I managed to evade Alex's cold for nearly a month. A couple days ago, I lost the fight. I hate being stuffed up. And tired.

I never mentioned this on my LJ before, but I got my Christmas present from Craig early this year. I've been begging him for an electric guitar since last Christmas and he finally caved. Meet William...

( Because he's blond and beautiful )

Craig had downloaded a demo of Guitar Heroes 3 for our xbox and yesterday, while we were waiting for our guests to arrive for our super bowl 'do, he decided to give it a go. He had pretty much downloaded it just to shut me up; I want it, but he wanted me to try playing it first before committing to the purchase. The original intent had been to borrow it from a friend, but that friend is in India at the moment and hence, the download.

10 minutes after he started playing it, Craig got in the car and went off to the store to buy it. Not because I begged him. I hadn't even tried playing it yet. No, this is all for him, lol.

The damn thing is very addictive. And I suck at it. Craig is amazingly good but we've discovered that if we co-op, I'm actually quite adept at bass while he's better at the lead. I need to practice a lot.

Poor Delilah. I have to remember not to forget my poor real guitar, lol.

Craig is off for the week for a work-inservice-thingy. No flying this time. He's got 5 days over at Half Moon Bay, which is great for both of us. If I get lonely or need something desperately, he's only an hour away.

Today marks our first full week back. Kids are at school, and Alicia and I resume piano/guitar lessons today. My lesson isn't going to be that thrilling, mainly because I haven't picked up Delilah in a month, but I want to talk to Scott about something else anyway. See, we picked up a small guitar for Alicia for Christmas since she wanted one so badly. I don't want her starting lessons yet, but I'd like his advice on what to do to get her started. Plus, Alex got drums. Don't ask. I lost that battle, suffice it to say. Not that I'm complaining, because hey, if they want to explore music, I'm not going to stop them.

Speaking of music, Alicia auditioned for their school musical last week and starts rehearsals today for that, too. She's singing and dancing in that. That goes from after school until 4, I'll pick her up, and then we head over to our lessons at 4:30. Needless to say, it's going to be a hectic day, but then Mondays always are.

In the end, we got around to our blitz yesterday. The playroom looks phenomenal. We have 4 bags to get rid of - 1 just of dress-up clothes that I'm going to offer to the neighbor for her little girl, 1 of toys to give away and then 2 trash. On top of that, we completely rearranged the room, go the futon in there from the spare room so that there's something to sit on while playing xbox or watching tv, and lugged up two barristers from the garage. The closet got cleaned out and reorganized as well. Man, we have a lot of puzzles and games. But still, the room looks great, we got stuff done we've been meaning to do for 4 months, and we're ready to tackle the next project next week. Not a bad start. :)

Last spring, I canceled my guitar lessons for the summer. It made the most sense. I was going to be gone for nearly 2 months, and would have to pay for those months even if I wasn't there, so I just told Scott I was taking the summer off and that if it was all right, I'd call him back in the fall about getting back onto his schedule. I'm sure he never expected to hear from me again. By midsummer, I had convinced myself I wasn't going to return. I needed that time for other things, I reasoned. My life is only getting busier. I haven't even picked up my guitar since before we left for Michigan at the end of June.

The past couple weeks kind of changed my mind. We got Alicia going again on her piano lessons, which are at the same place Scott teaches. And I thought, you know, if Scott has an opening at the same time, then it would be stupid not to pick it all up again, because I'm going to be there anyway for Alicia. And if he didn't, well I'd just figure out a time with Craig that I could go. I needed Craig's support on this, because Scott only teaches in the afternoon and early evenings, so somebody has to be there to watch the kids.

Lo and behold, Scott has the half hour free that Alicia is in her piano lesson. So I've gone ahead and signed up again, starting on October 15th. I couldn't start now because there would be nobody to watch Alex with Craig in the UK, and I don't get home in time from Phauxcon to start on the 7th. But that gives me a month to find my calluses again so that I don't go in and completely embarrass myself, lol.

I'm a little excited. I'd forgotten what a rush I got just from being in the store. And what a great guy Scott is. And I've missed Delilah. :)

Have I squee'd about my guitar lessons lately? Probably not. Life has been too crazy. Plus, I missed a lot of lessons lately because of traveling and being sick.

