Okay I’ve had that Ace Frehley ear-worm from the commercial that ends with it. Don’t know the product, a car of some short but enjoy the songs for where they are as they go across country. Not a good commercial for the car great one for songs, like Back In The New York Groove.
Life has been busy with Life stuff. Again dealt with health issues but again I’m back.
Decided to move my comic book review to this blog rather than on G+ so I can put the scans with the comments about the book. Getting my first posts on those ready.
Been working on some writing projects and dealing with over 100F weather.
Honestly I keep hoping a routine will establish itself and take hold but so far, one hasn’t held on for a whole month. Yet there’s always hope, always hope.
Things are going well. I’m on a roll. Then WHAM! I get sick and it knocks me off my feet. Then I spend a week catching up. Yep on that cycle again. This time it’s a stomach virus that hammered me Wednesday night. Solid food and I are in negotiations today. The negotiations broke down yesterday. I’m not suffering alone, Aaron’s girlfriend has it too. The good news is I’ve got enough reserves to take this with Gatoraid support. I’ll be back in a few days now I think I’m going back to bed.
In the meantime enjoy this rose from the Leu Gardens in Orlando, Florida
I enjoyed photographing roses in the Leu Gardens
You can give me a shout out at all the usual locations.
A new year is on its way, giving us a reason to do year in review. I look back on the last year of this blog and see I didn’t make the most of what I had.
Rappy was worried about my under utilization of my blog
I want to change that in 2012. The first thing I did is read up on blogging advice. Let me tell you, there’s no shortage of it out there. There’s books, websites, and even blogs on how to blog. I jumped in reading here and there. Trying to glean commonalities from all them. Honestly there was very little.
Post on a regular basis, yeah I can do that
Post regularly – whatever the interval I decide post regularly. That was the most often mentioned point in all the advice givers. Okay I got that, I fell down on it last year. I hate to set the goal of daily but it’s what I yearn to do. However I will set a goal of AT LEAST monthly. There that leaves room to strive for the daily goal but still set myself up for success.
Focus, can be limiting
Focus – Oh heck several say pick a topic and stick to it. If you want to chat about multiple topics make multiple blogs. I’m sorry that might be fantastic advice but it’s just not me. I get bored with single themed blogs. I get bored just talking about one thing. I don’t see it as focus but limitation. I like diversity and have worked hard in my life to embrace all aspects of myself. So this ain’t gonna happen. Consider me stuck in the variety show format. Tune in here to see what act comes next song, dance, stand up comedy, dramatic piece. My focus is to entertain us.
Oh I can’t stand clutter, really I can’t
Simple layout – okay a few mentioned don’t over clutter your page. No problem there. I won’t. I don’t like clutter. Like I said in the real world I can’t think in clutter, in the virtual world I can’t take visual clutter.
Cats all blogs need cat pictures
Define why you blog – I blog to share, to entertain, to wave at the universe as we take a ride around the sun on this big ball. Good enough?
Wanna buy a book? C’mon buy a book with one of my stories in it!
Self promote – Well I’m not one to be schlepping all the time. I hate people who just do that on social media. They only tweet to sell me something. Pfft I want that I can watch tv they do it every few minutes. Best I can do is post the link to my latest blog in my other social media. I’ll try to remind people they can subscribe by rss & e-mail. That’s about it. Since I don’t like people always selling to me I’m not comfortable doing it to others.
ME controversial?
Be controversial – Oh lordy – that’s NOT me. Yes I have political opinions mostly leaning liberal if you want to know. Yes I have a religious view but that’s personal between me and what I consider divine – none of your business just as I consider yours none of mine.
I’m here to have fun and hope you are here for that too. I’m not here to debate, get snarky or any of that. Here it’s the we all get along, live and let live. Life is too short to not enjoy it and arguing isn’t enjoyable to me.
In the end what did I decide for my blog for 2012?
I need to become more tech savvy about WordPress but not THIS tech savvy
First off I need to become more proficient at using WordPress.
Second I need to post here regularly. I think I will post at least monthly. My plan is to come here more often with small thought posts instead of Google+.
I’ve got topics coming and going, jump in see what’s interesting to you
Third this is a smorgasbord of topics, just like life. I’ll review comics that read regularly here. I’ll talk about writing and my struggle with it. I’ll chat about genealogy and family stories. There will be beading pictures and talk about how I plan to sell the backlog of what I make. Plus I’ll fill you in on what I’ve been doing with photos to illustrate. Heck I’ll try to include photos in everything just because I like pictures.
