Boosting the signal, as this is Lacey's cousin, and she just heard about this today.... If anyone knows anything, you know what to do, and boost signals further if you feel it might help.

Update from Facebook: Julie Hayes
WONDERFUL NEWS:Kristie's sister just notified me that Kristi has called home. I have no details other than she's in Ponchatoula and she's alive. THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR HARD WORK AND PRAYERS Whew! is all I have to say!




PONCHATOULA - Police are asking for your help in looking for 27-year-old Kristie Woods.

Kristie hasn't been seen or heard from in about two weeks. People close to her say this behavior isn't typical of Kristie.

Her last known address is 20395 Esterbrook Rd.

She is about 5'5", around 135 lbs., has hazel eyes and brown hair.

She also has a tattoo of her name on one of her legs and stars tattooed on her feet.

Anyone with information on Kristie Woods' whereabouts should contact Detective Dale Athmann at (985)902-2088.

Kristie Woods has been missing since July 16th! She is from Ponchatoula, Louisiana. She is 27 years old, Born Oct. 27, 1984. She has dark brown eyes, and dark brown hair. She has a tattoo on her upper right arm. She was last seen driving a silver Jeep Cherokee.

I have this set in big red letters on both my google calendar and my work calendar. XD who me, a dork, always!!

So far this year, I've read 16 books on my Kindle. At this rate, my new goal for the year should be reading 100 books. The scary part? My To Be Read excel sheet? Has ~55 entries, though some authors are just listed with their series names. Something tells me I won't have to hunt for things to read to make that 100.

( Whole List under cut:Collapse )

2 AM, I wake up hearing the dogs upstairs barking madly. They carry on any time someone's walking around out there, best alarm system in the world. So I'm listening, hearing some whoots and excited chatter, and my curiousity gets the better of me. And what to my wondering eyes should appear?



As in, actual snow!!! In SA.
Yeah, those upnorth, it's not a lot of snow, but every winter they get our hopes up and we never get ANY.
And yes, this one IS my fault. I was running around yesterday going "I wish it would snow". On purpose. ;) Thank you, starry gods and godesses, happy fluffy unicorns SQUEEEEE!!!

So after my summer garden started winding down, I was annoyed. My tomatoes? Nommed by whiteflies mostly. Basil? Going to flower. Rosemary, still content. Bell pepper, growing 2 currently, 2 more blooms, and a couple other possible blooms. Oregano, making like a weed! Lemon verbena? Trimmed back and most of it dried for teas.
Other than that, I have several empty pots now, longing for new contents. Since it's approaching winter, I looked up some of the seed packets Rae'd included in my birthday pressie. Discovered that several of them would be good winter varieties, so started those in the little peatmoss pellet growing kit thingy. So if all goes to plan, I will have lavender, spinach, lettuce, and mustard greens growing over the course of the winter.

This led to me planning out my spring pots. If I grow everything I'm planning on right now, I may need a bigger patio.

*Soybeans (for edaname, NUM!)
*Snap Peas
*Thistleberries (like raspberries, but different)
*Watermelon
*Tomatillo (for salsa)
*Avocados (Going to try, anyway. No guarentees this will work, but it would save me quite a few trips to HEB)
*Jalapenos
*Serranos
*Roma tomatoes
*Yellow and red cherry tomatoes
*Spring and regular onions
*Sweet corn (nummmmmmmm!!!)

This is on top of the herbs that hopefully will winter over, and the bell pepper plants I'm hoping will do the same. Wheee!

This week was a whirlwind. Em's been out of town for a taekwondo tourney (She gets home tomorrow night), so I figured no reason to come home most of the week. Monday, learned Rae was moving that Friday to Houston (suckage, but she got a good job over there, so I can't hold it against her.) so we went for Thai Wednesday. Thursday I went for ice cream with Miche, and caught up with her a bit again, which is always nice. Friday, went to mom's for lunch/shopping, got some more herbs (Oregano, thyme, lemon verbena, savory, tarragon, chocolate mint, and red stemmed mint to add to my rosemary, three containers of basil, onions, yellow and red cherry tomatoes, and red bell peppers currently growing out there.) and pots to put them in, as well as a really cute little black metal tea pot.

Saturday was the best though.

