Funny Photo Friday

Before we get to the main attraction, I needed to let you all know that Jess Witkins is blogging on the Life List Club blog today, so hop over there and get a dose of fun!  Of course, as soon as I wrote that, I thought to myself "What if she's got a dead serious post this time!"  Guess you'll have to go see for yourselves.

My post, Better Writing through Pressure, posted on Wednesday, so if you missed it, you can check my post out after you read Jess's.

So, lets get on with the photos!

Dude, Chill!

The last picture requires an explanation.  I live in fear a mountain lion is going to eat my children when we're out camping or hiking.  I'm not being silly, because mountain lions are pretty plentiful in the mountain areas of the region I live in.  Several years ago, in the foothills about forty-five minutes away, a four year old was hiking at the back of a church group and was pulled away by a mountain lion, never to be seen again.  Freaks me out!

However, we really like to camp and hike.  Last fall, when we went hiking at Vedauwoo, we took one of our four dogs.  The smallest. 

Before you all judge me harshly, I have to say that Tumpa is the fiercest of all our dogs.  We kept him on a leash the whole time.  He was our decoy, but also our warning system.  I didn't really think anything would happen, but just in case, I'd rather sacrifice the dog!

Now you can all show your displeasure in the comments section...

Have a happy Friday, free of mountain lions!

Winners and Awards

I didn't plan on posting this weekend, but I got some more blog-love and thought I'd spread it around!  Also, I'm thinking I'm not going to be posting on my own blog this week, since I possibly (not yet sure for Tuesday's post) have two guest posters lined up.  More about that later...

First, I'd like to announce the 100 Followers Party winners.  I used a random number generator on the Psychic Science website to pick two of the twenty-six commenters.

The lucky bloggers are...

Nicole Pyles and Hope Roberson!

If you both would e-mail what kind of gift card you would like, and how you want me to get it to you, at laschiff@yahoo.com, I would really appreciate it!  Congratulations!

Now for the awards part!  Earlier this week Randy Lindsay from the Campaign tagged me, and then today, Hope Roberson bestowed on me two beautiful new awards.

and

I just love these awards!  They are so cool.

There are some questions involved with both the tagging and the awards, so I'll get right to it.  For the tagging, I took out some of the questions I've already answered, either here in earlier blog-games, or over at Leigh's.  

Tag, I'm it!

First story you remember writing:  My sister and I wrote an eighty-ish page story that centered around our Duran Duran obsession when I was in high school.  We also wrote a screenplay for an episode of the X-Files.  I wonder where those are?

First Car:  1981 Dodge Colt (in 1990.  It was free because my Dad repaired it back to life for me.  I have the best parents.)  The first car I bought was a 1994 Ford Aspire.

Guilty-Pleasure: I don't have much self-discipline, so every day I give in on something, usually food related.

Do you use foreshadowing to strengthen your plot-line:  Like with everything else writerly, I do try.  I find that I'll do things intuitively and hope they work, rather than have a lot of thought about it.  Since I'm into the editing stages now, that may change.  When I did the first read through, things like opportunities to foreshadow or deepen characterization were obvious, but while writing the first draft I didn't even think about it.

How often do you check stats:  I'm too embarrassed to tell the truth.

What influences what you write:  Injustices I see at work, or in the world.  I'm a big good versus evil kind of person.  I want the good guy to win, and for evil to get it's comeuppance.

Most important thing that happened to me this year:  I attended the Writing the Rockies Conference at Western University this summer.  I signed up for a critique of my first twenty pages, and was assigned Russell Davis to critique it. As a past president of the SFWA, I was really nervous to hear what he said, expecting him to tear it apart. He told me four things that have influenced my self-esteem as a writer, which is why it's the most important writerly thing to happen to me this year.  1) He said if you don't feel confident, act like you do, because you need a certain amount of arrogance to survive in this field 2) He told me I could write 3) He told me my story "kind of intrigued him" 4) He told me that he would have quit reading at any time if the story didn't intrigue him, and he read the whole thing.  It made me feel like I might have a chance. 

