Random Tuesday Thoughts 5

Now that the colder weather is approaching, I've started to make like a bear and fatten myself up. I'm totally drawn to fatty foods during autumn and winter, I know I'd be cold if I didn't put on that extra layer of fat every year to help insulate. I'm also hiding foods around the house like a squirrel, then I come across them later and eat them.

I'm totally procrastinating NaNoWriMo. I'm already behind on the word count and it's only the 3rd day, I played with some ideas yesterday but didn't get any actual writing done. I did come up with a title and base concept though. The title is now "Shadow Box". I'll give you a synopsis when I have something more cohesive, but I can say that it's pretty much a character study rather than a plot driven novel.

Now I said that I was procrastinating, but my husband is far worse. He has been talking to me about his novel constantly for the past 3 days, but he has yet to put a word down or to even sign up on the NaNoWriMo website. So I think he wins this procrastination game.

I'm kinda getting back into Graphic Design. It's some form of NaNoWriMo procrastination. I'm working on a couple of things that I'll put up here for download at some point. I'm still not too hot at using Adobe InDesign so it's slow going. Graphic Design was so much easier in school when we could just draw it or make a model. For my Graphic Design class, years ago, I made a full scale model of a Cyber Cafe I designed. The model even had working lights. Yep.





Mikey has recently started putting together two word sentences. This is a really awesome part of his speech development and he seems so much easier to communicate with. He's having trouble with the order of his syllables though, which is quite cute. Sometimes instead of "Mama, Bye!" he'll say "Bama, Mye!" Instead of saying "Bye Ellie!" (when we turn off his favourite DVD) he just says "Bebellie!"

I just remembered a story my granddad told me when I visited last. It's the story of why his side of the family is not religious. Well it's kind of two stories. One story involves an ancestor being conned out of a lot of money by the "church" to build some kind of ridiculous statue. The other story is more weird, if they didn't learn their lesson by being conned, one of my ancestors was also struck by lightning while fixing his local churches roof. Now my granddad is quite good at embellishing stories, but (in the mood of the movie "Big Fish") It's sometimes more interesting to believe the stories as he tells them, I'm sure the correct version isn't nearly as good.

He also has told me so many times over the years that his side of the family is descended from King Æthelred the Unready (Æþelræd Unræd), an Anglo Saxon King of England who reigned from 978 to 1016. One of Æthelred's sons was Edward the Confessor (as referred to in Shakespeare's Macbeth as the Saintly King of England) who was one of the last Anglo Saxon kings of England, and up until 1348 was also considered the patron saint of England (he was replaced by Saint George and is now the patron saint of kings instead). Edward is also featured in one of the first panels of the Bayeux Tapestry. Edward the Confessor sounds like a decent enough guy but Æthelred was apparently a bit rubbish. The family name on my mum's side is supposedly linked to him though. What weird ancestors to have if it's true. Don't know much about the name from my dad's side apart from it's Scottish/Celtic and supposed to have something to do with rival clans.

For more Random, head on over to the unmom!