Write Well Me

Random Thoughts

I'm in the Bar at Nana's on the 27th floor of the lovely Hilton Anatole relaxing after a week of conference activities (and after three weeks of preparing for said conference, at the same time getting my house ready for market, oh, and work, oh, and life...)

Anyway, I took some time out tonight to sit in the corner of the bar and look out at the Dallas skyline.  I spent about two hours in the best corner of the bar.  Yes, I monopolized this spot, BUT I also bought drinks and food, so I was legitimate.

Another anyway, this was my first real time to just sit and be after those hectic weeks and falling into bed around 6:00 p.m. last night and not getting up until 7:00 this morning.  Tonight I had a little more energy and didn't want to necessarily isolate myself in my room.  So, I isolated myself in the corner of the bar.  Oh well. 

As I looked out on my favorite Dallas view, I overheard some of the conversations around me.  Since I'm at an eWomen Network conference, there were a lot of women business owners around.  It made me think of some of the connections I'd made while I was here.  Some while presenting at AuthorCamp, some in the Publishing Pavilion, and some just out and about. 

I also had time just to reflect on the last few weeks and what they've meant to me personally and professionally.

A few random thoughts:

• The best business to be in is one you're passionate about
• Depending upon your business, writing a book can be a smart move. It's an even smarter move if you really want do it and are passionate about your message.
• I give really good advice. I should take some of that advice.
• Stepping out of one's comfort zone is a good thing.  Really. I keep telling myself that.
• I want to revisit some of the book ideas I've had noodling around in my head.  Stacy, that means us.  :)
• It also means some of the book ideas I'm writing on my own. I'm going to make that a reality soon.
• I need a car next time I travel to Dallas. Since I wasn't exhausted tonight, I had more energy to do stuff. Sadly, I didn't have the easy means. Next time, a car.
• I really have to make a Snuffer's date ahead of time. It doesn't seem to happen on its own.
• As I watch cars from far away driving on the highways, I always wonder what their stories are.  Where are they going? What's going on deep inside them that they hide from the outside world? What drives them?

25 Random Things About Me

There's this thing going around on Facebook where you write 25 random things about yourself and then tag 25 of your friends to do the same.

Whatever.

I sooooooooo was not going to do this.  Heck, I just did the 7 random things that people don't really care to know about me. Now I had to come up with 25 things people might want to know about me.

But then people kept tagging me, and I found myself actually enjoying reading these things about them. Whether I knew these people well or not, I always got a much better sense of who they were as a result.

So I caved and wrote my own 25. And it does give a better of sense of who I am, if you didn't already know these things.  I'm not going to tag you; I've already done that to my Facebook pals.  This is just a way for you to get to know me.

1.  I like asparagus.  Yes, I know, but I like it anyway.

2.  I'm a writer, and I love words, but I suck at word games like Scrabble and crossword puzzles.  My mind just doesn't work that way. Go figure.

3.  I can still recite a portion of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales - in Middle English.

4.  I have a huge capacity to feel and to love.

5.  My biggest fear is that I'm so intense that people will walk away from me. 

6.  I know very little about my biological father, other than his name and that I have a half-sister somewhere.

7.  I've been stabbed with scissors, bitten by a Doberman Pinscher three times, run straight into a glass pole and lost a couple of hours of my life, sprained an ankle, had two cuts that required trips to the emergency room, two eye surgeries, one laparascopy, and one surgery to remove tonsils and adenoids. Oh yeah, and two babies. It's a bit like the joke of the sign at the trailer park:  200 days since the last tornado.  In this case, it's been 339 days (and counting) since Dawn's last trip to the hospital.

8.  I was the most popular when I had to start 3rd grade in a new school with stitches on my face from said dog bite in #7.

9.  I have an eclectic taste in movies.  I like chick movies, action movies (go Die Hard!), comedies, dramas, classics, horror flicks...

10.  My taste in music is just about as eclectic, from classical to 80s to easy listening to heavy metal to Celtic.

11.  I dress up for the Maryland Renaissance Festival every year.

12.  I'm a morning person and a night person.  I am not an afternoon person.

13.  My favorite style of decorating is heavy baroque, which is much nicer sounding than French whorehouse.

14.  I can tell you what a predicate nominative is.

15.  I make a mean banana bread as well as yummy yeasty white bread.

16.  I watch movies (see #9), but I'm an abysmal tv watcher.  I cannot commit to shows for very long.  Reruns and the summer hiatus are the kiss of death for a tv show as far as I'm concerned.

