Asrai Devin's Blog, page 7

Vacation: Screaming, spitting and dancing edition

 

We got back from vacation and I have a ton of pictures to share. We drove across the entire province of Alberta (SK border to BC) then half way across BC and then straight down the middle (Prince George to Kamloops) made a stop between Revelstoke and Sicamous then returned home.

It was done in 6 hour driving chunks which were more like 8 hour with a two-year-old.

funny highlights:

When I FLIPPED the fuck out on my nephew because he grabbed a box of cookies from my hand and ran. I just lost it, because I was NOT in the mood to play chase a teenager for cookies. I’m the adult and he’s a child and I do not play “keep away” BS. There was screaming and swearing. It was BAD. I feel like an ass. I was an ass. I’ll never live it down. EVER.

Then we were all out on the porch and my in-laws are handing out cookies. But there are more children than cookies so my SIL says “Just throw the last two in the middle of the kids [in the back yard] and it will be like the Hunger Games.”

I had a mouthful of wine and I had this awesome image of the kids beating the crap out of each other for these cookies. So I ended up spitting my mouthful of wine all over my husband’s cousin who was beside me. That was not my fault however.

Between the however many of us there were, we drank 2 bottles of wine. Well most of 2 bottles, there was a big glass left when everyone had gone but us (we were staying at my in-laws). Five years ago, I got REALLY drunk at their house, so they were feeding me wine again. I get drunk really fast.

There was dancing and singing in the backyard. I was heading to the basement and singing “Don’t Feel Like Dancing” by the Scissor Sisters and trying to do the actions from the Just Dance 3. Good times. I think.

Then we played some cards and some jackass decided I should be score keeper. I usually am, but I was pretty drunk. So The names on the top say “ME”, “YOU” (husband), GRANDPA (Father in law), an actual name and then “my wonderful first born child”.

I wrote about 15,000 words while on “vacation”. I have two books back from two editors. One has a cover I worked very hard on and now hate that I have my cover artist. (She did Second Chance Romance for me last month LOVE LOVE LOVE- at an insanely reasonable price). But that’s the book AFTER the one I don’t have even have a title for. I tried to figure it out while we were driving, NOTHING.

So, that was the lowlights of my vacation. There is much to report. I have MANY mountain pictures if anyone needs pictures of mountains. I’m there. I’ll post some in the coming weeks. And I’m back on twitter and hopefully my blog will pick-up again. I haven’t heard from the lady I was baby-sitting for, so maybe she fired me. Whatevs.

 

Tagged: Alberta, British Columbia, getting drunk, Hunger Games, Just Dance 3, Kamloops, Revelstoke British Columbia, Scissor Sisters, Sicamous, Sicamous British Columbia, Spitting wine, Vacation, visiting in-laws

Stupid $%^&*() password

My wifi card crapped out on me sometime the middle of June. I left it for a while, thinking I’d be more productive. I wrote more, but it put me behind on blog reading and way behind on Social media interaction.

So off we go to Future Shop (Canada’s best buy). I used to live in a place that had both best buy and future shop and other places. But here you have two independent computer shops and Future Shop.

I researched it a bit and decided a USB wireless would work out. Hubby wanted me to buy a new laptop and give this one to our daughter.

Anyway, I schelepped down and found one in my price range (low to mid-priced). I bought it, did some other running around, anxious to get home and have my wifi restored to the bedroom.

I couldn’t do anything until Sunshine Boy went down for his nap. Touching the computer while he’s awake means he’ll either run over and push the sleep button repeatedly until I’m insane or he’ll find other trouble.

Finally he went down, I unwrapped my new shiny thing for the week and wondered why it had a cord with a usb end.

I read the instructions, which were in French and Spanish- no English, while the computer booted. Then I popped the CD in and waited some more.

The driver installed and then I followed the directions, plugging it into the computer.

Despite sitting 3 feet apart, the USB could not find my modem. It did find six others in the vicinity, but not mine. I finally got it to find mine and Sunshine Boy awoke, he’d been asleep for about 20 minutes so I went to cuddle him back down, laptop on my lap.

Found my modem, lost it, found it. Tried the long cord with the support end. i realized that using it was was a necessity.

Then for the next two days I could only get limited connectivity. SO I searched on line. It’s a DCHP issue. I know more about DHCP then I ever wanted to know and I have no idea what it stands for or why my internet didn’t like DCHP.