Went to the Japanese Tea Gardens with 1978hermit and her little one, Sophie. It was a blast! I got a ton of pics with the lovely camera I got for Christmas while we were there, had fun playing with the Sophie, and as always loved hanging with Lacey. Went to a playground after that, but I didn't get any pics there because I was too busy playing with Sophie, hehe! Then went to lunch at Olive Garden, which was amusing too. Last time I went there was in Boston! I usually go to Carinos, because it's convenient, but more often than not I make my own Italian, because that's one cuisine I completely rock at. Their Marsala chicken is pretty good, a bit sweeter than mine, but the roasted potatoes/peppers totally made up for that. Num!

Then after I got home, I was voice chatting with petruck, which was really shiny too. She has the neatest accent!! And since we were using google voice, it wasn't running up anyone's bills, heheh.

Got done with that and ate dinner real fast, then ran off to Flying Saucer with one of my coworkers, Aaron, for his birthday. His girlfriend/babymama is soooooooo young! 22! 'Course, he's 23, but he's at least pretty mature. She seemed like a little kid to me! (Yeah, I know, I'm getting old, and I have the gray hairs to prove it!)

Ok, so out on my patio, in pots, I have basil, rosemary, spring onions, and yellow cherry tomatoes, among other things that are coming along out there. The basil started in the aerogarden, and while the other herbs I transplanted outside didn't survive worth crap, the basil has exploded. As in it is about 2 1/2 FEET tall! (This same basil at a couple points had also managed to BBQ the top leaves on the Aerogarden light bulb... I swear, this basil plant is like, Hercules or something!!)

So I look at the clock, and it's 8. I haven't had dinner yet, but I want something light and summery. I go pick a handful of yellow cherry tomatoes, added those to the few I had sitting on the counter waiting to go into something, grab some basil and rosemary, and curiously poke at my onions.

Now, mind you, the onions were a handful of "leftovers" from the batch my mom was planting. I'd been just trimming the tops and letting them regrow, but decided that I'd use one of the five, and put the rootbase back in to regrow (Which they're supposed to, which I find REALLY freaking awesome! Phoenix onions, reborn from the ashes!! (no ashes actually required!)) So I dig up one that is about an inch or so in diameter, and bring that in as well.

Spiral pasta goes in to cook, and some chicken is grilled with a bit of balsamic vinegar and a touch itallian seasoning and salt.

Tossed all that when done with some more balsamic, a bit of minced garlic, olive oil, the herbs and onion all chopped up, and the little tomatoes chopped in half for ease of nomming.

TOTAL foodgasm. Seriously, I'm now waiting very impatiently for more tomatoes to ripen up, and wondering if I plant more onions right now if they'll hurry up and grow, or if they'll just roast in the TX heat.

*grins*

Also had bookgasm today... Went to the library, they were having a book sale. It was fail. I found all of 3 that seemed at all decent. They're hit and miss though, either being fabulous, or failtastic, and never in between. Alas, this was the latter.

So I do what any self respecting book worm would do. Say screw it, and hightail it to the nearest Half Priced Books.

$100 for me (well, 90something and change, love their coupons!!) and just shy of $200 for Em (She kept going, "Just one more!!"... Even when the cart we were using was so full that even I, who can tetris books like there's no shelving left, couldn't fit a single book more in!! I finally had to put my foot down, and tell her enough (And when I'm saying enough books, you know it's bad!!)

Two big boxes of books later............

*grins* I has lots and lots and LOTS of books. :-D Just when I was thinking my TBR pile was almost looking more like a hill, less like a mountain... Nope! Mountain status retained!!

Between the two? I am a VERY happy Jami at the moment.

When they start making all ebooks do things like this, I think that's when Ebooks will REALLY take off. I mean, ebooks are nothing new, at all. I had a sony ebook reader back in high school. It was a pain in the butt, and rarely got used, really for two reasons. First being the stupid thing would make you reinstall the software on the device every time the batteries died (as it was only stored in RAM, and thus died quite often). The second being it was actually less easy to bother with downloading the book (of which there were limited sources in that era), installing it (and often having to convert it to a format that would work for that device), when I could just grab a paperbook off the shelf and toss that in my bag.


Real post to come when I pay attention to this tab long enough to think of anything interesting to say.

Sparked by a convo I got into with m_stiefvater...

Adored Authors. We all have them. You know the ones. You may follow their blogs or bookmark their website, or not, but every time you see a book of theirs, you eagerly snap it up, squeeing as you do so, and hug it all the way to the register, where you hand it to the cashier while singing the author's praise, eager to sink into the latest release.