Smorgasbord Dinner
That’s about all I got. I’m going to here more often, chatting away about what interests me. If you like it share it with others. If you want to join in and chat feel free to comment here, on Google+ Mary Louise Eklund, on twitter @marylouiseeklund, flickr or email me marylouiseeklund at yahoo.com or gmail.com
I’ll be back one I put the mess away. The clutter is getting to me.
Just a quick nod to let you know I’ve not forgotten ya’ll. It’s just the holiday clutter has gotten to critical mass. So today I’m picking up and doing a bit of swish & swipe cleaning. I don’t know if you are like me but when things get too cluttered I don’t have room to think. Well it’s that bad now.
So yeah I know next post what we learned craft fairing. I promise I know and I’ve got some lessons to share.
In the mean time I’m making room to think in here. See ya soon. As always love to hear from you at all the my usual places.
So obviously keeping a blog with everything else I’m doing isn’t working. I’m rethinking what I’m going to do with all my social media and blog. I’m thinking of turning this into more of a personal journal than official writing blog. Apparently that will suit my style.
For those who met or followed me on Facebook. I don’t do that any more. Ever since Facebook updated their system to track you even when you sign out, I stopped using them. I considered that an invasion of privacy and apparently so did the FTC. You can now find me on Google+ because it’s a system that turns off when you log out. They already had their brush with the FTC with Google Buzz and cleaned up their act. I’m me over there too, Mary Louise Eklund feel free to circle me any time. Also say hi in the comments.
I’m also on Twitter. Love it as I can shout out to the world from my phone when a thought is worth sharing. I’m marylouiseklund over there. Note one e for the end of Louise and the start of Eklund in that handle. Also over to the right my tweets run so you’ll see links I think are interesting shared there.
Now to tell you what I’ve been doing since August.
Three Gems – Jewelry Booth
Hmm, I’ve been doing craft shows selling my jewelry. I’ve had a booth with two of my friends Paula Lawlor and Jean Rabe. We’ve had great shows and really bad shows but in the end I just want to support my craft addiction. After the first of the year we plan to open an esty store. I’ll let you know about that when it happens.
Jean is moving at the end of January, her husband has taken a new job a bit south of here. He’s already moved there. I sure will miss them. Jean was a bit part of our writer’s group. She brought years of experience in writing and editing to our group of newbies. Now we’re on our own after January.
As for our little jewelry/craft group. We’ll go on with lessons learned from this year. There are some other crafters interested in joining us. After the holidays we’ll meet, choose what craft fairs we want to do starting in the Spring and start the application process for them.
Mike a the Emporer’s palace Tokyo
Mike had active duty in Japan. This was months after the big earthquake in northern Japan. He did get to go sight see once before the work started. We got to chat regularly over the internet. No we didn’t use Skype but instead Yahoo IM but the voice chat. I think he enjoyed Poland more last year because with that group he got to see more of the host country. Here he was on base most of the time working the night shift. Never know what you’ll get but the Navy still lives up to its promise of seeing the world.
Aaron in his first dorm room
Aaron moved out into a dorm at University of Wisconsin in Madison. He’s doing so well. He comes home regularly to see his girlfriend Sara. As a result we get to see him regularly. As you can see he’s having a great time a college discovering odd things like an old gas mask without the filter and public transportation.
Having a great time at college!
I rediscovered the fun of having ideas, doodles, plans, notes, and such all in one nice book. My new journal book of choice is a large moleskine with grid paper. The great thing about gridpaper is I can draw out floor plans of settings I create in my stories. I can do calendars, and such. Also when I take a notion to sketch it helps having a grid. I’m not a good sketcher but at times it makes me happy.
Yes we were THAT close to him
We didn’t just sit around all the time but did do a few things without going to a single theme park. We took an airboat ride out on a local lake. That was lots of fun. We got to see alligators and other wild life. I told Mike it felt like I was riding a couch across the water. I loved it and would like to go do it again sometime.
Leu Garden Roses
We toured the Leu House and Gardens. There they have a wonderfully historic house with beautiful gardens. Mrs. Leu loved roses and her rose garden was unbelievable! The roses were in bloom and I did enjoy making pictures of them until the mosquitoes came out at dusk! Didn’t see the rest of the gardens as we ran to our car to avoid the blood thirsty swarms! Next time going more toward mid day when the sun is high and mosquitoes are low.
Early Stages of the clean up from the plumbing disaster
Life’s not all been crafting, moving and vacation. We did deal with a huge plumbing issue that happened when the sewage pipe from the second floor cracked and drained through our walls and into our basement. The whole basement had to be redone. That took a while to get in order but our insurance covered most of the cost. THANK GOODNESS!
