Back from Hiatus

I know. I'm sorry. It's been a month.

But I have pictures!

Look at Danny, he's all cute and graduated! After a week of residency, presenting his project and hearing about others, they handed him a diploma, one with his name on it and everything.

After that, we drove through seven states to see this:

It's the National Cathedral, and it's breathtaking.

After a whirlwind trip through DC, we went to Roanoke, Va, before backtracking to Monticello, before driving to Pfafftown, NC, before driving to Spartanburg, SC to see this:

A BMW Airplane engine at the BMW museum, which is adjacent to where they keep the big giant robots.

I'm very sorry that I don't have big giant robot pictures to post. Truly. They took my camera(s). Just know that they were huge, they twirled pieces of BMW X5 undercarriage like a q-tip, and sparks flew when they welded the pieces together.

I came to two conclusions very quickly:

1. If there was a tornado, the BMW factory is not where you'd want to be.

2. If the robots suddenly developed independent wills, these are the ones that would take over the world.

In other news...

1. Simply Sara is 100% done, edits, galleys, acknowledgements, discussion questions, dedication, back cover copy, author bio and all.

2. Danny's hooding ceremony was the night of the Glee finale, but we got to watch it a week later when we had access to reliable internet again. Oh. My. Goodness. It ended just right, I loved "To Sir, With Love,"and I can't wait till next season. Congrats to their writing team for landing the plane! I just hope we see more of Idina Menzel...

3. I picked up Elizabeth Aston's Writing Jane Austen from the library today. It looks like fun.

4. I discovered this in North Carolina -

It's a chocolate-dipped waffle bowl. An innovative concept if I've ever seen one. While it is messy to eat, it does eliminate the drip-through-the-bottom problem.

Well, the bowl at the bottom does that. But it's the functionality of the bowl with the deliciousness (and carbs) of the cone. So everyone wins, if you're willing to get your fingers chocolately.

There are worse things.

5. It's funny being back. When we left, the kids were still in school and it was dark and drizzly. Now school's out and the skies are blue and sunny. I'm not complaining, just stating that it's weird. We were only gone two weeks, but it feels more like a month!

6. We have groceries again, though. My new favorite thing that I discovered at an airport Starbucks, and I don't remember which, is Greek Yogurt. It is thick, creamy, rich in taste while being the same calorie count as fat free Nancy's (if you don't have Nancy's yogurt in your neck of the woods, it's the local premium organic yogurt).

I think I need to go stretch my legs soon, so more later. I promise it won't be a month later! I've got a pizza I need, desperately, to recreate, so if there's success, there will be a recipe to follow...

The *Exciting* life of a writer

Really it's riveting. (type type type)

Nothing but excitement around here. (type-ety-type type)

For the last two weeks, I've been on schedule. Perfectly - so perfect, that I've not written at all on weekend. So perfect that by Friday night, I have the mental capacity of a...

...I can't come up with a good simile. Sorry. But basically, I sit around reading somebody else's book (this week it was Melanie Benjamin's Alice I Have Been) and trying not to self-destruct. Because before then, it's very possible that I only left the house two, maybe three times in the past week, and I've written two chapters. Some days, I don't do my hair or put on makeup. Instead, I spend most of the day staring at a computer screen that doesn't seem to change...

...and then out of nowhere it seems, it does. Seems all of the little nothing words add up to a lot of something, and when I read it back it's not that bad. Sure there's typo and continuity issues (the latter having bitten me in the behind quite often, lately), but it's coming. This puppy's going to end, and I might be alive to see it.

The good news, though, is that...hm. Went searching for an image (cute, no?), came back , and lost my train of thought. Train's gone. However, I can think of some other good things:

1. The Book Signing at Barnes & Noble's. Part book signing event, part "This is Your Life," seeing someone I see everyday (my husband), and someone I haven't seen in YEARS, a teacher from my old elementary school. There were a lot of people in between, enough that we sold out B&N's stock and dipped into the stash in the back of our car, selling enough that Plain Jayne was the store's top seller of the week.