But I'm back on schedule, for at least one more week, lol. For this week, I had Love Me Tender to learn. 4 new chords (for 9 total), but slow enough for me to get back into the groove. And except for one chord change - C to Cm which was totally messing me up, and I told him it was when I walked in - I rocked it. I rocked it so much, Scott realized we had to pick out another song for me to practice on for next week, because as soon as I got that C/Cm change down, I was going to be bored with this. So for next week, I have House of the Rising Sun to play. Only 5 chords in it, but at least 1 that I suck at (F), and a slightly different way of strumming.

Hee. I always leave my guitar lessons flying. :)

I'm so damn hyper at the moment, I'm scaring the inlaws.

I just got back from my guitar lesson. Last week, Scott and I decided that I'd start learning Hotel California, so that I have something fun to do. That only happened because he'd told me to bring music that interested me, but when I got in, I discovered my ipod was dead. So he couldn't hear it. And I knew he wouldn't recognize the song because it's Kane, lol.

So today I took the CD of the acoustic set in London. There were two songs on there that I wanted to try - my two favorite ballads, More Than I Deserve and In the Darkness. Scott listen to the first for about 5 minutes, just fiddling around trying to figure out what was going on, then spent the next 5 playing it. Turns out it's all open chords that I already know, and the only thing was that I needed a capo in order to get the right key. Woo hoo! So he wrote it out for me and I'm going to tackle that this week. He figured out In the Darkness too - more of the same, though Steve walks down chords which I've never done - but we ran out of time to write it down. So he's going to do that for me next week.

I love Scott. He's the best. And I'm going to be playing Kane this week, woo hoo!

I'm a tad excited by this. I don't know why. :)

Today was a good day. No. Correction. Great day. :)

1. Had the best night's sleep I've had since before Vegas. The wonders of having both my bed and my husband at the same time. :)

2. Have written another 4k of my book with pepperlandgirl4 and have another night of writing ahead of me. We just can't seem to stop. Hopefully sadbhyl will tell us it doesn't completely suck.

3. Had my guitar lesson today, and have new music to learn - "Hotel California"

4. Craig worked from home, so I got even more time with him.

5. Craig is working from home tomorrow, too. :)

6. Put on a top this morning that hasn't fit in ages.

So, in a good mood. Even though I have to come up with a blog topic and write about it to post in...6 hours. I really hate blogging. I wish I didn't have to do it. I always wonder why the hell anyone would want to read my inane ramblings, lol.

One thing is for certain. No matter what kind of day I'm having, my guitar lessons always make things better. I'm still flying from yesterday's lesson, and really, we didn't cover much new stuff. But getting to focus on something so simple, and something without any limitations or expectations, is so relaxing for me. It helps I adore Scott. He's such a good guy. He wants me to bring in some cd's next week of stuff I'd like to learn how to play. I don't think I'm ready, but he does so I'll follow his lead. He hasn't led me astray yet.

On the other music front, Alicia got very upset at Christmastime when she didn't get a keyboard. She really wants to learn how to play piano. So Craig and I agreed to buy a keyboard or piano for the house for her birthday, and we're getting her lessons. I got those booked yesterday, too, ready to begin the weekend after her birthday. Craig's as excited as she is. He never knew how to play, and he's looking forward to getting to mess around with it too.

So today's guitar lesson went well. I immediately copped to still not being comfortable with barre chords, so Scott let me off the hook and said just keep practicing them. Instead, he decided to launch into fingerpicking and taught me the Travis pick pattern. That's actually proving really easy, thank goodness. Plus he taught me two more scales, a pentatonic blues and what he called a country scale. Soooo much easier than the major scale, but woo hoo, more doors opening up for me. I wish I didn't have 2 weeks until my next lesson. Today's was a blast. I hadn't realized how much I missed it until it was over.