My bookshelves are teeming, and yet certain ones I find spark more passion than others. I snag a lot of random books, picked up on whims because the cover looked interesting, or it was a dollar at the local used book store and a cursory glance made it seem worth the shelf space. Some are decent, but nothing special... I read them once, and they get stuck on a shelf with nary a glance later, to be purged the next time I'm taking a load of books back to the used book shop.

Then there are the ones like Adored Authors, who I insist on buying at Barnes and Noble, because I feel their writing is so good, it's worth the cost, for really supporting them. Would I pass their book up if I saw it at the used store? No, of course not (especially as I have a habit of loaning books to coworkers, and I'm reluctant to lend out my beloved ones!)... but would I also snag another copy at the B&N? Yep. Every time.


And I started thinking about, what makes these authors so much better? It's so subjective... Books I detest, others love (Harry Potter and Twillight, for example), so of course, I started really thinking about what separates the ones like Maggie Stiefvater.

*Characters- They have to really pop, and develop. There's authors like Lisa Jackson, for example, that I've read a few of, but after a while, they get stale... Because their characters don't have anything unique about them. Change a detail, change the name, and you have every single one. Maggie's? I could never confuse her Lament/Ballad characters with her Shiver characters. Not a chance in heck... Even though they're all teenagers dealing with magic and otherworldly creatures, with lots of yummy angst.

*Plots- If I can predict the ending before I'm past chapter 4, I will put the book down. Maybe it's because I also write, but so many stories get formulaic. A LARGE number of romances are guilty of that one, as are comedy movies... Adam Sandler films, you can damned near time the plot "twists" to the minute. Guy meets girl. Guy likes girl, girl may like guy. Guy looks like an idiot. Girl goes away. Guy chases girl, catches her, things start going well. Something happens. Girl rejects guy. Guy does something stupid to impress her, girl laughs, but then just when you think all will be well, for real this time, TRAGEDY STRIKES! Guy mopes, life is Hamlet-esque tragedy, darkest point. Finds inner strength. Guy overcomes some external obstacle, impresses girl, gets her for real seriously this time. Happy ending, they kiss, credits roll.

(And yet this method keeps being taught in writing classes. Why? Because it does work... But I don't want to see it all coming, I want to be so absorbed in the telling of it that I don't THINK about what might happen later!)

Which leads me to

*Style- Partly the combination of the above... Yet something very ephemeral. Especially given if you look at the ones I consider Adored Authors... Maggie Stiefvatter, Neil Gaiman, Aislinn Kerry, Alina Morgan (and yes, you two count in this list, as do the rest of my lovely crit buddies when you guys get your novels actually published (hurry up damnit!!!)), Tamora Pierce, Anne Bishop, Lynn Flwelling, Charles De Lint, and JR Ward. Pretty much the only thing they have in common in their writing is that they all do some form of Fantasy, about half of them mixing urban/paranormal in there. Beyond that, it ranges from YA to erotica, and everything between, and the fantasy section is overflowing with many writers, few of whom inspire this type of MUST have, including many who write damned good books too.

So what is it that sets these into this special category?

If I have to narrow it down, it's that I become so engrossed in their world, the flow of the words, the slow unfolding of the world, until the words themselves only matter in the story they tell. I can lose myself in the worlds, in the stories they create, and the dirty dishes, errands that need run, even time, can be completely forgotten. Many years ago, when I barely knew Aislinn Kerry, I was lucky enough to read a very rough draft of her recently published Copper Kiss. Even in that form, I kept telling myself, one more chapter, and then I have to go to bed. I finished the novel, looked at the clock, and saw it was 3am, and I had class at 8. Did I mind? Not in the least, because those characters, that story, the words themselves, had coalesced into something that was so good, I couldn't get it out of my head. I'd see something with the main male's name (which at the time was Longan instead of Logan that it eventually turned to), like Longan Berries, and squee, because they reminded me of her story.

The Adored Authors do that. They get past the skin, out of the book. They stick in my mind, and my heart. I may have picked them up on a whim, but something in their writing, in their worlds and the characters who inhabit them, grew to something special, something more magical than any vampires, werecreatures, or faeries ever could be. And to those authors, I have two things to say:

Thank you. And write faster, damnit!!!

I should probably post about the cake of win that I made for mom that had her scarfing large pieces and raving about it being the most fantastic cake EVAR!

But instead, I'm just going to show off the cover art I made for my Nano 09.


Photomanip from a bunch of stuff, none of it mine (the girl is a sim of mine that I screenshot, does that count? ;)), but it's sooo pretty! I'm obsessed with it.

Or a closer look inside the cog:


Which do you like better?