in the driveway and we just filled the anti-freeze container, then drove around the corner to the Goodyear car repair shop. We were just getting ready to go into town and it would have been terrible for it to have given up the ghost out on the road somewhere. .

I was watching a show called "stories from the pet lovers heart" on Sunday,which featured a Greyhound rescue organzation. Did you know that if you want a Greyhound dog, the you can only get one is through a rescue organization? You can't just walk into a pet store anywhere and buy a Greyhound puppy. (Unless, of course, you know a breeder or happen on one in a shelter.) 

Do you know what they need rescuing from?

Death.  They're put to sleep after maybe six months of racing use. 

Yup, they have a very short life--unless a rescue organization gets ahold of them and recycles them into homes as pets. According to the show, they make fantastic pets. Very mild mannered and easy going,eager to please dogs. They don't need a huge yard or anything.--not a high energy dog like a Russel Terrier.

Personally, I totally disagree with using dogs for racing. I don't see it as any better then illegal dog-fighting. Dog tracks are just a legal form of cruelity. Florida is a big dog track state, but I won't go near those places,I disagree so much with it.

I can't have a dog. If I could, I'd certainly consider a Greyhound because I do feel so strongly about their mis-use. I think it wiser and better to adopt a shelter dog anyway then go and dumbly spend $500 on a store puppy .    (We won't even go into the horrible puppy mills that produce what you're buying! )

So, if you're considering adding a dog to your family or life, please consider adopting a Greyhound .(Google for a rescue organization for info.)  Or--if not that, at least go to your local animal shelter and give a abandoned animal a forever home.

Unfortunately, dog-racing, like prostitution, isn't going away anytime soon, because the dog-pimps are making a mint on it.

Here's a photo of what a normal averaged-size pine cone from my yard looks like (on the right) sitting next to the super-sized one I found on a walk(on the left).
(They are on the same flat surface side-by-side)

After this photo, I cleaned it up and spray-painted it with gold paint in prep for further decorating.
I'll post a photo of the finished product later. I'm still deciding exactly how I want to decorate it.

My friend, Dee, left a nice comment in the thoughts below about how she's put her pine cones to use! 

Sniglet of the Week: Keyfruit (kee froot): The one apple, pear or tomato in the stand that, once removed, causes all the others to tumble forward.

My house is surrounded by pine strees. Long-needled Southern Pines to be exact. They plant themselves in a heart beat. (I'm pulling up ambitious seedlings out of the yard all the time.)  Which is amazing to me, since where I grew up in Indiana, my Mother tried planting pine trees in our woodsy yard, but couldn't get them to grow for the life of her. You see, pine trees aren't native to Hoosierland. Cedars are.  I did, however, once receive a free 6-inch blue spruce in a tiny pot at a flower show once, which I planted and it did happen to grow. (It's presently about 40 years old and around 20 odd feet tall--but it doesn't make pine cones.) Therefore, the only pine cones we saw were on Christmas cards for the most part.

Then one year we had to drive down to Biloxi, Mississppi to get my middle sister, who was in tech school at Keesler, for Christmas vacation. It was my Mother, myself, my younger sister and I think a friend of hers who went. On the way down we stopped at a rest area in Alabama and there on the ground we saw pine cones. Hundreds of them, about a 2"x 3" size. (short-needle) So, we who had no cones of our own, went crazy joyously scrabbling about, filling our arms with them.  (We wanted to use them for Christmas craft-making and decorating.)

Nowadays, I'm sated with pine cones yearly, scattered thick on my lawn. But picking them up always reminds me of that amazing Biloxi trip when we collected armfulls!

I still like them, though I have far too many to use and certainly not all are very pretty looking. I do collect a few good looking ones for a table center piece every fall.

However, there was one year my usual pine cones were extra large. Normally, they range around 3 by 5 inches, but that year they were closer to 4 by 7 inches. For some reason it was a particularly good year for cones. In any case, I selected two lovely large specimens and made a Christmas door hanger out of them, which I still use to this day. (I hung them on fabric ribbon with bows wired to their stems.)  

