Betty Crocker's Rampage

Oh hell, the school's having a Bake Sale.

And my inner Betty Crocker said, "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

And my inner Betty Crocker said, "I'll bring stuff!"

And then my mouth opened, and the words came out, "sure, I'll donate".  Then I planned my mini-baking day with Nebalee.

We were asked to donate a dozen or two to the Bake Sale. But my inner Betty Crocker didn't care. Nope. Why even bother to warm up the ovens for just a couple dozen cookies?

This morning, bright and early, I picked Nebalee up, we hit the grocery store and loaded up on supplies then zoomed up the mountain to the lodge.  Because when we need serious baking done, only the Lodge kitchen will do.

I planned a couple of batches of magic window cookies and some chocolate Aztec cookies.  We got up there and dove right in.  The cookies kept coming and coming.  So much for a "mini" baking day.  Two double batches of magic window cookies and two double batches of chocolate Aztec cookies.

Compared to our usual baking weekend, our yield wasn't enormous, but we still cranked out dozens and dozens of cookies.  Something like fifteen dozen magic window cookies and twelve dozen Aztec cookies.

Those sonsabitches better sell.  That's all I've got to say.

(Huge thanks to Mom, Bill, and Nebalee for bailing my butt out.)

Uh-Oh, My "Girl" is Showing!

Friday was graduation for my students and I'm kind of getting sick of the whole ponytail for everything look, so I decided I was going to try to do something with my hair for the ceremony.  Only, I own no product and my hair never holds a curl, and I've been doing ponytails and an ocassional french braid as my hair "style" for years.  If I needed to get girled up, I just had Ashinator do it for me.

I went to YouTube and searched "easy hairstyles for long hair" and found some really cool and easy hairstyles, but doubted my ability to pull them off.  And then I ran across the waterfall braid...it's essentially a horizontal french braid where you drop one of the strands.  I took a deep breath and dove in.

The hardest part was dropping the strand I needed to and picking up a new one without incorporating it into one of the existing strands, but I managed.

Bad overhead self-pic,
but you can see the dropped strand

Not too bad for first time out.

I was pretty pleased with it, and it only took me about ten minutes once I got my fingers sorted out.  I hate the top of the back of my head, but next time, I'll probably part my hair so I don't end up grabbing from the wrong side.  I'll also probably attempt to throw some curls in the "falling" portion of the braid.

The downfall to this braid is that it's not hug-proof.  I get hugged a lot during graduations and someone went home with one of my bobby pins in their gown.  At least the other three pins held 'til after the ceremony.

If I can continue to find really easy - and I do mean really easy - hairstyles, I might continue to give them a try, because I'm fairly sick to death of my ponytail.  Since I love my long hair, though, and have to have it pulled back while in the lab, the ponytail seems to be the easiest way to go.  *shrugs*  Guess we'll see.

No Fires, and No Boogers

How 'bout just a random post?  Because I'm pretty sure I ran off Momma Fargo with my boogers posts - she don't like 'em.

And frankly, I'm sick of the f-i-r-e, though I did find out that one of my friends lost his house.

But we're not talking about fires or boogers.

Shit.

Now what are we going to talk about?

The sunset sure is pretty, the way the fading sunlight reflects off the smo...crap, that's f-word related and we're not talking about that.

We were joking at work today that we need to buy stock in Kleenex because we all have snot...we're not talking about that either...

Oh. My. God.

What is with this whole FIFTY SHADES OF GREY business?  You know, if y'all want to be reading porn, that's your business, but since when does an erotic novel become the subject of such conversation?  Holy shit - everyone and their sister is reading it, and it's all anyone can talk about.

I'm not against porn erotic novels, but for all that's Holy, keep that shit to yourself in the bedroom where it belongs.  I cannot believe how many women are proudly announcing it.  Have you no self-respect?  Stash it under the mattress next to your hubby's Penthouse.

Gah!

Fire Quote of the Day

Our previous two fires had been "accidental" fires caused by stupidity.  This fire occurred the day after a crazy lightning storm.  This morning, officials declared the cause "lightning".

In class, we were talking about the fire - just to get it out of the way so the students could focus.