Author you most resemble in writing style: I can honestly say I don't know.  Anyone have any suggestions?

And for the awards:

Favorite color: Varies, but right now I'm partial to purple.

Favorite animal: My Viszla, Raymi

Favorite number:  I have never had a favorite number!

Favorite non-alcoholic drink: Diet soda or any kind. I need to quit.

Facebook or Twitter:  Twitter.  I do have a Facebook account, though.

My Passion:  Writing?  That's about all I have time for.  Otherwise, science and magical "stuff"

Getting or giving presents:  Since I'm older now, I'm more about giving, especially with my little boys.  I don't spoil them, but I do like making them happy. :)

Favorite pattern:  A-B-A-B-A-B?

Favorite day of the week:  Friday.  We kind of have a little celebration each night with pizza, pop, and video games.

Favorite flower:  Lately, Sunflowers and Zinnias.  They grow beautifully even in our semi-arid conditions.

Okay! I'm not going to tag anyone else, because I did that before and couldn't find hardly anyone, but thanks so much to Randy for letting me play again!  For passing on the awards, I am going to choose people who haven't gotten an award from me before. (I am having anxiety now because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings!)  

And the awards go to:

CJ Parmenter 

Ozlem Yikici

Stacy S. Jensen 

Nicole Pyles 

El
L.G. Smith

So, I'm stopping there!  Thank you again to Randy and Hope!  This week I may have Eric from Eric Blues over for a techie-geeky guest post, since he is the techie-geeky-go-to-guy for me.  This Friday is a Life List Club Friday and I have the great pleasure of having Gary Gauthier from Literary Snippets come and visit. I will be over at Jess Witkins' Happiness Project, talking about something happy.  I haven't planned that far in advance yet!  Have a great week!

Confessions of a Shopaholic

I am excited to welcome to Motivation for Creation writer and Life List Club member, Jess Witkins.  She does a wonderful job of introducing herself, so I will turn the post over to her!

Hello Lara’s blog readers! Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Jess Witkins, and I’m a shopaholic. But let me back up a minute. About 6 months ago, my phenomenal friend and superwoman, Marcia Richards, co-created a little bloggy baby with me called the Life List Club. The LLC is a group combined of readers and writers and everyone that falls in between. It’s essentially, YOUR club! What Marcia and I do, and the other six contributors, is write bi-weekly inspirations and real life stories of the ambitions, struggles, setbacks, success stories, meltdowns, and milestone parties that consume all our journeys towards the things we want in our lives. We want to inspire you and help you take the next steps toward accomplishing your own goals, knowing you’ve got pals along the whole journey to give you the nudge you need.

Recently, the group celebrated its 2nd milestone party, which meant we’ve been working on our life lists for about 6 months. That’s a long time, and a great position to look at what goals you’ve set and adapt as necessary, take account of lessons learned, and recognize small successes where you find them. My Life List has many things on it, mainly writing related, but it also included a desire to travel, to save more money, and make changes necessary to one day move to a new city or return to school. Well, that all costs money. And if there was one goal that was sitting quietly in the back of the classroom with it’s glasses cockeyed and kleenex shoved up its nose to stop it from running, it was my life list goal money saving baby. (Yes, I know that was a disgusting image, but this goal needed some desperate attention and a lesson in taking a stand against the other goal babies!) 

Now, any hardcore movieholic/chick flick entrepreneur has seen the Isla Fisher film Confessions of a Shopaholic, the film where the delightfully perky redhead spends money on the latest fashions, gets the guy, but also runs herself into rampant, full on debt. *sigh* Fairytale, here I come!