It was like watching a bad date. They had nothing in common. DCHP wouldn’t accept my computers overtures of affection. DCHP was DNS blocking me. Bastards. It got to the point where I was begging the DCHP gods to grant me my connection. I need it (my daughter asserts I never NEEDED the internet, but she hasn’t hit the teen years yet).

Back to the God-given Internet. (I saw someone post a Facebook forward “If you pass this on within 5 minutes, God will do you a favor within 120 seconds”. Right, God is watching my Facebook feed I’m sure). I needed to modify my registry. First back it up, then search for my controller registry assignment, which is buried about 15 layers deep. Then go find it in my internet settings, 15 layers in another file system, then add a file and modify a value.

save, reboot, plug in. still limited connectivity. They had some “other” suggestions for me this afternoon. Reinstall the driver, driver up date and somewhere I stumbled upon someone saying they’d get limited connectivity if the password was off.

yeah, three days of work, searching, poking at my computer and it was the password. I never did figure out the proper WEP key as I triple checked and i had the right one. I changed to WPA and it works fine. Now I have to reset all the other wireless devices in the house.

I have internet in the bedroom again. It’s slow like dial-up, I can’t load more than one page at a time, but I can read my blogs and visit on Twitter and I can sync my Dropbox.

Every time I fall a little more in love with ….

Seth Green/Joker.

My husband loved the whole Mass Effect thing (until I made him play Skyrim and now I don’t get to play Skyrim and he is ahead of me in levels).

Seth Green was a big part of my high school movie watching career. We used to drive up to the city, about 45 minutes, at least once a month for 2 years to see a movie.

Can’t Hardly Wait

Austin Powers (my mom loved Austin Powers so I saw it a lot this wasn’t a theatre movie however)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I didn’t see a lot of episodes, but I remember Oz).

So when I found out Seth Green was in Mass Effect I squeed. He’s not really an romance option, but he should be. Which is probably good, because Shepard would break him due to his brittle bones. Plus he has a thing for the artificial intelligence EDI.

Either way, Seth Green is always funny. And sweet and sexy.

and

Second Chance Romance on Re-Release

Well, I finally put on my big girl pants, admitted my mistakes and got Second Chance Romance edited by someone who wasn’t me. *Sigh* Part of it was shame and part of it was money.

Anyway, I’m trying to just let that go and move forward.

I’m going to leave it free/99 cents for the rest of the summer, while I work on getting Summer Fling and Complications over Coffee done. While they are much better than SCR, they do need the same treatment.

And then I’m also getting two new books ready for release this fall and winter.

But for now, Second Chance Romance is available at Smashwords and Amazon.

And, I’m offering cookies freebies for people who write me a review. I can give you a free copy of one of the books that are available now (via Smashwords coupon or I’ll just send you the file in  your preferred format). Or if you can wait a month or so, you can get a free copy of my next release.

I’m only asking for honest reviews, of course. I really want to get the word out that the book has been redone.

Free Books For Reviews Details HERE:

If you review my book after this date and want a free copy of any of my other books (or the next one), send me an email at asraidevinAT@gmailDOTcom and let me know what you would like and I will send it out ASAP.

I will be getting new cover art in the next week or two as well, but I could not wait to let people know.

Hope your summer is going as well as mine.

The State of Children today

The first article I read was on HuffPost titled “The Benefits of Spoiling Children in America” which was full of comments about children being too spoiled, not having enough responsibilities and so on. It linked to an article in the New Yorker citing cases where children did not have any limits or expectations upon them and were allowed to do what they wanted or not told to do basic things themselves (get your own silverware).

I commented that a few separate incidents of lazy parenting do not mean that all children are this entitled.  Also I think that the assertion that children are “entitled and lazy” are a reflection of parents rather than children. Children who are entitled live with parents who shop as recreation and buy everything either parent or child wants (and probably have credit card debt to show for it). Children who are obese generally come from families who eat more unhealthy foods than you should.

I left this to go paint with shaving cream and food coloring on my shower wall with my 2 year old, which was fun after I got him over the “it feels weird”.

When I returned I came upon this article via Free Range Kids blog. Mom arrrested for letting her 13 year old babysit 3 other siblings until the “real” babysitter arrived. If you read further apparently the four-year-old wandered off, and it may not have been the first time (in the comments of the original New Canaan news site). And I went to the New Cannan newsite and there is a person there who is yelling that 13 year olds should not be responsible for 4!! other children.

