It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.....

From the Google Public Alert Page this evening:

"The first significant snowstorm of the season will arrive tonight and continue Sunday morning."

TECHNICALLY, the weather men in my area will remind you, it's not OFFICIALLY WINTER until December 21st.  It's only the 14th, so it's still AUTUMN!  But we're still having a prediction of 12 - 15 inches of the fluffy white stuff.....

And I find this amusing.....

Why, you might ask?

This is Maine.  As a child living here, our Halloween costumes had to be able to be worn over warm clothing.  Shoes were frequently snow boots.  Hats and mittens came off long enough to knock, speak and collect the goods, then were put back on for the "stroll" to the next house.  (I grew up in a town with about 15 to 20 houses grouped together in the small section where I lived, next to the general store.  A couple of the houses were a bit of a hike from the store, so we walked roughly a mile.)

Maine used to be "nine months of winter and three months of hard sledding" per my elders.  (Of course, they say it so that "winter" becomes "wintah", "hard" becomes "hahd", and sledding loses the "g".)  Considering that we've had only a couple of really light snow storms since Halloween - and remembering how many years we were trick or treating in warm clothes and snow boots - I suspect we're actually due this "first significant storm". 

Some will hunker down and stay cozy.  I'll be at work. 

I grew up here.  I've always managed to get safely from Point A to Point B no matter what the weather, and worry more about the inexperienced drivers out there who didn't grow up in a small town where, even in the "center of town", as we were, one could be literally snowed in a couple of times each winter.  When you grow up driving on crappy roads, you can handle these nice, well kept roads in the area where I now live.  Unfortunately, there are those times each winter when I'm driving along, minding my own business - and see another car coming at me sideways.......

So far, no accidents (knocking on the wooden top of my desk), and that is the only concern about tomorrow.  Otherwise, this storm will give us some beautiful white, fresh snow to make all the Christmas lights stand out nicely against the crisp, clean background.  It means it's almost Christmas.  I have to finish everything and get my gifts sent.  I don't want to repeat the one time that I spent Christmas in the south of the country.....

Nothing against all y'all south of the Mason - Dixon line, but I need snow at Christmas to get me in the right mood.  I couldn't get into the Christmas spirit.  My presents, what few ever got finished, were late.  I just couldn't get myself into the idea that October was passing without having to rake up a single fallen leaf.  There was no dramatic color change followed by all the trees shaking off their leaves like a dog shaking off water droplets.  There was no chill in the air and no need to change out of my skirts and short sleeved shirts.  My Halloween costume could be as skimpy and sexy as I wanted it to be.  Our turkey dinner took place on a breezy screened porch because it was too hot inside the house from the cooking to eat in there.  I discovered that I couldn't make our traditional dipped chocolates because they kept melting, and the lack of snow on Christmas Eve made me feel bereft.....

So, if you're in the Northeast, please be careful driving tomorrow, especially if you aren't used to it.  If at all possible, stay in, stay cozy, and enjoy a nice, family Sunday with your loved ones.  If you, like me, must work, be safe.

I want to see you for the New Year celebration.  I have a special hat and everything......

Cats rule, dogs drool - at least, that's how it works in my house.....

I've always had a "mixed pet" household.  In the home where I grew up, there was generally at least one cat, and from first grade on, generally also a dog.  I always heard the old adage about "fighting like cats and dogs", but in my house, there were often times when the dog and the cat were sound asleep cuddled together on the couch.....

The trend of having at least one pet in the home continued when I rented my first off-campus place in college.  My boyfriend and I had rented a small trailer, but we had both left our cats with our parents, as they had never been away from the old homesteads and we both were sensible enough to not take them away from their familiar surroundings.  One very hot August day, when I had opened all the windows trying to get it to cool off, then opened both doors, figuring letting in bugs was better than roasting in my own skin.  Part-way through the afternoon, I came out of the bedroom to find a strange kitten asleep on my couch.

Asking around to all the neighbors when he kept returning, we discovered he had just shown up one day and no one "owned" him.  We named him "Quat" (because he was a "Quazy Cat") and started feeding him, thinking the adoption was finalized when he started returning to sleep in the house each night.  After moving to another apartment, however, Quat proved to us that not all cats have a good sense of direction.  He got lost several times when I would let him out, and when I was walking around the neighborhood, people kept saying "Oh, thank goodness!  I thought we'd been adopted by a stray!"  When there came a point that I DIDN"T find him, one of our neighbors who had adopted a little kitten who was driving him nuts gave us his kitten, whom we named Avatar (after the good wizard in the movie "Wizards", one of my boyfriend's favorite movies at the time).  Avatar was with us until we had to have him euthanized for kidney failure at the ripe old age of 17.