Tomorrow is Leaving for Las Vegas Day! Woo hoo! So today, Craig is taking his parents into the city for their last escape before we abandon them. It's supposed to be another one like yesterday - 65-70 and beautiful clear skies - so it seems silly not to take advantage of it. I'm going to do wonderfully mundane stuff like grocery shopping, laundry, and my guitar lesson, but I'm actually really thrilled about it. The visit with my inlaws has been going remarkably well so far, but the one thing that drives me the craziest is that I have absolutely zero schedule of my own. I pretty much have to abandon 90% of the way I do stuff because either a) they've done it already, or b) I just can't do it in front of them. Like practicing on my guitar. I'm hugely private about it. I'm okay practicing in front of the kids and Craig, but not anybody else, so my practicing has taken a huge hit with extra people in the house.

Oh, but yesterday, scarlettgirl posted on the homekeeping community about the Seven Things Giveaway, where, in the spirit of clearing out your clutter, you get rid of 7 items a week. I'm doing this. As soon as I get back from Las Vegas. I have a feeling Craig's List is going to be my new best friend.

So pepperlandgirl4 has been here for 7 hours now. So far, I've satisfied her Trader Joe's craving, subjected her to my favorite Kane song (after giving her the 2 CD's), already launched into fangirl talk about Wes and Angel and Faith and the new Buffy comics, argued over the Star Wars movies (which has happened more than once in chat already, lol), and now I'm torturing her with Pop Idol Christmas music. An excellent day all around. :)

I had my guitar lesson today, and Scott decided to ignore everything I've been working on and go back to bar chords. Which I've been kind of hoping to ignore for a little bit longer since our last foray was less than successful. But now I have no more excuses. It's all he wants me to work on. He went over the 4 key grips and wants me to be able to form them all with ease by next week if not be able to get a clean sound. In fact, he doesn't care about the sound too much until I'm 100% comfortable with the positioning. My hands are going to be killing me by next week, lol.

Other than that, not a whole lot accomplished today. I have 1500 words so far of chapter 8 of Soul done, and I really want to get it up to 2000 before I go to bed, but pepperlandgirl4 keeps distracting me with chat. Which is not a bad thing. And is one reason why I wanted to be so ahead because I don't feel hugely guilty for not getting done. Tomorrow, we're going to start on our revisions for Chase and I'm baking for Alex's birthday on Thursday. Oh, and I'll be posting chapter 3 of Soul. ;)

So much for thinking I was going to get a lot done today. Woke up this morning unable to connect to anything on the Internet - in spite of the fact that we were perfectly connected - and then spent the next six hours wrangling with phone support and then a technician who came to the house (for 2 1/2 hours) trying to fix it. Turns out that our line can't handle the upgrade Craig recently requested (that went into affect last night), and our line was overloading. The tech cleared it slightly, but we're still dreadfully slow and probably will be for a few days. *sigh* It's annoying, and I almost drove myself crazy not being able to read e-mail until almost 4pm.

On the plus side, I got practice time on Delilah while I was on hold with various people this morning. Things are coming along nicely, I think. My finger doesn't hurt any more, so I spent a fair amount of time on chords as well as the fingering. I might even get back to trying bar chords tomorrow, lol.

*And* I've managed to get 2000 words done on chapter 4 of my new fic and will likely finish that tonight to send to sadbhyl. Well, maybe. My productivity drops drastically after 8pm, lol. I've got nearly 9k on my new book, too, and am rather charmed by my vampires in it. It's coming *so* easily. I love it when this happens. :)

Phew. Finished chapter 3 of the new Spuffy fic. Though I don't think of it as strictly a Spuffy fic. In fact, the way it's writing so far - heavy, heavy on plot, and light on ships/internal conflict - it's feeling like the closest I'll get to writing episodes of AtS S5. I think because the basic plot starts with stuff that happens in S5, takes lots of little threads, and then runs with them. And because it's such a heavy ensemble piece. Spike's only had 1 small scene so far in nearly 12,000 words. That will change, of course, but there's so much that has to happen first...

Guitar yesterday went okay. I had jammed my left index finger making Thanksgiving dinner, so it's been sore for days now, which meant I skimped on playing chords of any type. So yesterday was all about fingering and strumming. My right arm is too tense, apparently. I need to relax my strumming. Gee, I'm tense? Who'd've thunk it? ;)

So now I'm off to eat lunch and do my daily practice. Isn't my life thrilling? ;)

You know, no matter where my headspace is or how much I fear sucking when I go in, my guitar lessons never fail to make me feel good. I went in today still unable to get these stupid bar chords to sound right, and Scott was his usual super-supportive self and convincing me that it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was.