Honestly, it could become my fate. Thankfully, I’m taking charge well before my shoe collection does! I am lucky enough to only have student loan debt so far. But it doesn’t mean I’ve been able to save anything for old age or emergencies. Through college and beyond I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck, and it suddenly occurred to me: with every job promotion I’ve received and higher pay that came with it, I improved my standard of living, rather than take that money as an opportunity to save. For instance, I used the extra money to buy lots of new clothes, a habit hard to break when you manage a department store in the mall! I also spend money on food a lot. A pizza here, some tacos there doesn’t seem like much until you add all the receipts together and it matches what you spent in groceries!

So, I’m making changes. First things first, I can’t ignore my bank statements for months and then manage them all at once. I was forgetting to jot down receipts and suddenly my paycheck was almost gone when I tallied it all up! So now, I vow to manage my finances once a week, making sure my balances are accurate.

Step two was a great idea given to me by a friend I met at a writer’s conference. It’s a website called piggymojo.com which lets you track what you didn’t buy in order to show you what you could be saving. It’s completely private (unless you want to friend others for the pep boost), and you don’t enter your banking information. You do put in a goaled amount you’d like to save and a period of time. Then you synch up to twitter and make updates like if I think about stopping for fast food I don’t need, and I skip it, I can tweet “$6 lunch,” or if I see a sweater I think is cute, but I don’t put it in my shopping cart, I can tweet “$20 sweater” and piggymojo will add up what I don’t spend and I can then look at that amount and put it in my savings! I’m SUCH a visual learner that this is really helping me, and it feels like a reward when I get to “report” in via twitter how much I saved.

Step three was remembering to put your money where it matters. I made a list of what I wanted to do this year. It included traveling to the DFW conference in Dallas, TX to attend the writer’s conference and MEET up with some of my LLC peeps, visit my High School best friend in South Korea, and take a road trip to Yellowstone National Park with my honey. I’ve looked up costs of plane tickets so I know what I need to save. I’m not positive it’ll all happen, but at least I feel I have some concrete plans to work towards. That, and the continuous payments towards my student loans...

How about you readers? What money saving/budgeting tips do you have for this shopaholic? What things are on “saving up for” lists? How ‘bout your life lists? Can’t wait to chat with you all in the comments! And don’t forget, you can find Lara at Gary Gauthier’s blog today! Happy Friday!

Bio: Jess Witkins claims the title Perseverance Expert. She grew up in a small Wisconsin town as the much younger youngest sibling of four, she’s witnessed the paranormal, jumped out of a plane, worked in retail, traveled to exotic locations like Italy, Ireland, and Shipshewana, Indiana, and she’s eaten bologna and lived to tell about it! She deals with it all and writes about it! Come along on her midwest adventures; Witkins promises to keep it honest and entertaining. Go ahead, SUBSCRIBE, you know you want to.
Follow on Twitter: @jesswitkins

Exciting News and Samael - Nightgale Blog Challenge #2

I received an exciting e-mail today from the WOW - Women on Writing website, informing me that I survived the first round of judging in the Fall 2011 Flash Fiction Contest.  That means out of roughly 285 entries, my story is in the eighty-five that will be sent to the guest judge for the second round of judging.  I feel so lucky to even be in the eighty-five!

Here is the second installation of the Nightgale Blog Challenge.  The prompt was "Immortality comes to you, you do not go to immortality."  This story is a little longer, but has more action, so I hope it still reads quickly for you all.

Don't forget that on Friday I will welcome Jess Witkins for a guest blog.  I have read the blog, and it's a good one!  Please come and tell Jess "hi"!

Samael

Bright flashes of light sped past Samael as he hurtled through the Heavens.  He slowed when he reached the borders of space and time, and grimaced at the sudden sensation of gravity.  The pull on the essence of his being was disturbing, if not downright uncomfortable.

When he reached Earth, the city streets were cheery in the midday summer sun.  They gave no hint of the tragedy about to befall one man, and a chocolate Labrador Retriever named Brownie.

Samael checked his watch.  Two minutes to go.  He spotted Brownie down the street, leashed, and ambling toward him at the heels of his human.

The middle-aged woman wore yoga pants and a loose t-shirt that covered the bulges around her middle.  She had bags under her eyes, and limp hair that looked as tired as the woman did.