At 13 I regularly baby-sat my brother and 3 cousins, ages 10, 9, 7 and 5 I think. It was a long time ago. I never lost any of them. I never burned the house down. Maybe this 4-year-old was particularly crafty or perhaps this 13 year old was not ready to be responsible for this set of children. I don’t know. I wasn’t there.

Maybe this is not the best example of the opposite of spoiled children, but come on. Most 13 year olds can watch three other children. It’s not unreasonable.

Do children have too much or too little responsibility now days? Do/did you cater to your children? Do you have limits and expectations of behavior? Do you know any brats or lazy parents?

Tagged: Asrai Devin, Home, HuffPost, New Yorker, Parent, Spoiled child

Dominated Love Slave

I’m thinking about writing a sometimes column about BDSM, bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism, because I’ve always been interested in the practice. I have a mostly vanilla husband who isn’t the dominate type, and I’d prefer to be a submissive in the bedroom. Not that I”m unahppy with our sex life (in case he’s reading this sometime).

Anyway, an authoritative man is a fantasy for a lot of women. Actually, an authoritative partner is a fantasy for a lot of people in general. It seems a lot of people want to be told what to do.  That’s my bias, I don’t know if there are a lot of other people who want to be the ones telling others what to do, I think most people tend to do that in their lives so in the bedroom they want to surrender. Added to our often repressed sexuality in the industrialized culture, maybe just “America”, I haven’t interviewed a lot of Europeans.

Because 50 Shades has made erotica cool, I’m sure there are a lot of people searching for information. And then there is the whole canning/caning debacle.

But the whole idea made me think of a track on Green Day’s very first album, Kerplunk. It’s actually sung by their drummer, Tre Cool.

 

I remember laughing hysterically when I first heard this, but it’s not as funny as his other song:

Ah me and every romance hero I’ve come across this week. “You and me had/such wonderful times/when I’m all by myself.”

 

Judging is easy

I wanted to write a series of posts about parenting and my views. I’m a pro-attachment parent or maybe better to say responsive parent, we don’t do cry it out and we co-sleep (still) and breastfeed and my baby was rarely set down because he hated being on his back and he wouldn’t sleep without me for five months. And lots of things. And I’m very strongly against spanking.

And I wanted to write this post, and it was kind of a “why you are a horrible person if you spank” type post. Which is an opinion. and I feel that my opinion is the right one and shaming people who don’t agree is okay.

Then I was reading my RSS feed and someone wrote a scathing post about people living on the welfare system and they labelled three illnesses or disease that could be faked so that someone could use the welfare system. Bipolar, multiple sclerosis and fibromyalgia.

And it really pissed me off, because I know people with these conditions. They don’t want to have them, and they have no choice but to rely on assistance of others, whether government or a partner.

I wrote a really nasty reply and then as I read it over, I deleted it and said “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

It is easy to make judgments of others. And I will sometimes readily admit to judging people who make choices I believe are wrong.

There’s that meme on Facebook that makes me want to gouge my eyes out, but it’s true here.

he Girl you just called fat? She has been starving herself & has lost over 30lbs. The Boy you called stupid, he has a learning disability & studies over 4hrs a night. The Girl you called ugly? She spends hours putting make-up on hoping people will like her. The Boy you just tripped? He is abused enough at home. There’s a lot more to people then you think.

Making fun of or judging any group of people is not nice, it’s not funny and it’s generally just passive-aggressive or in my blog example above, just plain mean. Unless the person is  your close friend, we generally don’t know the true story behind anyone’s life.

And we wonder why bullying is such a problem in school, when so many adults are still doing it!!

What examples do you have of bullying in your life? Do you find yourself in judgement of others? What can we do to bring this to more people’s attention?

Tagged: Asrai Devin, Child abuse, Facebook, if you don't have anyting nice to say, Judgement, life lessons, Spank, Welfare

Beauty and the Werewolf: a review (small spoiler)

I don’t know how to word this spoiler. The book is easy to figure out, if you want to read the book, skip reading reviews on it and just read it. My criticism in a nutshull is the book lacked tension.

I’ve given up on the 50/50 challenge. I don’t have the will to watch movies. 2 hours of unblocked time? haha, that’s writing time baby, and blogging and social media. If there really is 2 hours of time that I don’t have someone demanding something of me. And if it weren’t those, it would be housekeeping.

But I’m still reading at least a book a week these days, I just haven’t been tracking them. I asked about fantasy suggestions a while back and one from Karen J was Mercedes Lackey and my library had one of her newer ones in the electronic lending library so I downloaded it. Beauty and the Werewolf, a romance. And a new take on Beauty and the Beast, with a dash of Little Red Riding Hood.

