Sunday, January 03, 2016

The End of the Holidays Hodge-Podge

My kids go back to school tomorrow, so even though I worked through the holiday period, today very much feels like the last day of vacation. Tomorrow, we're back to our less leisurely morning routine.

It is also supposed to start raining tomorrow, and then it is forecast to rain for the next seven days or so. That is extremely unusual here (hello, El NiƱo!) and will make my movie-hating eight year old very sad, because her school's solution to lunch recess on rainy days is a movie.

But there is nothing we can do about the weather, so we'll just smile and soldier through.

It is looking like a beautiful day here today, so perhaps we can come up with something fun to do to enjoy this last day of sun and last day of vacation. We wrote our 2016 family fun list on New Year's Eve—it is a bona fide family tradition now. So we have a list of 12 fun things we could choose to do. We'll see.

I'll do my annual family fun list and personal goals list posts soon. They didn't feel "right" for today. Today felt more like a hodge-podge post.

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As I've mentioned a couple of times, I'm running a sale at Annorlunda Books. It is going well, and I'm glad I tried it. I won't really know how successful it was until after the sale is over, though. That is when I find out if the boost in sales during the promotional period translates into higher baseline sales after the promo is over.

I wrote about the constraints that still hamper readers and publishers of short ebooks over at Tungsten Hippo. That post also talks a bit about what I hope to do with Tungsten Hippo this year, and ends with a quick look back at some of my favorite books of 2015.

One of the things I will be doing with Tungsten Hippo this year is making better use of my archives. I plan to start tweeting out archive links and quotes, and will probably post them to the Tungsten Hippo facebook page, too.

I've also started implementing my plans for my Annorlunda social media accounts. My new tag line is "learn things you'll feel good about knowing," and I'll be supporting that by posting at least one interesting fact (or word! I love cool words) ever day at both the Annorlunda Books facebook page and the @AnnorlundaInc twitter account.

In other news, 2016 will be the year in which I finally embrace scheduled social media posts.

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Yesterday, the kids and I went to the pet store to do some information gathering about fish and aquariums. Back in May (I think), I promised Petunia a "fishy pet." But I told her it had to wait until we had space for the aquarium. Now that our renovations are complete, we have the space. The fish will live in our new office, near the door to the living room. It is a big barn door, which is almost always open, so Petunia will have easy access to her pet. We don't yet have the shelves to put the aquarium on, though. I needed to see how big the aquarium would be so that I could figure out what shelves to get. We accomplished that yesterday, but don't yet have the shelves. Getting those will require yet another trip to Ikea. I had hoped to do that today, but I don't think Mr. Snarky is on board with that plan, so we'll see.

Petunia has been very patient waiting this long, though, and both kids are VERY excited about the aquarium, so I'll try to get this done soon.

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I've started learning to crochet. I decided I wanted to learn as something to keep my hands busy when I'm watching the kids' gymnastics classes. I also thought it might be relaxing. I think it will be, as long as I keep my expectations of my abilities realistic.

Here is my first piece, so far.



People keep asking me what it is going to be, and my answer of "a chance to practice my stitches" doesn't really satisfy them, so I've started saying it will be a Barbie blanket. Petunia is excited by that. I figure her Barbies won't care that the stitches are uneven.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:22 PM

    I like knitting for the same reasons (keeps hands busy + relaxing once I get in the groove on a project). I hope you enjoy crocheting!

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  2. Zenmoo12:15 AM

    I love crochet & find it quite meditative. If you're after portable crochet, I recommend trying motifs or granny squares. I have to admit though, that while I like creating squares, I really don't love sewing them all together (unless I've got a good audiobook to listen to!)

    Also, I like The Green Dragonfly blog - she has some tutorials and patterns for nice easy starter projects (like hair ties & easy hand warmers) as well as more complicated patterns

    ReplyDelete

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