Belated Happy Turkey-Day!

Hey everyone! I just wanted to take a minute out of what I'm assuming is a busy Black Friday to share some pictures of our Thanksgiving meal! (pictures of food on the internet, what? Is that a thing?)

Let me give you a brief over-view of the menu:

• Two different kinds of salad
• Salmon patties 
• Two different kinds of wine (1 homemade)
• Split-pea soup
• Homemade bread
• Turkey (of course)
• Gravy
• Stuffing
• Sweet potato casserole
• Cranberry sauce
• Roasted white potatoes
• Honey cupcakes
• Ginger-apple cake
• Chocolate bumpy cake
• Pumpkin pie

A feast I tell you! We did it all kind-of pot-luck style, where everyone brought something. And by everything, I mean the woman. It's not a sexist thing, but the men in our family just don't cook for whatever reason, although my Father-in-Law did bring us homemade wine!

And now for some pictures:

Yours truly, putting the finishing touches on my bird.

And it was a beautiful bird, if I do say so myself.

My family and I usually head out to my aunt's house for Thanksgiving, so this was actually only the second time I've ever had to put the Thanksgiving meal together. I think the turkey came out pretty damned good! I was really proud of myself and what I was able to accomplish. Would I do it again? In a heart-beat. It was fun, and the turkey was actually easy (and tasty!).

And these are just the leftovers!

Okay, so I know that Thanksgiving isn't just about food, so I want to take a minute to talk about all of the things that I'm thankful for this year.

• I'm thankful for my job.
• I work in am amazing library, where they treat the staff like family. My coworkers are fun and amazing people, and my boss is one of the sweetest people I know.
• I'm thankful for my family.
• My parents and In-Laws both live about 15 minutes away from us (okay, 20 with traffic), and I love that we're close enough to pop over whenever we want and spend time with our families.
• I'm thankful for my education.
• I'm working on my Master's in Library and Information Science, and I'm just about done with my second semester. That's 1/3 of the way!
• I'm thankful for my health.
• While I'm not always the healthiest person (I could eat less and exercise more), I don't have any big health issues, and that's a blessing.
• I'm thankful for a great place to live.
• Our apartment might not be much (though we're slowly improving it), but it's ours, and I love it.

So that's it for right now. How did you guys celebrate Thanksgiving? And if you don't celebrate, did you do anything fun/cool on Thursday? What are you thankful for this year? 
Stay tuned for another post in the next few days, I'm going to be talking about the end of NaNoWriMo, and my plans for next year (yes, I plan ahead. no, I don't always stick to those plans), and of course, what I learned from NaNo this year and what I love about the event!
Also, look for a new Librarian's Corner next month (on-time, I hope), and some year-end recaps!

Happy Friday, and enjoy your leftovers, I know I will!

Librarian's Corner: Preacher

Preacher

by: Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon 

We're doing things a little bit differently on this month's Librarian's Corner. Normally, I like to spend a while telling you about a book that I recently read and enjoyed. This month though, I'm going to be talking about an entire series!
Now for those of you who don't know, I work in a library (gasp, really?), and my library has an amazing collection of graphic novels. One of those (or really, 9 of them, this is a series, remember) is Preacher. Now, don't go jumping to conclusion, this isn't a religious comic. Well, I guess it is, but it's not that kind of religious comic.

Preacher is about the Reverend Jessie Custer, who's starting to become disillusioned with his position (and his flock) when something... supernatural happens. Before he knows it Jessie, his girlfriend Tulip and their friend Cassidy (who just happens to be a vampire) are on a mission to find God (who's missing) and hold him accountable for the state in which He's left humanity. So yeah, I guess it is about religion, but I told you, not in that way. Along the way they run into a whole cast of characters who want to stop Jessie. From the Saint of Killers (who's mission is to collect the souls of anyone who dies a violent death) to an organization called The Grail (bent on bringing about Armageddon, for the good of humanity, of course), and even an unfortunate young man who goes by the moniker Arseface. 
 
I picked up Preacher: Gone to Texas last November without a single clue what it was about, because I had heard that one of the main characters was a vampire. I'm a total sucker for vampires and will read just about anything that has 'em. I ran to the library to see if we had a copy, and was thrilled to discover that we actually had the whole series! I grabbed Gone to Texas, and started reading. It took me a year to work my way through the series. Partially because I knew that there were only 9 books (technically "trade paperbacks" collecting issues 1-66 of the comic books), and I wanted to space them out nicely.

