Last November, after soccer season was over (*sigh*), my husband and I were desperately looking around for a way to channel our 7yo son’s boundless energy. Since it’d probably qualify as cruel and unusual punishment to hook him up to a treadmill and power the house with it, he and his dad enrolled in the local taekwondo studio (um, sorry, dojang) down the road.

He LOVES it. And, so, rather bemusedly, we have become a taekwondo family, with husband and son rushing off to the dojang two evenings a week, and Sir I. practicing kibons and showing off punches and kicks and strikes almost all the time.

We found this amazing video of the Korean National Taekwondo demo team. Apparently they travel around the world, breaking boards and showing off spectacular spinning kicks. While I wonder how useful some of these would be in an actual fighting situation, I admire the skill and athleticism on display here.

My husband peppers his prose with semi-colons. I can’t seem to live without em-dashes and parenthetical asides–must be the way I think. *grin*

How about you? What are your writing quirks?

There should be adult-sized swings in playgrounds. Even stodgy grown-ups like to fly sometimes, feel the wind in our hair and the lurch in our tummies as we arc and dip.

… opening up the refrigerator and finding a neat stack of empty snack bowls or a couple of trains (hey, it’s been hot. Even Thomas & friends need to stay cool!).

… taking away scissors from a certain little person who’s been snipping his own hair

… giving up the job of winding up the vacuum cleaner cord to someone who thinks it’s his prerogative

… and generally never having a dull moment.

Happy birthday, sweet sweet little Baron. You are finally as old as you’ve been saying you are for the past month.

But no, you don’t get to be 4 tomorrow, or 5 the day after.

I returned home from Colorado 3 am Monday morning, promptly crawled into bed and went to sleep. Since I had spent four days shut up in airports, airplanes and a hotel building, surrounded by crowds of people, I spent all afternoon yesterday in the yard, soaking up the sun, reading a Miles Vorkosigan book and keeping an eye on the kids.

My inner introvert has ceased her rocking and shaking in the corner and feels a lot better, thank you.

I’ve vanquished the massive RSS feed monster that grew in my absence.

The Baron added “Play Portal?” to his repertoire over the weekend.

After blithely telling people at the conference to find me on Facebook, I realized I had set my privacy setting so high they couldn’t. Oops.

We did school today. I swept the floor, made lunch, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher. I feel almost back to normal.

Further conference details to follow.

I’m off to the Pikes Peak Writers Conference tomorrow.

See you when I get back!

Just getting back into the whole writing thing again. I wrote a couple more thousand words on Secret Project, got Kai’s book past 80K and tinkered around some more with queries.

How’s it going on your end?

David pointed me to this trailer of Age of the Dragons, a rather loose adaptation of the classic Moby Dick in which the white whale has been replaced by a dragon. What do you think?

Goodbye, 2010 and hello, 2011! May this year be full of love, laughter and joy for you all.