Nothing really new in the lesson. He gave me two Christmas carols to learn 3 different ways, and we worked on those.

And now I have to go and try to get done some of the stuff I need before Thursday. I'll likely be scarce for awhile.

I'm feeling list-y.

1. 8 weeks on WW, and I've lost 16 pounds. Woo hoo!

2. Finished the first chapter of my next Spuffy fic this morning and shipped it off to sadbhyl for beta. The plan is to start posting it after this holiday weekend, provided she doesn't tell me the opening chapter sucks.

3. Our prompt inspiration last week was Shakespeare, but I gotta tell you, I really dislike Shakespeare and wasn't feeling hugely inspired. So, pepperlandgirl4 and I decided to write a tagfic for it instead, and she's posted it over at her LJ. What I mean by a tagfic is that she took a character and I took a character, and we wrote back and forth. That means there's headhopping every other paragraph. We also wrote the bulk of it in the wee hours of the morning so it isn't the cleanest of stories. However, if you're interested in reading Wes/Faith, post-Chosen, that gets a little smutty, feel free check it out. It's called Sometimes By Chance, and I mentioned smutty, right?

4. Bar chords suck. I still can't do them. And my next lesson is tomorrow. Here's hoping the Christmas songs he wants to teach me don't have bar chords in them.

5. Pepper and I are getting really good feedback about our book we're trying to get into print. Everybody send positive vibes in our direction. You just might get to buy our paperback this time next year at a store near you if all goes well.

Ah, having Craig home. What a relief. I didn't have to walk Alicia to school this morning, and I didn't even have to get dressed until 9:30. Such a luxury. And then all 4 of us went to see a matinee of Flushed Away this afternoon. *So* funny, but I think that's because of all the in-jokes about England that Craig and I caught. Unfortunately, it didn't hold Alex's attention, which is a shame because I really had fun.

Finished the editing on my book and got it sent off to Liquid Silver. Thankfully, I don't have to wait as long as I would if I'd never published with them before, but that still doesn't mean I'm thrilled about having to wait, lol. Elsewhere on the writing front, I also managed to finally do my spreadsheet with everything I've published and where, and what I'm working on (as well as where I'm going to submit it). Craig asked for it months ago, and I only got it done today, mostly because of getting my book off.

Oh, and I found titles for my new Spuffy fic and my next original book. Hopefully, I'm going to be able to find time to start writing the Spuffy this weekend, but we've got softball signups, a ceramics project, and a birthday party this weekend to do as well. I'm going to aim for starting to post the fic the beginning of December. Get a few chapters under my belt. The fic is multi-pairing, so people know. It's Spike/Buffy, Wes/Faith, and Lindsey/OC, and there *will* be smut for the non-Spuffy pairings. I'm doing this specifically so that I can have some time with my other favorite guys for a change. :) But the fic is meant to be very action/plotty oriented, just so you're aware.

In my guitar practice today, I decided to give the bar chords a try, since I learned the scale and actually doodled a bit in improvising random notes. God. I know everybody's been warning me about them, so I knew it was going to be tough, but...gah. I only tried a simple F, but it was a nightmare. I could either get the strings playing clean with my first finger in place, or I could get the chord playing clean without the first finger bar in place. Not both together. I invariably lose pressure on at least 2 strings when I try to combine them and it sounds all muddied. Blech. But I know. Practice, practice, practice. Thank god Craig is home so that I can actually devote some time to it.

I haven't talked about my guitar lessons recently, not in any detail. There's been a reason for that. I didn't go last week, lol. But I went today, and felt quite nervous about it actually. I haven't had the time to practice that I would've liked, and in spite of being able to finger my scales with ease, I always get nervous in front of Scott even though he's the least scary person you could imagine.

( Read more... )

I love scales. Does that make me crazy? I love the rhythm, I love the fingering, I love everything about them. I even skipped ahead to find out other scales to learn. I think what it is, is that I much prefer fingering to strumming. It makes going back and practicing chords hard, lol.