I love the series, and once I got into the last few books, I couldn't help myself. I was picking up one every few days and powering through them. I just had to know what was going to happen to these characters I had grown to love (and hate, I hated some of the by the end). Who would I recommend this story to? Anyone who has questions about God. No, seriously, this isn't a series for those who might be offended by some slight (haha!) blaspheming. And before I go any further into my recommendations, I should mention that this series is for mature readers only. Seriously, I don't like to tell kids not to read things, but this really isn't for the littles, grown-ups only please.

So, to summarize: Preacher is about a gun-toating hard drinking, Texas preacher named Jessie Custer, who is on a mission to find God. He teams up with his tough-as-nails girlfriend Tulip and an alcoholic fun-loving, Irish vampire names Cassidy and they travel across the country (and to France, that one time) to find God and hold Him accountable for abandoning humanity. Sh*ts about to get real here folks. So if you like sharp-shooting Texas cowboys, and hard-drinking Irish vampires, and chicks who are not about to take cr*p from anyone, then Preacher might be the series for you. Plus, there are lots of pretty pictures!


That about wraps things up for this month's Librarian's Corner. Sorry for the 2-day delay. I meant to have this post up by the 22nd, at the latest, but... I've mentioned that I work in a library, and sadly, one of my co-workers passed away yesterday. She was an integral part of our tech-services department, and will be dearly missed. 
Anyway, thanks for being patient and sticking with me. I promise that December's Librarian's Corner will be more prompt! Speaking of, I'm always looking for suggestions, so if you have anything you'd like me to read and talk about, let me know! You can leave a message here in the comments! And, if you've read/want to talk about Preacher, leave a comment! We'll have a discussion, it'll be fun, I promise! So that's it for now folks. See you in December!

Stay tuned! 

NaNoWriMo 2014

In case you have been living under a rock (or another similarly rock-like object), today is November 1st! Yay! So what? you say. November 1st, big deal. you add sarcastically. Yes big deal, for November 1st marks the beginning of

NaNoWriMo

What's that? You don't know what NaNoWriMo is? Oh you poor soul, let me educate you. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Every November tens of thousands (possibly millions) of people around the world (yes, I know I said National, but stick with me here, okay?) gather together to write a novel in one month. For the sake of the event a novel is defined as 50,000 words of a new and original story. And no, it doesn't actually have to be a novel! You can write five 10,000 word short stories that all focus on a similar theme, or a 50,000 word memoir about your life in the Philippines or you can just go ahead and be a NaNo Rebel!

You might think that it's impossible to write 50,000 words in just 30 days, but it is possible. I've done it! Tens of thousands of others have done it too! You can do it! All you have to do is commit to writing 1,667 words a day. And really, that's not a lot. It's only about 2-3 pages, depending on your writing software and your font size. A few pages, I bet you have a few pages of a novel sitting around in your head, just waiting to be put down on screen, or paper!

So how do you do it? The first step is to sign up! Head on over to www.nanowrimo.org and sign up for an account today. It's 100% free, and I promise you won't regret it. Then you can go ahead and start writing! Today is Day 1, and there's plenty of time left to write. Grab a snack (and some caffeine, trust me on this one, you're going to want to caffeinate), and get to writing. Open up Word, or your notebook and start putting words down. And don't worry, it doesn't have to be any good. We're writing novels in 30 days folks, but no one said anything about writing good novels. Trust me, just get it all down, and you can spent December, January and February editing. Oh, that's another thing, your Inner Editor is going to want to pipe up and make changes. Before you start writing, grab some rope and tie him up, okay? You're on your own for this one!

I don't want to bore you with a lot of text, and besides, you've got some writing to do, so I'm going to let you get to it. Go sign up for an account, and add me as a friend if you'd like! Writing is easier with buddies! (I'm CarynSKA on the site too) There are all kinds of local writing events that you can track down and participate in, and if there's nothing close to you, there are WordSprints and virtual write-ins on twitter (follow @NaNoWriMo, @NaNoWordSprints and check out the hash-tag #amwriting for more goodness).

So that's it! Go write! Have fun and give in to 30 days of literary abandon! I'm going to add a word-count widget to the site for the rest of November, so you guys can check in on my progress, and hassle me if I fall too far behind. After all, what are friends for?

Happy Writing and remember: 1,667 words per day, and you'll hit 50K on November 30th!