Throughout the years, as my boyfriend became my husband and then we added two children to the family, we were also continuing to add pets.  When Avatar was "cat-napped" when we were moving to Florida and my mother-in-law was insisting that a black cat would die in the Florida heat, I adopted a young black cat whom I named "Talon" after the good guy in the movie "The Sword and the Sorcerer".  Then came a husky/german shepherd mix dog we named "Buck" after the main character in "Call of the Wild".  Then there was a bunny (our son named him "Bugs Bunny"), several fish (mostly unnamed except for the plecostomus, whom the kids called "Mr. P"), several other cats - some of whom didn't survive their first trips into the outside, as my husband never liked having cat pans around - etc.  As we ran into lay offs from jobs, causing us to have to move more frequently, we slowly let the number of pets in the house decrease as they died or disappeared, allowing us to cut back to a single dog and a single cat at about the time that we moved into the house we have been in since 1998.  Throughout our years with the animals, we had noticed a bit of a phenomenon when it came to the pecking order in the animal kingdom:  All of our dogs, whether coming to us from a shelter, a home without other pets, or from a farm full of animals, all deferred to the cats when hissed at and slapped across the face the first time.  If the dog was eating and the cat walked over to see what was in the dish, the dog would always step aside, going back to the food when the cat had sniffed and moved on.  Even though the dogs were all large enough that the cat could have been a snack, the cat ruled and the dog drooled......

A few years ago, it was decided that our current pets would be the last we would have.  The reasons were many. 

First off, the children were graduating high school and moving out, so there was really no need to have a dog to protect them when they got home from school any more.  Then there was the fact that we love to go camping, and it was getting harder as well as more expensive to find pet sitters to come in and care for the cat when we were away.  There was also the fact that we had a husky/collie at the time, so a long ride to a camp site always resulted in me being unable to move once we arrived because my legs had been put to sleep by 85 pounds of dog leaning on me for the whole ride so that he sniff out the window.  When the dog, Bear, and the Maine Coon cat, Tiger, both developed cancers, eventually leading us to having to euthanize them both within two months of each other, we were heartbroken, but stuck by the idea that it was better to not have any pets than have a pet who was staying home alone all the time while we worked.  The only pet still living in the house technically belonged to our daughter, who had brought a little Shih Tzu/Pomeranian mix back with her when she moved back home from New York City.

But then our daughter moved to an apartment where she couldn't have a dog.  Pookah, who had moved in with us shortly before the loss of Tiger and Bear, needed a temporary place until his mama could get settled into an apartment where he could live.  She soon discovered that was harder said than done, and since my husband, who has never liked small dogs, had decided that Pookah wasn't half bad for an ankle-biter, we offered to keep him with us on a more permanent basis.  Small enough to not cause the same problems as Bear when we went camping, Pookah has adapted to spending a lot of time alone.....

until recently......

Once again, our daughter has moved into a situation that won't allow her to take along the cat she now has  - at least for a couple of months.  Her roommate, who has two cats, also needed a temporary place for her animals.  Rather than make them bring the cats to a shelter to hope the boys would still be there when they could take them back, we've opened our home - and noticed that phenomenon of pecking order again.

Meeko, the youngest of the cats and the most mischievous, noticed that, whenever I've brought Pookah to visit his "mama", Pookah got very nervous about the cat (mostly because of Tiger, who was 18 pounds and much bigger than the tiny puppy who first moved in with us.  Tiger terrorized the poor puppy).  Meeko has been using this to his advantage over the past few days that they've all been in the same house.  Pookah, even though he growls to try to keep some control, will defer to the cat 99.9% of the time.  Moses, who looks just like Meeko, has been starting to discover that Pookah will back down despite the growling.  The only one who hasn't figured out yet that the noises the dog makes are mostly bluff is Thomas, who is blind on one side and a little more skittish because of it.  I give Thomas about another week or so before he comes to the conclusion that the cats rule this house........

So, I don't know about other people's homes, but in this house, cats rule, dogs drool, and the humans just need to make sure everyone is well fed and petted when desired....

I wonder how I can use this in a book???
 

HUZZAH!

This just in:  WE HAVE A NOOK VERSION OF "THE TIGER'S CUB" IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS!! http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-tigers-cub-debi-emmons/1117635676?ean=2940148864547

That is all...

(Original link posted on 12/7 was corrected at the B&N end of things, so this link - posted 12/10, is the corrected one.  Heaven help me if it gets corrected after this.....*grin*)

Thinking of doing my own casting call.......

