The Playground

Your results:
You are Hulk

Hulk 80% Spider-Man 80% Wonder Woman 77% Green Lantern 75% Catwoman 70% Superman 55% Robin 52% The Flash 50% Batman 50% Iron Man 50% Supergirl 47%

You are a wanderer with amazing strength.

Your results:
You are Poison Ivy

Poison Ivy 59% Dark Phoenix 54% The Joker 50% Mr. Freeze 49% Apocalypse 44% Mystique 42% Catwoman 41% Magneto 36% Venom 35% Dr. Doom 34% Riddler 28% Juggernaut 26% Lex Luthor 26% Green Goblin 22% Kingpin 16% Two-Face 14%

You would go to almost any length for the protection of the environment including manipulation and elimination.

Stephen Colbert is back and starting the new year off well. It seems he's coined a new word to possibly replace "truthiness" - "factiness." He also echoed my sentiments about the bleakness of the Northeast this year, especially without any snow. It's nothing but "the endless dreary grey death scape of mid-winter." No kidding.

Still haven't heard anything from The Atlantic Monthly. I plan on waiting until the end of January before contacting them again. In the meantime, I've submitted a short piece of non-fiction to Brevity magazine in Pittsburgh - just emailed it tonight. We'll see.

Still have to take down the Christmas tree. This is the worst part of the whole holiday season - cleaning up after it. It's like a three-month long house guest that has left little bits of himself all over your house that you're still finding come spring.

I've used some of my frozen leftover turkey from Christmas and made this delicious salad.

Turkey, cooked (white or dark meat, I used both)
1 Apple, cored and chopped (I peeled mine)
Nuts (I used a mixture of pecans, almonds, and pine nuts that I toasted earlier)
Fresh dill
Salt and pepper
Mayo (but just enough to moisten everything, not make it gooey.)

I ate it as a sandwich on toasted bread with homemade cranberry sauce on the side. So good!

The Atlantic Monthly said Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not surprised. So now I'll just start working down the list.

I still have the essay at Brevity, but I don't know what the wait time is on that.

Such is the life of the starving artist.

(Relax, I'm totally joking.)

Brevity said not this time; "Good luck with your writing."
So, here's what I submitted.

Eavesdropping

Trying to publish this elsewhere.

One leg down; one to go. And here's Crochet Fiend coming up on the last leg...
Ok, I found this awesome and easy crochet Lattice Leg Warmer pattern and I can't wait to make the second one. They work up fast because of all that open space so I should be able to wear these by Sunday if I so choose. Yay!

I made it to within three rows of the end of the my second leg warmer when I realized I didn't have enough yarn. It's some partial skein I've had laying around forever and I don't have the wrapper for it so I have no idea what it is in order to go buy more. The only option was to unravel it and unravel the first one and crochet the top edgings with fewer rows and with a smaller hook so as to conserve yarn. I've finished (again) one leg warmer, still several inches short. I'm hoping that when I do the next one I will end up with some extra to join onto the first one so that I can finish the bottom edging. Here's hoping.

Despite evidence to the contrary all over my house, it seems I've been relatively productive lately.

I've submitted manuscripts to three magazines, (rejected by two, no response yet from the third), crocheted a set of legwarmers twice, and I'm working on a knit pair next.

Also, I've submitted an entry into a literary contest. The theme is Less is More, focusing on micro-fiction, micro-poetry, and micro-photography. So fiction has to be 100 words or less, photos have to be taken using a camera phone or a PDA phone. Poetry is to follow the rules of the Fib. A Fib is a 20 syllable poem broken up over six lines and the line sequence follows Fibonacci's numbers. The breakdown of syllables looks like this 1,1,2,3,5,8. Anyway, I submitted two Fibs. The winner in each category gets $75, so that's cool. Casey submitted a photo from his phone. We don't find out until Feb. 20.

Here are two of the practice Fibs I wrote:

Pestilence
drip
sniff
blow, cough
my head aches
and my throat tickles
cold season is miserable

Beer Baby
beer
left
table
baby sees
baby swipes bottle
Mommy should put her stuff away

Two leg warmers done. Finally. With all the times I've taken them out and started again, I've made the equivalent of eight leg warmers. They're awesome.