Halloween is speeding up for us. We have a party tomorrow, two parties Saturday, each child has a party Tuesday, then a party in town Tuesday afternoon, and then trick-or-treating on Tuesday night. I'm fighting to get other stuff done.

I tried a new WW recipe for dinner tonight. A mushroom/leek/wild rice stew that gets done in the slow cooker. But the leeks completely overpowered the recipe, and I just don't care for it at all. Guess who's having salad for supper? :P

Craig made me watch Stealth last night. Tell me why again why I don't try harder to talk him out of movies he really wants to see?

Speaking of Craig, he leaves for India a week from today. He'll be gone until the 17th, which screws our plans for going to NC for Thanksgiving, but oh well. I'm anticipating getting a lot of stuff while he's gone. I have to. I have 25 books to read for the EPPIE's by December 5.

Yesterday's guitar lesson showed me just how off the mark I was this weekend with my cold. Started playing "Yesterday" for Scott and realized three chords in that I'd mastered the damn thing with a wrong chord (Dm for D7) and was too intent on fingering and had my head too blocked up to hear the difference. I felt like an idiot, mostly because I hate looking like I hadn't practiced or wasn't taking it seriously in front of him. He was really nice about it and said that the rest of it sounded good, but I still hate it. So I'm going to spend the next 2 weeks learning every damn chord he's shown me and proving I'm not an imbecile.

We talked about families of chords and scales, too, and he showed me the basic scale progression that I can use for all major scales. I've got an exercise he wants me to master before I go back in 2 weeks (he's got Halloween off), and it's already coming along pretty good. Between that and the other chords, I've got a lot to keep me busy until my next lesson. I just have to learn to be patient. I find the rote of the practices incredibly relaxing, but I hate not being perfect at it when I go in for the lesson. It's OK for me to make mistakes while I practice - I expect that. But being less than what I know I can be in front of an audience has always been one of my biggest peeves. I don't want to do something publicly unless I know I've got it as good as I can possibly get it at that point. That holds true for when I was acting, or my writing, or just about anything else that requires me to present myself to others. It's a personal flaw, I know. And it's not like I don't mind making mistakes...as long as I'm the only one who knows about it, lol.

My cold is starting to fade finally. Which is good because Craig is back at the office today.

Oh! And I discovered that the big romance review publication (Romantic Times) reviewed "Two Lives in Waltz Time" for their December issue and gave it 4 1/2 stars out of 5, making it one of their top picks for the month. Of course, I can't find out what the damn thing says until November 9 when it hits the bookstore shelves, but still, very exciting. :) Also means I need to get off my butt and finish my new book. ;)

So Craig is off from work until next Wednesday. And Alicia is off because of teacher conferences. So my darling husband has taken both kids out for the day, to the Oakland Zoo and then biking, leaving me with an empty house and all the time in the world to write and get things done. And he did it without me asking. Men like that are hard to find. :)

Today seems to be a day for canvassing. It's 10:30 and already we've had 3 people come to our door trying to sell something. First religion, then realty, and this last one was a politico. I think I'm going to stop answering the door and just hide upstairs in the office. I can already see two new faces heading their way up our street from here.

I learned yesterday that my left hand isn't quite ready for 2 hours of guitar practice in a single day (not all at once, 2 half-hour shifts scattered through the day, and then an hour while the kids ate and then calmed down after dinner). It *hurt* so much when I finished that last practice. On the plus side, however, the first verse of "Yesterday" is now my bitch. :)

I'm going through all my files and such to find all the ficlets I haven't posted on LJ yet. I'm going to be posting them sporadically so that I can get them in my memories, so don't be surprised when you see more of these show up. There's a few LAS entries from the last time I did it, and a Joyce ironfic story. Plus, in order to keep the fic muscles working (and to practice on writing shorter stuff), pepperlandgirl4, sadbhyl, mydeira, and I are giving each other weekly prompts, so those will start showing up here, too. And yes, I will be starting my new Spuffy story some time in November. I'm trying to finish my book first, though, and I have a ton of reading to do for LLGA and other stuff, so I'm putting that off until I have more time on my hands. But it'll come. I promise. :)