17.  Books are crucial to my happiness.

18.  I'm short, 5' 1", but I've developed a big personality to counteract the shortness.  Just ask my former 7th and 8th grade students who were afraid of me (and were way taller than I).

19.  I'm most grateful for the number of people in my life to whom I can say, "I love you." I'm pretty lucky.

20.  I'd go to Dallas in a nanosecond just to eat at Snuffer's.  Probably a good thing I don't live there anymore.

21.  When I get turned on to a new food or drink, I buy copious amounts of it.  Invariably, I get tired of it, and I'm stuck with a gigantic, Costco-sized pack of whatever it is.

22.  My greatest physical assets are my hair, my smile, and my, oh well, never mind.

23.  My greatest desire is to become a published author.

24.  I'm one of the strongest people I know, which can get me into trouble.  I just keep dipping into that well of strength, always expecting it to be there until it runs empty and I crash - SLAM - into a brick wall.  This is all figuratively speaking, of course.

25.  I'm working on happiness, BEing, self-evolution, balance, and I don't see that ever changing.

Randomness to Close Out 2008

I have to say that I'm a little sad to say good-bye to 2008, even with the tumult and chaos that's been going on.  Because I know that there's been a lot of good stuff to come out of 2008.  Yeah, bad stuff too, but all of it's gotten me to where I am right now, on the cusp of a new year, new possibilities, and a new Dawn.  (I get a lot of mileage out of my first name.)

So that being said, I leave you with the following to muse and laugh over as you bid farewell to 2008 and usher in 2009.

• Lake Superior University banished words list.  (You had to know words would be involved in some way.)  I didn't get riled up over any words on the list, and maybe it's because I'm just so happy that we'll have a president who speaks in complete sentences.
• Which leads to this... Obama's chief speech writer.  I loved that they talked about voice in writing and Favreau's ability to write in Obama's voice.
• Yet another link to words, the Inigo Montoya Guide to 27 Commonly Misused Words, compliments of Meryl.
• Stacy had written about my interview on an Internet radio show, and I've written about how she called me her BFF.  Then, she wrote more about what I said on Virtual Moxie and the concept of red and green traffic lights.  I actually think she wrote it better than I said it.  
• We all have favorite numbers, but it never occurred to me to pay attention to five.  Bruce writes about how to Unleash the Power of Five.  I like the idea of using five (five things your customers like about you, five things your customers don't like about you, and so on) instead of just saying, "Come up with what customers like/don't like."  You tend to stop at one or two. Five makes you go deeper.  Hmmm.
• The very best eCard out there. 
• On one of the rare occasions where I watched live tv, I saw this commercial.  It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen, and I have to say that I almost rushed out to buy the product. It was no surprise that it was produced by Baz Luhrman.
• Watching Oceans 11 for the umpteenth time, I felt moved to find out yet more about the film.  One can find anything on the Internet.  Oceans 11 trivia awaits!

May you all have a prosperous and joyful 2009! 

7 Random Things About Me

Kudos for Carla for getting me started.  Of course, since I sat on this for weeks, Laura beat me to it, but I'm going to tag her anyway since I don't feel like thinking on my vacation.

• Link to the person’s blog who tagged you.
• Post these rules on your blog.
• List seven random and/or weird facts about yourself.
• Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
• Let each person know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog.

7 Random Things About Me

1. I was born in the back seat of a car in Mississippi.
2. My grandfather has driven me over the approximate spot where I was born.
3. My grandmother delivered me from the front seat of the car.
4. I am not obsessed with stories of my birth.
5. I have curly hair.
6. I attended six different elementary schools.
7. I love to play flag football, although I do more tackling than I'm supposed to.

Here are the seven people I'm tagging:

• Laura Howard West
• Antonette Artiz
• Sharon Broughton
• Stacy Brice, when she comes back from sabbatical
• Word Lily
• Meryl
• Any of the bloggers on The Virtual Wire

Enjoy!

Random Thoughts on a Tuesday

In the 2020s, will radio stations refer to their music as the "music of the '20s"?

Will there be radio stations?

Apple isn't so big a company that "playlist" has made it into the online dictionaries.  It still comes up misspelled.

I bet computer graphics took a big leap when someone got fed up with the micro details of claymation.  Can you imagine the tedium of moving things a millimeter and then shooting a frame, moving things a millimeter and shooting a frame.  It must take days to shoot a 30-second claymation bit.