Student: I hope they find the bastard who started this one!
Me: You mean Mother Nature?
Student:  Oops.

So. We're On Fire. Again.

Not too much to say about our third fire in approximately four weeks, other than it's huge.

20,000+ acres.

Zero percent contained.

Yeah.

Sucks.

Here's more information on it.

It's about 15 miles due west of us, but looks a lot closer.  One of my co-workers received a mandatory evacutation order about two hours ago.  We're safe from the fire, but rapidly getting sick of breathing smoke and ash.

Elbutts would be appreciated for the firefighters and pilots helping to fight the fire.

Betty Crocker's Chocolate Flavored Boogs

The other day I wrote about my brown boogers and how it meant that I'd been outside "doing stuff" and brown boogs are a good thing.

Wednesday's brown boogs are a little different.  Yes, I went out on a ride with Mom and, yes, I might have gotten a few brown boogs from the trail, but they couldn't compare to the ones I got from making cookies.

Yes, you read that right.  I got me some brown boogers from making cookies.

I made three double batches of Chocolate Aztec cookies and while standing over the KitchenAid, slowly adding the dry ingredients to the wet I realized I was inhaling the cocoa dust.  Bill and I were joking about it, and as often happens when we're bantering, it got out-of-hand, which is how we came up with chocolate-flavored boogs.

No, I did not take a picture.  Nor did I attempt to get a sample to taste to see if they were actually chocolate-flavored, but one could reasonably assume that they would be.

The plus side is that we ended up with a whole shit-ton of cookies (we made extra just in case, 'cause no one wants to run out of those babies).

The down side? Allie-bird, my step-dog, found them on the table while RCC and I were out and ate an entire gallon-sized zip-lock bag of them.  There were three dozen in the bag that I'd saved just for us, since the rest were already spoken for.  We found a two-inch square of the zip-lock.  That's all that was left.  I guess we were lucky Allie hasn't gotten sick from eating all of that cocoa and cayenne, but we were not counting ourselves lucky Wednesday night when we wanted some.

Camp NaNoWriMo

...Because writing 50,000 words in November just isn't crazy enough, I decided at the last minute to join Camp NaNoWriMo.  Camp NaNo is like "NaNo Lite" - still 50,000 words, but much less pressure.

I figured it would be a good time for me to finish up edits on HUNTED LYON, and then I decided that I've only got until the end of June to get a book to the copy editor that I won back at the Thank Goodness It's Over (TGIO) party after NaNo last year, so I switched my focus to my book about my trail rides.  Still don't have a name for it.  I was going to go with TALES FROM THE TRAIL, but I want it to be distinctly different from my blog, even though a lot of the stories have appeared on the blog.

Camp NaNo started on June 1st and I've written zero qualifying words, but I have gotten the new book organized and polished up.  I have just a few more stories to add to it, which I hope will be done by the end of the week, and then off to the copy editor it goes.  As soon as I settle on a title, RCC will do my cover art for me - he does amazing book covers.

I've decided to self-publish in e-format this yet-to-be-named book.  I'm not seeking fame or fortune with it; I wrote it purely for fun and hope to share my stories with people who will appreciate them.  Trail riding stories definitely have a niche market that is fairly small compared to all of the readers out there, so I can't see pitching this book to an agent or publisher.

I've talked to Tara about e-pubbing, which she's switched to exclusively and she gave me some tips on getting the text formatted and will help me navigate publishing on Smashwords, Nook and Kindle.  If everything works out the way I want it to, I'm hoping to have it for sale by the end of August.

A small part of me wants to have "real" copies printed for sale, too, but that might be cost prohibitive. I'll have to look at how much the finished product is going to cost before I decide to have some printed up.  I could probably talk Mom into carrying a small inventory at the lodge and possibly can talk Compass into carrying some at the livery.  I don't know, one decision at a time. Even though I don't care about fame or fortune with my book, I don't want to go into the poor house either!  I spent enough time there and I don't want to go back.  Breaking even would be nice.

Any ideas for titles?  The book is primarily about my experiences as a wrangler, with some stories of horses who stand out in my mind thrown in.