yup. this. i agree wholeheartedly.
Tag: hooray
popular
i have an issue with expectations and keeping them at a reasonable level, which puts me either way ahead or way behind on the “what’s popular” curve, as i try to get in on things before i have ridiculous expectations or after i’ve given them time to diminish.
what have i done recently to incite such a post? i joined the iphone cult AND the nora roberts fan club.
for the past 2+ years, i’ve been a devoted droid user (sorry brother G). the time came to upgrade and i was insistent on sticking with droid because i liked the user interface and had spent time with the apple user interface on my ipad and found i liked the droid better. i researched phones and found the samsung galaxy III was getting a love of rave reviews.
done.
but then i went into the store to check it out and HOLY SCHNIKEYS. that phone is huge. it’s a man phone, if you can even call it a phone at all. there’s no way i wanted to cart around something bigger than my hand, and none of the other phones appealed to me, so back to square one i went.
over the christmas break, i spent time with people from all areas of my life (family, high school friends, college friends, neighbors) and they ALL had iphones. (well, not brother G.) in the middle of my friend’s engagement party, it hit me. if i had an iphone, i could text with all these people on imessage therefore cutting my text messaging usage by 80%.
much to everyone’s surprise (mine included) i joined the cult when i (with some birthday $ from the folks) purchased the iphone 5 the day before 2013 began. (sorry brother G).
another popular item i hadn’t put much stock into was nora roberts. i’ve read a fair amount of that brand of extraordinarily prolific authors and haven’t been much impressed, so i assumed nora roberts was just like them. i mean, when you’re putting out multiple books a year for decades, how good can they be?
OH, SO GOOD.
my first indoctrination was the audiobook of THE WITNESS and it’s still my favorite of hers, but every other one i’ve read (THREE FATES) or listened to (CHASING FIRE) has blown away my expectations. her characters are so richly developed, her settings are vivid, her plots are fast paced and intriguing, and her writing just plain sucks you in.
she also writes the IN DEATH series under the pen name jd robb and if my book hungry gals are to be believed, i’m in for a treat when i start up with those. i should be annoyed with myself for holding out, but this just means there are so many more books available for my reading pleasure.
have you done anything popular or unpopular (lately) and lived to tell the tale? DO SO NOW. or, feel free to lead me into the land of popularity and tell me what else i need to be doing/reading/eating. DO SO NOW.
happy birthday, grandpa
today is my grandfather’s birthday. he’s 88 years old.
it’s a big accomplishment that’s garnered him a lot of wisdom along the way. he’s worked and studied and learned and embraced change with each year and the most interesting thing, for me, has been his attitude towards technology, i.e. he’s not afraid of it.
he’s more fearless than i am.
the side effects of this attitude have been that i’ve been given a chance to get to know my grandfather through emails and phone calls and his comments on this very blog and as it turns out, we have more in common than just the same last name.
he reads. he writes (his memoir via email which is a fascinating study on memory). he’s ambitious. he’s thoughtful. he collects quotes. he’s interested in words while at the same time being a whiz with numbers.
*record scratches*
okay, fine, we don’t have the math thing in common. honestly, both of my grandfathers + my father went to MIT. WHY OH WHY didn’t i get any of those math/science-y genes?
anyways, happy birthday, grandpa! i hope today’s a grand day that’s just the start of another wonder filled year.
look at me go
speaking of checking things off a life to do list, i crossed off two more things recently (it was a productive thanksgiving, what can i say?)
*eat a november cake (an amazing sounding recipe from THE SCORPIO RACES, one of my favorite books. fortunately, sister E loves to bake, so she made these for me and all i had to do was keep her company in the kitchen. sweet deal, huh?)
*write a novel (50k words) in 30 days or less. (yup. i finished. 58,620 words to be precise. 50,006 written from 11/1 to 11/24 combined with 8,614 words written the last week of october.) and now i’m going to let it sit for a bit and then i shall revise the heck out of it.
while i’m letting my manuscript sit around and marinate, i will be doing the exact opposite. i’ll be traveling to a country i’ve never been to before. for work.
this is shaping up to be a VERY interesting end to 2012 for me.
check THAT off the list
there has always been this one thing on my life to do list that i hadn’t shared with many people since it’s, well, a loaded topic.
what was that thing?
shooting a gun.
no one in my family hunts or owns a gun (to my knowledge), so i’ve never been around a gun before. i don’t even really like action movies with too much violence, but for some reason, i’ve always wanted to shoot a gun. i mean, something other than that orange remote controlled duck hunt ninetendo game thing.
lo and behold, this thanksgiving, i found myself surrounded by a cop and a doctor, wearing protective eye and ear gear and standing in front of a target. before this moment, i watched a five minute safety video and got a quick rundown of the gun + its parts, and then, it was go time.
after holding the gun(s) in my hands, i understood why i wanted to try it in the first place.
POWER.
it was scary and nerve wracking and interesting and creepy and unlike anything i had ever experienced and exactly like i had expected though much, much louder.
the recoil was jerky and uncontrollable and confusing because from my time playing (or trying) almost every sport under the sun, the way your arm followed through generally determined the arc/angle/ending point of the ball/puck, and when the gun jerked up after the trigger was pulled, it shocked me the bullet didn’t travel a similar, uneven path and end up 12 meters higher than i aimed for.
having finally (and randomly) checked this off my life’s goals list, i want everyone to follow suit. i know this is usually the time of year we’re all reviewing what we did and planning for the new one, but instead of making resolutions, i recommend getting out there and doing them.
starting now.
but be safe! and follow all the rules! and surround yourself with experts! (i mean, hello, could one be any safer at a gun range than with a cop and a doctor? i don’t think so.)
Abigail Mumford 