Grandpa Mac holding Baby Aaron
We lost Grandpa Mac this fall. He was Mike’s maternal grandfather, Dale McAllister. It was sad but a blessing Grandpa was freed from his body. He’d not been in good health and had to be in a nursing homes. We’ll miss him. The funeral service was excellent the minister recounted many of his funny tales make all of us smile remembering the man we knew.
As for writing, I’m working on a Steampunk novel. I’m using the characters from my two published stories. It picks up just after the Steampunk’d story. All of it takes place on the Plebeman estate. It’s been fun and soon the first draft will be done and sit on the hard drive to cool before my editing/rewrites. Then it’ll be out to betas.
Next big project will be an urban (but really rural setting) fantasy set in town I grew up in and my parents still live, Greeneville, Tennessee. I’ve been working on that story concept and plot for months. It should be fun to revisit the area but with a fictional twist of course.
As for genealogy, I’m still plugging away at it. I’ve come to terms that I will always have a filing cabinet of information awaiting input into my family tree program. I’ll always be collecting more documentation and always be behind. All this despite I only deal with dead ancestors and relatives. Such is the life of an amateur genealogist.
We haven’t had any snow that stuck to the ground until today. I’d been counting my blessings and hoping for a snow-less winter but that’s too much to ask for in Wisconsin. I count my blessings that it is late starting this year and hope for an early spring, say oh in March!
Hope the holidays are treating you well. Now that you know what I’m up to give me a shout out to tell me what you’ve been up to. You can reach me here, Google+, Twitter, Flickr (where you’ll find this photos in large sizes and many more from these events & other things), or at either of my e-mail addresses marylouiseeklund at yahoo.com or gmail.com. I try to make it easy to be found.
Bathysphere4826 by Bob Richmond on Flickr. Image used through the Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution license.
Welcome to the first post in my blog. I’m not real sure where to start. Do I jump in babbling about the topic that entertains me for the day? Do I introduce myself? Do I set a statement of purpose for the blog? Do I need a bathysphere to enter the blogosphere? Maybe a blogysphere?
Since I can talk about anything, I know I have the first one covered. That’ll mostly be what I do, jump into a one-sided conversation on something that strikes my fancy. It’ll become two way if you comment because I will reply.
That brings me to introducing myself. As the blog says, I’m Mary Louise Eklund. I wear a lot of hats in life. I’ll write about all of them here. I’m a published writer of short stories. I’ve been published in Terribly Twisted Tales and most recently Steam Punk’d. I have more in the works. I’ll shout out when they are coming out. Given that I’ll write here about writing, words, language, reading, and all the stuff related to that. What I like, what I find frustrating, my process, inspiration, blocks, and all the stuff I go through trying to write.
I enjoy photography as a hobby. You can see my photos on flickr, again under my name. The most recent ones appear on my sidebar. I’ve sold a few in my time. I even worked as a photographer for a bit in my undergraduate days. I like going out and making photos of things, not so much into photographing people. It’s not that I don’t like people, I love to watch people. I just like to take pictures of things because they don’t fret over how they look. It’s also easier to find stuff that’s willing to pose and release for publication isn’t an issue.
On the people topic, I am into genealogy as a hobby. I love the stories I find, the interesting facts, and the thrill of the hunt. I like trying to solve the puzzle of family lore or where did so-and-so end up. Like Mark Hicks my 3rd great uncle that went to the Confederacy in the Civil War when all the others in the family were Union. His brother was a Union Calvary officer. The family never welcomed Mark home and blamed him for turning in his brother-in-law who died in Andersonville. Mark wound up in Arkansas destitute and living on the dole. I found him. Those stories and the questions raised as I work through the information I have will show up here. I’ve even got a story inspired by my genealogical research and expect more to come from it.
I make jewelry. I do beading and am trying out resin pouring designs. I will eventually sell the stuff. I’ll link to that here when it’s up and running. I’ll chat about my working on it and other crafting. I crochet and take various courses in other things that hit my fancy. So far I’ve enjoyed fused glass, pottery, and precious metal clay working. You’ll get all about those things too.
I’m a family person. I’m a mom of a 17 year old who is in his senior year in high school. I’m a wife of a busy business man who is also an officer in the reserves. I’m also the only child of aging parents. I’m a person with chronic illness that’s manageable but not curable. I’m a pet parent, 3 cats and a dog. Those things I’ll keep to a minimum. If it involves another person I don’t want to say more than they are comfortable with sharing. I don’t want to whine and complain about health, there’s enough blogs made up of kvetching. However, I’m sure some off it will come through at times.
That takes care of introducing myself and what I’ll write about. What do I intend to do here? I’ll post regularly. My goal is at least weekly but hopefully more often. I’m sure it’ll depend on the ebb and flow of the other areas of my life.
Mary Louise Eklund 