An angel named Dunrahl hovered near the duo, and, noticing Samael came over to him.

“Are you here for Sylvia? I wasn’t made aware of a change of assignment.”

“I’m not here for Sylvia.” He knew how rude he sounded, but didn’t care.  None of the other angels wanted anything to do with him.  The only reason Dunrahl came over was out of concern for the human. “The dog is coming with me, though.”

“Not good, Sam, not good,” the angel shook his head, “That dog is her life. She doesn’t have any family, and the dog is her only companion.” 

“It’s not my problem he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I’m taking him, and that’s how it is.”  Samael looked at his watch again.  The man should be arriving soon.

Samael leaned against the storefront window and watched the people milling around him while he waited.  A group of teenage girls window shopped through him, laughing and giggling about some important nonsense.  He wondered what they would do if they knew they had a brush with Death.

At that moment, a red Volkswagen bug careened around the corner.

Right on time.

The man inside slumped over the steering wheel.  The car bounced over the curb, and continued in a path headed straight for the woman and Brownie.

The woman’s eyes grew huge.  She screamed as the car bore down upon her and her doomed dog.

Samael shook his head. They always screamed. Why didn’t they run or fight? That made better sense than screaming.

Brownie had better sense. He strained at his leash, and pulled the woman out of the way of the car.

The man’s spirit popped free of his body as the car hit the building.  He landed in the street to the side of the Volkswagen. He looked around, an expression of pure confusion plastered across his face.

One down, one to go.

The car bounced off the building, and skidded sideways.

Brownie didn’t have a chance.  The front wheels slid over the top of him, crushing him. His spirit shook itself out of its body, like he’d just had a bath and needed to dry off.

The car slid to a stop inches from the woman.

Absolute silence followed the crash, and then chaos rang through the street.  Samael already heard the sirens of the rescue vehicles that had been called into action.

The teenage girls ran toward the wreckage, half-fearful of what they’d find and half-excited to have seen the whole thing.

Over it all, the wails of the woman pierced the air.  She knelt between the front and back wheels, next to Brownie’s lifeless body. She rocked back and forth, sobbing, and petted the dog’s head.

Dunrahl caught Samael’s eyes, with an expression that said “I told you so.”

Samael turned to the man, still in the middle of the street, and tried block out the woman’s anguished cries.

“Hey,” he said, “Over here.”

The man stared at him. “I… Am I dead?”

Samael raised his right eyebrow. “What do you think?”

Dunrahl gave him an aggravated glance.  He approached the man, and said, “You have to go to the Heavens now.  I AM has called you to return.” He jerked his head toward Samael.  “He will show you the way.”

The man looked at the Angel of Death with suspicion. “I’m supposed to go with him?”

Samael didn’t answer.  He had only heard half of the exchange, distracted by the scene next to the car. 

He watched the woman, his lips pressed into a straight line.  “Humans put too much emotion into their pets,” he muttered. 

Still, something about the woman’s grief pulled at him. He couldn’t look away from the dog, which had taken up his position at her heels, and sat patiently as she attended to his body.

He crossed over to the dog.  Its amber colored eyes were soft when he turned to face Samael.  Starting on his chin, the angel scratched the soft fur, worked his way up over the dog’s jaws, and finished at the hollow behind Brownie’s ears.

“All right,” Samael said, so only Brownie could hear.  He patted the dog on the head.  “Go back.”  He snapped his fingers, and pointed at the dog’s body.

Brownie bumped Samael’s hand with his nose, working his head under the angel’s hand.  The tension around the angel’s eyes lessened, and Samael felt his heart expand a bit. 

Aware of Dunrahl watching him, Samael scowled and said, “Now move it, before I change my mind.”

He strode back over to Dunrahl and the man.  He didn’t look back when cheers erupted from the group huddled near the car.

“Let’s go,” he motioned for the man to follow him, and headed for the Gate to the Heavens.