Day 319 Nightly Roundup

Hope you all had a lovely holiday weekend. I was happy to take a complete four day break. Today I was practicing tomorrow's presentation for the mentor group when Greg announced with heartfelt enthusiasm, "You've really come a long way with this business idea!" That was nice to hear and it is amazing what 46 days (365 to 319) can accomplish. I'm wishing all of you milestones as well and would love to hear on day 300 (19 days from now) any progress that you've seen.

Today's 1o goal round-up.

Marriage - check.

Parenting - Got the kids a $6 guitar at a thrift store today and we all sang (off key) a number of kids songs, between an enormous number of angry jealous bouts about who was going to hold the instrument......Yin and Yang;-)

Business - Practiced tomorrow's presentation to the mirror, to Greg, to my five year old (who didn't make it the whole 10 minutes) and in the shower.

Writing - I had to go in for jury selection today. I wasn't chosen but had quite a bit of down time and continued to read the book about creating characters from Orson Scott Card. It's quite an endeavor and seems almost impossibly difficult. Then tonight, when I was walking the dogs with my friend she mentioned an author named Stephanie Meyer who wrote a series called Twilight. It was an intriguing story, so I googled her and found her personal tale. Apparently she didn't read a lot of character development books;-).

Stephenie Meyer's life changed dramatically on June 2, 2003. The
stay-at-home mother of three young sons woke up from a dream featuring
seemingly real characters that she could not get out of her head.
"Though I had a million things to do, I stayed in bed, thinking about the dream.
Unwillingly, I eventually got up and did the immediate necessities, and then
put everything that I possibly could on the back burner and sat down at the
computer to write—something I hadn't done in so long that I wondered why I
was bothering."
Meyer invented the plot during the day through swim lessons and potty training, and wrote it out late at night when the house was quiet. Three months later she finished her first novel, Twilight. With encouragement from her older sister (the only other person who knew she had written a book), Meyer submitted her manuscript to various literary agencies. Twilight was picked out of a slush pile at Writer's House and
eventually made its way to the publishing company Little, Brown where everyone fell immediately in love with the gripping, star-crossed lovers.


Garden - Potted up about a dozen hyacinth bulbs for winter bloom for the house and for gifts.

Spirit/catchall - Lovely, albeit short chat with a good friend.

Health - Walk around block will have to do.

FI - Parked about six blocks from the courthouse to get free parking, and got some exercise to boot.

House - My mini- Christmas village is now all lit up in the bay window. It dates back to before I was married, when Mom and I shopped all the Walgreens in downtown Chicago to collect the set and then dragged them home on a train on a FREEZING winter shopping trip that was our only one to date in the windy city so it has good memories.

Bus. Vocab. -Focus group, asking price, factors of production, Committee on Uniform Securities Identification Procedures.