It was fast paced and a page turner. I suspected who it was half way in but had to read frantically until i got the the end and found out the villain.

But at the same time, I was left feeling a little unimpressed. I raced to turn the pages. What went wrong?

Lack of tension at all.  The only reason to turn pages quickly was to find out if I was right or not and looking at it, of course I was correct, there was no other option. There were only three characters in the book.

For a romance, even as a subplot, there was no romantic tension. Until the scene where the hero and heroine did something other than try to find out how to break the werewolf curse, there was no mention of any attraction whatsoever, it felt tagged on as if Lackey remembered this was supposed to be a romance. She had more page time with his invisible servants than the hero.

Even Bella’s raging against her three month imprisonment incase she turned werewolf felt half-hearted.

It’s a reminder to me, that tension needs to be on every page. I’m going to see if I can read the rest of the series, because I love a good rewritten fairytale.

Tagged: Asrai Devin, Beauty and the Beast, book review, Little Red Riding Hood, Mercedes Lackey, Romance, Werewolf

Simplify: Email

My first step of my simplifying and stretching my brain was to deal with my email. I had 77 unread emails in my personal account, 15 in a public account and 300+ in my Facebook/author/other public account.

Part of the problem is I am a sucker for those “sign up for our email list and we’ll send our ‘free’ 1,000 part course on how to blog and make twenty figures every decade.”  And then I leave them in my inbox, unread, marked unread in hopes that the unread status will guilt me into reading them and then the marketing starts and I wonder why I signed up for this list in the first place.

The second part of my massive e-mail collection was Facebook notifications. I belonged to a few groups that were set as notify me every time someone posts. Wana1011, I love everyone, but I the emails were burying me. Combined with all the emails I had skipped over, made for a very stressful email life. I would sometimes go weeks without checking email because it was too stressful.

I logged into my account, unsubscribed from all those email lists I didn’t read, and then I deleted all accompanying emails. The search function is your friend here.

Then I deleted all emails that were more older than 2011, except some files I had sent myself in 2006. really, really. Most of these were Freecycle(TM) related as I founded the group where we lived in 2005 and ran it until we moved last August. Good riddance.

I went into Facebook and went to each group and turned off notifications. On your home page, your groups are in the left frame, click on the group and then there is a little bar underneath the member pictures, one of the options is notifications. You can turn off or on notifications for this group.

I also went to that little arrow menu beside your profile and home link.

So it’s down arrow > Account settings > on the left Notifications and then you can choose what you want to be notified of and how.

That is all I’ve done so far. I kept Flylady notifications, even though I don’t read most of them but it keeps me on track. I don’t feel as bogged down when I check my email now. I feel happy, and I love deleting nonsense messages and making my inbox say 0 messages.

What do you do to simplify your email life? Or do you need to take some of the above steps to simplify?

Also check out the http://four.sentenc.es/ email project (also two, three and five are linked).

Tagged: Asrai Devin, burnout, Electronic mailing list, Email, Email address, Facebook, Flylady, simple life, simplify, slow down

When Love Knocks Cover Release (image heavy)

I finally finally finished my cover for When Love Knocks. I posted a link to the orginal image on Facebook and Twitter yesterday with the teaser line: Sophia, widow with four children, is determined not to let Doug into her life, her children have other ideas.

Here’s a big longer line: Sophia has been a widow for a year, trying to find her equilibrium again with four young children. Doug Black fell in love at first sight with Sophia now that she’s single and he’s moved close by, he can’t help knocking on her door. Will Sophia let go of her past and let him in?

Okay but who cares about that? Let’s see the cover(s). If you click on the covers you can see the larger versions.

Covers? Well, there were some false starts and then some goofing around.

My first cover was this, but my daughter said the font was too thin (i lost the version with black writing).

I liked this next one but my daughter said it was too creepy.

And the ubiquitous sparkly “Twilight” version.

Creepy eyes man: not sure what filter I used in Gimp for this one.



and last the Cover I will probably be using unless I get more writer’s block and start messing around in Gimp some more:

I will be pin this on my Pinterest account. It will be updated with links when the book is available. I just sent my editor an email with a nudge as I’d like to get it live before I leave for vacation.

The cover photo was created using stock photography with a licence from dreamstime

it is © Markus Gann | Dreamstime.com

I’ve never used royalty free photo before so I pray I’m attributing it all properly. The photos within Flickr are only available via this blog post.