I haven’t planted any bulbs in a couple of years and I need to plant more daffodils. I think the tulips are okay although they need to be dug up and spread around more. They look like they are growing on top of each other. (not pictured)

There is a virtual book fair going on right now on Facebook. Tons of indie authors in all genres. What a great idea and easy way to try new authors.

There is a free copy of Season of Us up for giveaway so if you’re a Facebook person — now is the time to put your name in. Contest ends March 3rd.

I was looking through my ancient scanned photos last night for a particular photo and instead found some slides from a 1972 trip to the Grand Canyon. I thought I could clean it up a little better but ran out of time and patience. Photo credit: Dad

I’ve read those articles that say no one knows what “sell by” or “use by” dates mean. (example)

But there still has to be some vague rhyme or reason, right? I am a big worrier about bad dairy. My Aunt told me I have “intense fear of sour milk” a condition that runs in the family. I don’t drink a lot of milk, especially in the summer. But in winter I like hot chocolate on the weekends.

I usually buy milk in half-gallon cartons which go off on me fairly regularly seeing how little milk I drink. But the date on the carton is always far in the future. I recently picked up a quart of milk because I was at a different market and that carton is dated last week and the milk is still perfectly fine. It’s a mystery.

We have a bag of lemons that some family brought from California. I have company coming this weekend and I wanted to bake something. I found a lemon buttermilk bundt cake that looked good. I did my usual quick skim of the recipe and saw it called for 3 lemons.

When I started making it and looked more closely it said:

3 TB of zest and 3 TB lemon juice (3 lemons)

What kind of lemons are they talking about? I only used 1 lemon for the zest and half of that for the juice. The cake just came out of the oven and smells amazing.

This was taken in Frankfurt, Germany in September 2014.

Last fall I lost my mind a little bit with the ebook buying. I subscribed to both BookBub and BookPerk and couldn’t resist anything that looked remotely interesting even though I knew I had more than enough books to read.

I swore off new purchases for awhile and I’m down to about 5 books on the ereader. I just finished Kristan Higgins The Best Man which I mostly loved. I thought it got a wee bit too silly at times and there was one scene that was unforgivably mean spirited but overall I recommend.

I still have bookshelves collapsing under the weight of unread paper books so I’m intending to continue the trend of reading before I buy anything new. We’ll see how long I last.

Over New Years weekend I thought I broke a crown.

It didn’t hurt even a tiny bit. Cold food. Hot food. Crunchy food.

I finally got in to see the dentist and it wasn’t a crown, it was a tooth. And it was a nasty fracture. And it did not want to get numb for the dentist.

I was a little shaky by the time I got out of there but my dentist is wonderful and I am prepped for my new crown which is on the way.

I’m still eating very carefully. No pita chips for me right now.

I’ve been trying to master Photoshop for at least 10 years. I think I took my first class in 2004 — so longer than 10 years. I’ve always wanted to do one of those challenge where I do PS tricks to a different photo every day for a year. Or maybe every day for a month.

But once I challenge myself I hate to fail and I would make myself crazy trying to fit a Photoshop project on top of everything else I need to get done in a day.

Doing a PS project every week doesn’t sound as appealing.

I only want to learn for fun. There’s nothing at stake if I can’t remember how a radial gradient works.

Since I finished Season of Us I’ve taken a little break from writing.

I’m been reviewing the Photoshop streaming class I finished last year. (Or 2 years ago? I can’t remember.) You know how sometimes when you’re learning something new and then you go out and do it for awhile, when you go back to review the lessons you learn a bunch of new stuff? That’s what’s happening now. I completely forgot about an entire menu in Camera Raw. I think I need to do a streaming class with just Camera Raw.

This photo was from the color goosing tool.

The Season of Us eBook has been at .99 since the beginning of the year. It’s going up to $2.99 very soon, like anytime between now and tomorrow depending on when the server hamsters get their work done. (It’s still a deal at $2.99.)

I was in rural California for Christmas and we had some heavy rain and a bit of slushy snow. Just enough to lose power on Christmas Eve. The power was off all day Christmas day, as well.

We had already been considering leaving on Saturday because we were watching the weather but the power issue helped seal the deal.

We had to pack up in a cold cabin with no power. We had flashlights and daylight but we ended up forgetting things. My sister and her SO forgot stuff, too.

We found the missing glasses (in the car), the missing phone (in the different car), the missing glove (on the floor of the garage when we got home) and the missing sweater (in with the xmas presents).

The last missing thing on my list was one of those extra long socks that goes up over the knee that I had paired with a little Christmas tree ankle sock on Christmas day. One pair was missing and I already checked that it wasn’t stuck to a sweater or stuffed in a pocket. Yesterday I finally dug around the back of my closet and pulled out my duffle and unrolled it and found my socks.

Updating here has been the *next* thing on my list for days.

I had a little extra time off during the holidays and I’ve been either aggressively getting chores done or aggressively doing nothing except drink hot chocolate and read in bed. I like the second one better.

I’ve been complaining forever about what a mess my photos are so I’ve been working on that and I’m still in the pruning state. I take so many and then I’m precious about deleting any. I even keep blurry ones and ones where half the person’s head is cut off. I’ve been a pruning machine and made it 2/3rds of the way through 2011 before I gave up. Maybe I’ll do some more next weekend.

I also have a lot of great photos that I’ve forgotten about. I’ll roll some out here.

I think I’m growing out my bangs. I’m 90% committed at this point but they aren’t quite long enough to drive me crazy yet. I found a barrette at the back of a bathroom drawer so I am presently wearing the same hairstyle I had when I was 7.

Back to work Monday. Vacation time always goes by so quick.

Happy New Year.

This isn’t a current photo – no snow on the ground as I am writing this. I don’t know what Santa is pointing at, maybe at all our awesome gifts just out of frame.

It took me awhile to get in the mood for Christmas this year. Between the book and regular life I was so over-extended during the fall, it felt like I would never recover. But I have all my stuff done and packed and ready to go. Now we just need the weather to cooperate so we can drive down to California.

Enjoy your holidays!