Yes, like a lot of people out there, I tuned into the Live "The Sound of Music" last night to see if all the hype I'd been hearing was worth it.  As they used to announce after editorials that ran on the "big three" stations when I was a kid, this is my opinion.  I welcome yours......

I had a music teacher growing up who thought that the 1965 movie with Julie Andrews in the lead role was the BEST MUSICAL EVER!!!!  (And yes, I did that all in caps for a reason.)  Mrs. Clark ALWAYS had at least one tune in the chorus recitals from the time I first met her in 1st grade right through graduation.  I'm not sure if she continued in this tradition after I left the school, as I didn't make it back for any of the recitals after my graduation and before her death in a car accident, but I have a suspicion she probably did include at least one of the songs.  She was that enamored with the show.

I kept hearing Mrs. Clark's voice during the short time I watched the production last night.  Carrie Underwood is one of my favorite country singers, but last night wasn't her best performance, and Mrs. Clark would have been yelling at her about "bellowing the songs" instead of "singing them with sensitivity".  I was left with the impression that someone - the director?  One of the people who had acted on Broadway, maybe? - had told her that she had to belt out the songs so that the person sitting in the very last row of the theater would hear every syllable.  That was one of the things we were told during the stage productions in high school and college, because it was before the advent of wireless microphones.  They obviously had good sound pick-ups on the production last night, and I think that Carrie would have been better served if she had been singing with the normal emotions that come through in her regular songs - and she seemed to be the one I noticed that with the most.

At about the time when the Captain returns for the first time after leaving his children in the care of the new governess and is mobbed by a bunch of hooligans in clothing made of curtains, my husband came in and changed the channel.  I can't blame him.  I had abandoned actively watching the show and was here at my laptop, working on a scene or two.  Once sports were on the screen and I zoned out into my own little world, I started hearing some of the compliments I've been getting from the local fans who have read my books and been following my Facebook fan pages.....

In talking to a co-worker last week about Chase - and the fact that the character came in much more clearly after I found photos of model Dylan Griner to represent him - I started thinking about my current characters.  Yes, I have a Facebook fan page up for "Rhawneth".  Yes, I have a model to represent some of the characters, most of whom aren't named on the pages where I found their photos during a general Google search for certain attributes.  But they aren't coming in as strongly as Chase, so I'm having a much harder time with the editing and writing process.....

So, did I choose the wrong models for the characters?  Might I be getting a stronger vibe with a different face to represent my "cast"?  Did I do as poorly as NBC's casting agent in picking someone who isn't an actor/actress to "play" my parts on Facebook?

Here's the deal.  If you know of anyone who, like Dylan Griner, is an actor as well as a model, who might meet my descriptions, please feel free to suggest them.  Here are the characters and the descriptions:

Rhawneth Kenna, the main character:  blonde, brown eyed, with the body of a warrior and powers that are well beyond any Healer that her planet has ever known...

Roth Garret, Commander of the Guard at Dahmehn/personal bodyguard for Prince Nicholas Kenna:
brown hair, blue eyes (which he hides with brown contacts), an experienced warrior who is a Sensitive, meaning that he psychically links to Healers.

Matthew Rossi, Commander of the King's Guard at Beni:  brown hair, brown eyes, the epitome of a Benite warrior.  He has a haunted look resulting from marrying the love of his life at an early age, and then watching her die of an incurable disease.

Loralie Kenna, Crown Princess when Rhawneth is disavowed:  brown hair, brown eyes, the epitome of Benite beauty.  She seems very malleable while the King lives, but proves to have a spine of steel when she takes over as the Queen.

Nicholas Kenna, Prince, second in line for the throne:  brown hair, brown eyes, a bit of a mischief maker in order to draw the fire away from his sisters - especially Rhawneth.  If there's something that is against the rules for him to do, he'll do it just to make sure that he catches the fire of his father's anger and give his sisters a free pass.

Eondach Roema, Captain of the Guard for Tario Venides:  blonde hair, blue eyes, a true giant of a man.  He is a Sensitive serving a warped Healer, but more because his grandmother has convinced him that he's needed to make sure that a prophesy is allowed to come to pass...

Tario Venides, a rogue Tarist who is also borderline insane:  blonde hair, blue eyes, very handsome, but the most evil being one could ever imagine.  He needs to see blood to get sexually excited, and he wants to be sexually excited several times a day.  Needless to say, he has a LOT of victims...

Any actors/models you know of who you would suggest will be graciously considered.  I would truly love that face that stirs the characters in my head to speak louder so I can get this story completed.