How hot is too hot?

Alright, I have a question for all of you, as even my not unremarkable researching skills have failed me.

As you may know, I live in Texas, where summers are HOT. Like I hear northerners complaining about 90 degrees and I laugh at them.  It's not unusual to have the hottest days of the year reach over 110, and that's before the heat index adds another 5-10 degrees. Last year alone, we had over 100 days at over 100 degrees.

This doesn't usually bother me. My car doesn't even have air conditioning, and when my cars HAVE had it, I almost never used it. My motto is, "suck it up and roll down the windows."  We don't even turn the air conditioning on in our house until the daily highs are well over 80 degrees, and we turn it back off and open up the windows as soon as the temperature drops back below 78 (which is the lowest we ever run our A/C).

But now there's a fetus involved, and I'd very much like it to not die from heatstroke on the drive home from work.   My husband's truck has air conditioning, but it's a gas guzzler and I'd prefer not to use it unless it's necessary.

So my question to you is...HOW HOT IS TOO HOT??  There's no doubt that I'll take the gas-chugging truck to work on days when the high will be 105 degrees, but what about 95 degrees? 98?  I have a 1/2 hour commute (barring traffic, etc.), I'm inside the car so I'm out of direct sunlight, and I have the windows down while I cruise along at anywhere from 40-75 miles per hour.

The only information I found online about pregnant women and heat was to avoid hot showers, baths, and spas, which has surprisingly little to do with my daily commute.  I'm fairly used to the heat, but I don't want the baby to be missing an arm or half its face or something because I picked the wrong day to drive my gas-sipping Aveo to work instead of the air-conditioned boat of a truck.

So, what's the cutoff?  What is the "danger zone?"  Not what's comfy or convenient; I can live with a little discomfort in the face of such high gas prices, but what is the UNSAFE temperature for a pregnant woman to be driving in an un-air-conditioned car for about 1/2 an hour?

Any thoughts?

Happy time is Baby time!!

In case you missed the exciting news via Twitter & Facebook, I'm pregnant! YAAAY!!!  I'm about 5 weeks along (according to their weird calendar, anyway.  The baby was conceived 3 weeks ago, but that's not how they measure it; go figure), probably due in February.

We just told the Grandmas 9and everyone else) this weekend.  I made these crystal bracelets (for the girls) and keychains (for the boys) for each family member that said things like "Nana," Grandma," "Hello, my name is Uncle Bobby," etc. We have them their presents and waited for the gasps!  This will be the first grandbaby for everyone, so everyone is SUPER excited! My mom cried all day, told everyone we saw all about it, lol. 

The crazy thing is that my sister is also pregnant, just about as far along as I am, so we'll be racing to see who will REALLY give Nana the first grandchild.  I told her no having them on the same day, because we live over an hour apart and of course Mom can't be both places at once!  It'll be kind of nice, since I was beginning to despair that my kids would ever have any cousins, or if they did, they'd be so far apart in age that they wouldn't be interested in one another.

There sure does seem to be something in the water, though; my best friend is pregnant (5 months along), and one of my husband's best friends' wife is, too, also 5 weeks along. Craziness!

I;m going to try and stick to my low-carb diet for the most part.  not TOTALLY, of course; it wouldn't be safe for the baby for me to only eat 20 carbs a day, so I'm bumping it up to around 60-70 carbs a day, which is the "maintenance level" of the low-carb diet, and I'll try to get those mostly from fruits and veggies.  I won't lose any more weight, but I shouldn't gain too much, either.  Everything I've looked at online seems to back up my belief that this will be fine for the baby. After all, I can't imagine that I'll be denying my baby any real nutrition by abstaining from sugar, bread, and pasta.

My first prenatal visit will be July 2nd.  We're so excited!!

Fixing your Broken Smartphone

My husband dropped his EXTREMELY expensive, 1-month-old, Samsung Galaxy SII smartphone a couple of weeks ago.  And yes, it broke.  It was now a $600 brick, and we sure didn't have the money to replace it.  After waiting a few days to make sure it really was broken and not just "sick" or something (because androids can repair themselves, right? RIGHT? No? DANGIT!!), we started looking around for repair options.

