Where analytic and creative thought collide and all kinds of weird stuff can happen.

When I first started writing for a living, I made a lot of mistakes. One is the same one lots of rookies make. In fact, one of the telltale signs of a young writer is someone who starts an article, story, paper, etc. off by citing a definition. I’m sure you’ve seen it done. Heck, you may have even done it. It would go something like this.

Wikipedia (which, by the way, you should never use as a reference) defines “habitat” as “an ecological or environmental area that is inhabited by a particular species of animal, plant or other type of organism. It is the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the physical environment that surrounds (influences and is utilized by) a species population.”

That’s not to say you can’t use definitions in your work, you just don’t start off that way. It’s lazy. Uninspired. If that’s as exciting as your opening, which is really supposed to pull your reader in, gets, imagine how boring the rest of the thing will be.

I just thought I would share that little tidbit since it popped into my brain as I started to write this post. Which, by the way, has nothing to do with rules of writing, it has to do with observing animals in their natural habitat. Actually, it’s about the habitat of one particular animal.

Wanna guess which animal?

You’ll never guess, so I’ll just save you some time and pain and tell you.

That animal is me.

K Visiting Me in My Natural Habitat (aka OFFICE, ignore the wet head)

Yep, Hubby was in the spotlight yesterday. Now it’s my turn.

I have finally redecorated my office. There are still a few things left to do, like add more pictures to the walls, but the big stuff is finished.

Before, it was BLAND. Seriously. Everything was either white or off-white. It was quite depressing.

Not only was it lacking color, it was quite disorganized. I never completely unpacked stuff. There were boxes sitting around, and stacks of paper to be sorted. It actually looks rather neat in these before shots. Because I didn’t remember to capture before images until I had already started preparing to paint. It’s hard to paint with crap scattered all about the place.

Just trust me, it was bad. Completely uninspiring. I hated spending time in there. So, during my period of unemployment earlier this year, I decided to change things. I wanted to add COLOR. I wanted the room to be interesting.

Some people go for the chic office look. I was going for fun. I wanted COLOR.

And that’s what I got. When describing my paint scheme to a friend, she said, “That sounds like a child’s room.” It might even look like a child’s room. But that’s okay. I like it and that’s what matters, right? I mean, I spend an awful lot of time in here every day, I might as well like what surrounds me.

So, are you ready for the AFTER pictures?

It’s hard photographing an entire room, so you have to see it in pieces.

View from Door

View from Behind My Chair

View from Bathroom Door

I have to pause here and explain that my office and Hubby’s office share an adjoining bathroom. It’s quite convenient, but sort of limits how far one moves during any given day.

Looking from My Chair Toward Hall and Bathroom Doorways

A Peek into the Bathroom

Cloud-covered Ceiling (gives the room a more outdoorsy feel)

Even the Dogs Have a Place

And, yes, they use it all the time. Hubby says it looks like I said something like, “Okay, I have to put the dogs away now so I can go to work.” Because, really, they’re there pretty much all day long. We come into the room, I sit at my chair, they climb into their beds.

Dogs in Their Place

Miscellaneous Bits of Color

More Color

There's Even a Spot for Hubby!

Miscellaneous Bits of Color and Interestingness

Switchplate Cover

More Color (and rocks!)

Favorite New Sticker

I would show you more frog pictures (yes, I found my frogs!), but I do realize that not many folks appreciate frogs like I do. Take Hubby as an example. He doesn’t get the frog thing. Recently, I ordered the switchplate cover, crazy frog lady sticker, and window sticker (you can see that in the picture above with the “More Color” caption). When they arrived, Hubby, who gets the mail every day, saw the return address on the package and said, “Really? The Frog Store?” As in, “I cannot buh-lieve you are now shopping at The FROG Store.” That sort of conversation happens in my habitat frequently.

That’s it for the tour. I hope you like my new office as much as I do. If you don’t, that’s okay. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, no matter how wrong or silly that opinion may be.

Now I have to get to work in my nice, new office.

Last week, when trying to think of colorful stuff to take pictures of for the You Capture project, I REALLY wanted to create my own poster featuring “colorful” words to hang on my wall. Not colorful as in red, blue, green, etc., but colorful as in $%#@*&^!#*. But that wouldn’t have been very PC and probably would have actually offended some of my readers. So I quelled that particular urge.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And then I remembered Wordle.

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

That text was lifted right from the Wordle web site.

If you don’t have a big block of your own text to plop in, or aren’t feeling inspired enough to type out a bunch of random words, you can use the URL (aka address) of your favorite blog.

The first image below resulted when I entered http://www.toadmama.com.

Make your own Wordle word cloud.

So, once I did that, I had to try a custom block of text. I just HAD to.

It was like being alone in a room all by yourself with a little red button and sign that says, “Don’t push that button.”

If you are offended by colorful text, don’t click on either one of the two images below.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

It isn’t immature. It’s ART, people.

Immature would be going to sites like the Merriam-Webster online dictionary and typing in colorful words then hitting the little speaker button so you can hear the pronunciation.

What, you’ve never done that? You haven’t lived, my friend.

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary is my favorite online dictionary. It can actually be quite useful for real stuff like looking up the meaning and/or correct spelling of a word. And, yes, the pronunciation feature is helpful, too. Especially when you encounter words like “slough” that you just don’t use in everyday conversation.

I’ll never forget being on vacation in Oregon. Hubby was driving and Eric, who was around 10, was in the back seat. We were driving along the coast and I kept seeing signs for SLOUGH. I thought it was pronounced like SLOFF. So I said something to the effect of, “What’s with all these SLOFFS everywhere?” Eric piped up immediately and very excitedly with, “Where? In the trees?” I turned to look at him, saying, “What?” His face was plastered against the window looking at the trees as they flashed by. (Remember, Hubby was driving.) That’s when I realized Eric thought I said sloths.

I have no idea where sloths live, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t the Oregon coast.

Anyhow… if you have some time to kill, make your own Wordle word cloud. And if you post it to the public gallery to share with folks, be sure to send me the link(s). Colorful or not.

I woke up ungodly early this morning. Really. It was 5:15. I thought about rolling over and going back to sleep. I mean, the dogs were even still all sleeping. But I had to pee. Plus, I knew if I did go back to sleep, I probably wouldn’t wake back up until about 8:00 and then most of the morning would be GONE.

Isn’t it odd how the older you get, the more you hate to waste your mornings in bed?

Anyway, I got up.

First thing I noticed was that our thermometer appeared to be broken. It had been registering the same temperature since yesterday afternoon. Or so it seemed. Every time I looked at it, the darn thing said 31. Until I told Hubby about it. He looked and, of course, the thing said 32. Of course. It’s Monday. A rainy Monday at that.

At least I had some good coffee.

It wasn’t Maui Grown Coffee. That just happened to be my mug of choice this morning.

With my coffee, I had some yummy strawberries.

How is it that the strawberries I have purchased in December and January taste better than the strawberries purchased during the summer? That’s just wrong. They’re from California, too. I think. (I’ll check the label later and if I am wrong, I’ll let you know.)

That’s a very unflattering picture of Meg. It looks like something you’d see on some crazy paranormal show. Although, she was pissed. Either because I wouldn’t give her a bite of strawberry or because K was hogging my lap.

Whatever…

On another note, Amy, our middle child, thinks she found me the perfect frog.

Click on the image and you’ll get views from different angles. She’s even wearing assless leather chaps.

I have to admit, that’s pretty funny. But I have ditched the assless leather chaps for real riding gear. So she won’t work. But thanks for thinking of me, Amy!

And now, since it’s Monday, I have to get to work.

Ugh.