When I found that out, I was like, "Hey, in this one market, I outsold Sarah Palin. Good times."

2. Hopefully, my laptop may be fixable with a $45 (ish) part, which would be nice because if I had to replace the whole thing (which is only three years old), I'd also have to buy a new operating system, update Microsoft Office, and update Photoshop. All of this means major dollar signs, and while I'm all for tax write-offs, I'd just rather not right now. I like my laptop, and the teensy fact that the screen doesn't work doesn't strike me as a good enough reason to part ways at this time. I am thankful for my handy husband, and this is just another example why.

3. We finally bought tickets for Danny's Vermont graduation, and are planning a jaunt to D.C. and farther south to visit the east coast family.

And the BMW museum. Everybody wins here.

Neither of us have been to D.C. for a while, but it's really less that we're going to D.C. and more that we're going to the Smithsonian Museums.

4. We returned the Big Book o' Bridge Codes to the University of Portland, further signifying Danny's completion with school. Sally (our car) started making sounds that one doesn't desire a car to make. Filled her with oil (the handy thing about being in Portland at a time, you can throw a rock in any direction and hit a Fred Meyer's), now she seems better...but definitely keeping an eye on that.

5. Ate the best red pepper I've ever eaten in my life last night. It was also the reddest red pepper - Dior lipstick red I've ever seen. Coincidence? Probably not. Just thought I'd share. It was a really good pepper, roasted(ish) in our toaster oven with olive oil and sea salt.

Well...diverting as the pepper news is, I should return to writing before I tell of my laundry successes (as in, laundry got done last week). It's Chapter 25, and so far, so good. Onward!

I saw Amish people

See that? In the window? See that Amish head? Total accident. I actually took four shots of this parked buggy, and in the last one I got a little happy surprise. I didn't want to actually try to take a picture of an Amish person because one of the premises of my book is treating Amish people like normal people and not circus freaks, and while the urge to snap is very strong when faced with the strangely bearded, I resisted and, in my opinion, was given a little present for my moral fortitude.

Ha ha. Anyway.

After we purchased our plane tickets for my grandmother's memorial service, I posted something about our trip East on Facebook. My editor then asked if we were headed to Amish country...and it got me to thinking.

Were there Amish in North Carolina?

I knew Grandma wouldn't mind. She would have rolled her eyes and drawled, "Honey, if you need to go see the Amish, go see the Amish." And that would have been that.

Technically, there is only supposed to be one settlement, in Union Grove, but the settlement we visited was in the much-closer town of Hamptonville. Goes to show that the Amish settlment censuses (censi?) aren't wildly accurate. We also saw...


A buggy sign...




...and a traveling buggy with real people in it...

...and Amish kittens.

The last two shots are brough to you by my cousin Melissa, seeing as how I shot a slew of photos without my memory card inside my camera. I have grieved the loss and moved on, although the shot I'm saddest about loosing is the black kitten walking through an Amish-carved spindle-thingy.

Grieved. Moved on.

Anyway, we stopped at the Shiloh General Store, where we ate Amish ice cream (good stuff), bought fudge and Strawberry-Rhubarb butter. The store was run by an Amishman; a young lady served us the ice cream. We chatted with the older gentleman for a little while - once he found out we were from Oregon, he asked if we'd ever been to Sisters. Aparently there's a farming periodical that's published out of Sisters, and it was the only connection he had with Oregon.

He also told us about his son-in-law who ran a woodshop down the street, so we hiked down a bit - that's where we found the kittens.

All in all, a great trip. I didn't work up the nerve to ask anyone any questions, although in hindsight there were several things I could have asked and sounded intelligent about. I mean, it's not like I haven't researched these people for the last several months.

For a change of pace, we went to the fair that evening. We watched pig races (winning piglet gets an oreo), and I got to pet a camel :

Also fed it a carrot round and nearly lost a finger (more user error than camel violence).

We had a wonderful trip. I got to see my grandpa, as well as aunts, uncles, and cousins I don't get to see very often. And we really want to go back, although the next trip will likely involve fewer Amish and more of the BMW factory tour...