Replacing it with a new phone of similar abilities was out of the question, and the 48 hours he'd been using one of our old phones that only makes phone calls and sends text messages had convinced him that he could likely die from technological starvation if he had to use it for another 2 years.  So we started poking around on the internet looking for anyone who might be able to repair smartphones.

Lo and behold, we stumbled across MobileTechVideos.  They gave us a quote that was $100 less than anywhere else, and they have some spiffy YouTube videos showing how they can "unbrick" your phone.  With no small amount of trepidation, we sent them my husband's broken phone, $200, and prayed.

About 2 weeks later, it came back to us in brand spankin' new condition, and my husband claims it works even better now than it did before he broke it.  The staff there was very helpful and communicative, and they assured us that it only took as long as it did because they didn't keep the necessary parts for that phone in stock and had to wait for it to arrive from Samsung.

We couldn't find any reviews of MobileTechVideos.com before we used them, so we were understandably nervous about sending our phone to them, but we did it, and they did a fantastic job.  So if you need your phone fixed, I highly recommend them.  They were quick to reply to our questions, cheaper than anyone else I'd found, and they did a really great job.  They repair many types of phones, and you can always email them to ask about yours.

Yay! I won a contest! :D

It's been a good writing news kinda week!

I found out last night that I won the Utica Writer's Club's critique contest! Yaaaay!  They made their decisions based on the query letter and first 250 words of the entrants' manuscripts.  I'm so excited that they chose mine as the winner in the fantasy category!

So now I've won a critique of the first 5 pages of my book by a published author.  I'm so excited! 

You can read all the winning entries in all 10 categories on Jordan Mierek's blog.  And feel free to comment on them; you all know how we aspiring authors love constructive criticism! 

And thank you so much, to Jordan and to the Utica Writer's Club!  This is the first writing contest I've won, and I'm SO excited! :D

Huzzahs to Wes Chu!!

Handstands all around for one of my fellow Anxious Appliances, Wes Chu, who just signed his *first* book deal with Angry Robot Books!  Wes, like myself, had his manuscript passed up to the angry robot overlord editors during last year's Open Door month. 

And, having beta-read his manuscript, "The Lives of Tao," I can assure you it's brilliant, so everyone should buy it immediately upon its release.

I insist you check out all the details at the Angry Robot Books website, because they've already said it better than I can.

Congrats, Wes! I can't wait to buy it! :D

HUZZAHS!

Ace/Roc Publishing just asked to read my full manuscript!  SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!!  Happy dances all over the internet!!  I'm SO EXCITED!! 

That is all. :)

Fairness for Struggling Students Act

Anyone else out there struggling under the Sisyphus-like burden of student loan debt?

Then check THIS OUT!!

I don't know what your situation might be, but mine is a result of my school telling me to borrow as much money as I could as often as I could--including living expenses--because I simply COULD NOT expect to work and ever graduate from their school.  Or so they told me, over and over and over again.

Should I have known better?  Yep.  Should I have ignored their constant nagging and the incredible pressure to borrow another $10k? You betcha. But I was 20 and stupid and I borrowed and borrowed and borrowed some more.  When I had doubts, they told me not to worry, because when I was done with school I was going to make so much money that I'd barely even feel those student loan payments.  They brought in the court reporters from the O.J. Simpson trials who went on and on about how they made over $1 million apiece.  They brought in closed captioners who worked for NBC and made HALF A MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR.  They brought in people who only worked 3 months a year, remotely, from their mansions in Hawaii or Alaska or France.  I was enthralled.  I believed them, and I borrowed more money.

What they didn't tell me is that court reporting is something that either you can do or you can't. Either you have it hardwired inside of you the ability to write at 250 words per minute, or you don't.  But nobody told me that until I was too deep in to just walk away.  They told me before I enrolled that the average graduation time is 2 years.

Five years later, when my money ran out at last, they told me that court reporting just wasn't for me, that I was one of those unlucky few who just couldn't do it, and that the time had come for me to quit. 

Horrified, in shock, and half-blinded with tears, I had to quit, because I'd exhausted both my federal and private student loans.

Unable to even THINK about paying off my nearly-6-figure-high student loan debt, I enrolled in my local community college and paid tuition out of pocket, and found out that none of the classes I'd taken transferred. Not even the normal ones, like English, Psychology, or Medical Terminology, because they were labeled as "English 1401- FOR COURT REPORTERS." "Psychology 2106 - FOR COURT REPORTERS," etc.  So I had to start all over.

