Happy Holidays!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Shawn and I went to Lexington on Christmas Eve to spend time with friends like we have for the past five years or so. We had a great time at BJ and Beth Willenger's house eating their traditional Chinese "A Christmas Story" dinner and watching Svengoolie. Then we went to Carol and Laura Reynolds house to watch the "A Christmas Story" marathon, the "Dead Like Me" marathon and have coffee, pecan pie, black forest cake, and Christmas fudge. We finally left for home at around 5am. We pulled into our driveway in time to hear the churches around us ringing their bells on Christmas morning. And then we went to bed and slept through Christmas Day.

So how important is it to celebrate Christmas on Christmas Day? It isn't important at all, not to us anyway. There's so much pressure to buy gifts, get everything just right and be done by December 25th that the stress has sucked all the fun out of the day. So what is the solution? Do we stop celebrating Christmas altogether just to get out from under the stress and the headaches? NO! But we do celebrate it differently now than we used to.

First of all, we don't even think about Christmas until after the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Not one Christmas song or special is allowed in our house until then. The Christmas decorations don't go up until sometime in December, sometimes right before Christmas. And when the stress of not getting it "just right" starts to be too much and we find ourselves forgetting what Christmas is about, we sing Zombie Christmas Carols. Yes, that's right, I said Zombie Christmas Carols. It gets all the "bah humbugs" out and puts everything in perspective, believe me.

 And if we have a year like this year where one of us is sick and things don't get done at all, we get to it when we get to it. What's the big deal about December 25th anyway?

Short answer, there isn't one. It's an arbitrary day set as Christmas Day as the Christian answer to the Pagan Winter Solstice celebration and the Jewish Hannukah. No one really knows when Jesus was born, so it's not the date that's important, it's the celebration of his birth and why. And we can do that anytime.

We use the time to enjoy the company of good friends and family and don't worry about "the big day." If we forget something on Christmas Day, we stick it under the tree anyway and unwrap it on New Year's Day, or as we call it, "Oops! We forgot it" day. Besides, there's always better sales after Christmas than before and we don't mind waiting.

So relax! Give yourself a break and enjoy the "Holidays" as a whole, not as single, stress filled day. And I bet your kids will love the second chance to open presents on New Year's day! 

E-Reader TABLET! Ah-Ha!

First the update! 

It's been forever since I posted anything here.  I've been busy for nearly a year now with "other things."  Most of you know that I'm a fantasy artist and one of the mutitudenous horde of wanna-be-published authors.  I spent most of 2011 preparing for Dragon*Con which went well, I'm happy to say.  BUT as soon as we got home from the convention and my husband went back to work, he was told he was being laid-off at the end of September.  The money I got from Dragon*Con was thankfully enough to get us by until I got a decent paying job.  But my husband is still out of work so I take advantage of every over-time opportunity I can, which keeps me busy and unfortunately away from my computer.

So what does ANY of this have to do with the title of this post: E-Reader TABLET! Ah-Ha!  Well, since we only have one computer and I'm at work for most of the day, my husband has taken over the use of said one computer to hunt for jobs, update his resume, and report to Unemployment.  So where did that leave me?  Stuck with having two finished novels that I can't edit or write queries for because I need access to my computer files for that.  While I do have a computer at work, I can't access personal e-mail accounts through our system (potential virus and spyware hazard).  And I wouldn't want to leave any newly generated files on the system because anyone else using my computer could access them.  Then one of my coworkers came in with a Nook reader that let her check her e-mail and my brain went AH-HA!  If I could send and receive e-mails to myself on the reader, then surely I could do my edits that way.  And the search for the right e-reader began!

I started with a Kindle Keyboard...Bomb!  Straight back to Staples where I bought it.  I didn't like the Kindle Fire, and quite honestly couldn't afford one either.  Nook Color cost even more than the Fire, and I didn't like that Fire would only download from Amazon and Nook Color would only allow access to Barnes & Noble.  I hate being told where I can and can't shop, by anyone.  Enter another coworker with a brand new e-reader that looked like a tablet, and hers would download from anywhere.  So I looked it up and found that while hers wasn't really a tablet, there was another, smaller version that WAS an Android powered tablet!

Eureka!  I bought one.  OK, so maybe I'm a bit of a sell out, but I can't afford an iPad or a Galaxy tablet.  I can't have one at work anyway because those are actual computers, but I can have an e-reader.  With the addition of a free office app, I can get my edits done and even write new stuff in my spare time at work.  AND I use it at home too while my husband is searching for jobs.  It even allows me to get some access to my laptop at home.  All I have to do is start playing Angry Birds on the couch next to my husband and PRESTO!  He's ready to swap with me and I get to update my blog, finally =)