celebrating christmas

Took the boys over to Grandpa and Grandma's house where we cooked dinner for them. Slices of salmon with fried gambas and stir-fried veggies. Yum. Nice and light. None of that overstuffed feeling, which is a good sign.

Simple Christmas celebration. Under our borrowed tree, we parked Samuel's dream car. A Lightning McQueen thing that makes sounds when buttons are pressed. He loves the thing so much, it's gone everywhere with us today. A plus was getting this car at half-price because I went to the shop at the right day...the day when this car was on a day special. Cool, huh.

Yesterday, I bought a paper from a homeless person. I stood there thinking of how misfortune can happen no matter how hard we struggle and fight against it. Buying the paper from the homeless person may not provide a roof over his/her head, but it will at least help them in some little way. And, at least these people are trying.

Earlier this year, I bought a paper from a homeless guy in Utrecht. He was very honest about why he'd become homeless. But he was trying. And he was very proud of having written some poetry and that the poetry he'd written was published in the paper he was selling. It wasn't bad either. I know, I read the poem.

Anyway, all these homeless people, made me think of how lucky we are to have a roof over our heads and of how it's quite easy to be misled into thinking that christmas joy is all about presents. Truly, it's all about sharing time with those who are dear to us.

No Playstation 3's, no X-Boxes, no DS's, no Wii's were bought by this household this month. When I look at the generations of game consoles, I have to think of how society is so brainwashed into believing that the newest is the best...when the truth is...there will always be something else that is the best next year. So why waste your money on expendable crap when what makes kids really happy is time spent together.

updating the blog

It's been quite a while since I last updated this blog. I was on slow dialup for a while as we were in the process of moving servers.

Updates:

My review of Lone Star Stories #30 has been published on The Fix.

While I was offline, I made my first professional sale. I sold my Pink Elephant Story to Fantasy Magazine. I was tickled pink when I got this news. Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to seeing the story on there as this is my tribute to my fellow Villa Diodatians.

I've kept up the momentum of writing one story every other week, and worked on my Clarion Application stories. My story package is ready for submission. I'm hoping I qualify for some scholarship, as that will be a really huge help. I also think I've really got to work really hard at selling more stories. Ha, ha, ha.

I'm quite pleased with my application stories. One of them is a tribal fantasy mix. It combines the Ambahan of the Mangyan with the culture/language of the Ifugao. Pretty Philistine (I know), but that's why I'm a specfic writer.

One bummer was my laptop breaking down for no reason at all. We took it back to the shop as it's still under warranty. Hopefully they'll keep true to their word and have it done by this week. I miss the danged thing.

Gym stuff: I've been on this sports program for almost ten weeks, and I'm proud to say I've lost 4.5 kilos. I'm going for the slow and steady thing. Color me turtle. Someday, I will be at my preferred weight of 60 kilos.

I've been trying to resign-up for the Flips group (since our email addy is now changed), but keep getting fault messages. What am I doing wrong?