Currently stashed in my garage, patiently waiting for me to do something with it, is an extraordinarily super large pine cone. I found it while walking one day,picking up aluminium cans. It's a whopper.  it's at least 10 inches tall and 6 inches wide. It's waiting around for me to decide what to do with it---most likely decorate it to look like a Christmas tree. (I've done that before.)  One of it's beauties is it sits square and upright on it's bottom,which is a prerequiste for a Christmas tree cone. Maybe I'll do that this year. I have gold spray paint I could spray it with. I'd just need to buy some tiny glass ornaments to glue on it's petals. Hmmm...

So you see, I still have a love for my pine cones.

Sniglet for the Week:  Airdirt:  A hanging plant that's been ignored for 3 weeks or more.
(sniglets are works that aren't in the dictionary, but should be!)

It's November 1st. Halloween is over. I was disappointed not to have a single trick or treater!   Though, I made good progress on crocheting that baby blanket while waiting around!

Today was "update the website" day, too! I added some nice photos of Jean Grey in her Phoenix costume from X3. And the writers challenge for this month is related to discovering the real meaning of Christmas. (I work about a month ahead of holidays on those--need time to edit.)

I have a 20-page limit on story submissions, but that doesn't mean they have to be 20-pages It just means not more than that--mostly because the editing takes a good deal of time considering it's a hobby and I do have a real life.

20-pages does equal about 14,000 words. That's alot. DG Davis's challenge story "Afflicted" is a good example that, if you want to see what 20-pages looks like.

The average submission, though, is usually between 3 & 10 pages. I've discovered I really like offering flash fiction challenges (500 words) or challenges with other word limits because it makes editing them a breeze.

I have a combo WierdJob/Holiday Christmas Challenge I was working on last year I may work on again for this year. I got stumped on the ending. It concerns an odd Christmas event which happens to Logan while he's working one time as a cab driver.   (The Weird Job Challenge was to write about an interesting work experience Logan might've considered "weird."  In fifteen years, I figure he did more than fight cages or pool hall hustling to earn a buck. My next story chapter will have him re-visit another "past job", in fact. Ice road driving. It's  called "Encounters" though the ice road driving only serves as a story back-drop. (It creates the situation for certain "encounters") Seeing it on history channel once gave me the idea.

A personal photo card I designed using just a close-up photo of someone's porch decoration that I "reconceived" using Picnik.
Have a safe and fun Halloween!

My search for "Heroes" show sponsors with which to lodge my protest continues...I located Nissan as a major sponsor and emailed them today. We'll be in the car market for a vehicle within the next couple years (really) so I suggested action on their part could "go long ways toward influencing us in considering their product."    (always good to touch upon the ol' pocket book.)

I've pulled out my crochet baby blanket pattern book today to  look through which one I want to make for my nephew. He's in the Air Force and he and his wife are expecting their first child around March. I'd like to send it as a Christmas gift. It's a tradition for me. I made each sister one and now I'm moving on to their children. (Time certainly does fly!)  I only make one per family, so I usually pick a neutral color scheme so it can be used for every new future arrival as well. My sisters still have theirs and use them as throws now. So, it's a worthwhile gift. We're going to stop at Joann Fabric on the way back from the movies today.

Which brings me to the lunch-date. We're going to see Astro Boy and eat lunch at Panara Bread. (Love their tomato soup!)  Last weekend the local theatre in the nearby plaza had a FREE 1:00 pm movie showing of "Aliens in the Attic."  Of all the kids movies we've been to this summer, that one was the most entertaining. I'd say "Shorts" was the most blah.  The week before that we saw the double-feature 3-D Toy Story, which was fun.

As for the website, I've been working on updating old chapters as well as my new chapter. I also put up a new front page photo of Wolverine. It looks really nice--all thanks to Picnik, which is the in-site photo editor. I used one of it's effects to darken the outer edge so it blends into the black background. InTheZone won't be updated until after Halloween. My favorite Picnik photo effect, however, is their b/w focal point, which makes the photo all b/w except for one spot you can adjust the size of for a focal emphasis.  I really enjoy the photo manipulation Picnik offers!