All the while, my debt was (and still is) incurring interest at a rate that I can't think about without throwing up.  There was no hope.  You can't discharge student loans through bankruptcy and they never go away like bad credit card debts will after 7 years.  And even when I'm eventually done with my Master's degree in Library Science (probably still about 7 years away because I'm paying everything out of pocket and I can only afford 2 classes at a time), I can only look forward to making about $45-55k a year. My student loan debt will easily be three times that amount by then; probably more.

Yes, I was young and stupid and I should have known better, but in my defense, I was young and stupid and dozens of teachers and administrators knew that.  They took advantage of it, and they urged me to keep on borrowing for five years, and when I was  all dried out, they cast me aside.

But now there's a ray of hope on the horizon!!  There's a bill before Congress called the "Fairness for Struggling Students Act" that would allow students to discharge their student loans (at least the private ones) through bankruptcy! Is bankruptcy ideal?  Heck, no! But it would mean a fresh start for millions of students who had to borrow money to pay for degrees that they can't use or don't pay enough, because their families were too poor to pay for their college tuition out of pocket.

So please, please, please consider signing this petition to show your support for the Fairness for Struggling Students Act.

Puppy time!!

My blogging has shrieked to a halt lately, and I do apologize for that. It's been...oh, just a hellish couple of months, for the most part. My brother-in-law's girlfriend is a crazy person, and let's just leave it at that for now.

On the upside, I've lost over 30 pounds (thank you, Mr. Bacon), and it would have been so much more if I wasn't also on these damnable birth control pills (only a month and a half left on them, at least!).  My doctor says "they don't work that way," but when I'm consuming less than 10 carbs/1400 calories per day and walking 6 miles a day 6 days a week (burning almost 1000 calories a day) but gaining weight for 3 weeks out of the month, then losing 12 pounds in the 7 days I'm not on the hormone pills, I'm inclined to disagree with her.

Anyway, my husband has been joining me and the puppies on our walks for the last couple of weeks, and on Saturday we took a new path down one of the many country roads near our house.  On our way back, we passed a pasture with 3 horses in it, who were utterly fascinated with our dogs. It was the cutest, coolest thing I've ever seen!

 That's Punkin, who is always brave.  Went right up and sniffed them like she'd met a thousand horses.

And the little brown dog is Turtles, who put the "weenie" in "chiweenie."  It took him a few minutes to stop freaking out about the giant animals he thought wanted to eat him, but I was so proud of him for getting up the courage to get close to the horses!  Although he kept darting back and forth so fast that it was hard to get a good picture of him that wasn't all blurry, lol.

And that's David, petting one of the horses.

It was one of the coolest walks we've ever taken.  Next time we'll bring some carrots for the horses, too.  Yay, ponies! :D

HUZZAHS to Lexcade!!!

HUZZAHS to my dear friend Cate Peace, aka Lexcade, for making it to the quarter-finals in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest!  W00t!!! W00t!!! I'm so happy for her and proud of her!!  I beta-read this a long, long time ago, before it was as awesome as it is now, even, so I can assure you it's worth a read.

Everyone go read the first two chapters of her amazing, soon-to-be-award-winning sci-fi novel, Duality, on Amazon for FREE here:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007GEC0OC/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_alp_c-JApb1RP07NW

And don’t forget to “like” it and write a review.

Well, what are you waiting for?  It’s free, and it’s awesome.  Go; go now!  Be a part of ABNA by helping choose the winner!  Yaaaay!!

Updates and such

Has it really been over two weeks since I blogged? My apologies; I neglect you all shockingly.  Although, in my defense, I was totally oinking on self-hatred and cake, as Goblin's Humiliator so aptly suggests.  But, at long last, I have dragged myself out of the trench of disappointment, self-hatred, and cake I'd immersed myself in since my heartbreaking rejection letter, and I am now back on that querying horse.

So, updates. It’s been a crazy few weeks, that’s for true.  Our old roommates moved back in (huzzah!), I got a raise (DOUBLE HUZZAH!), my father-in-law popped in for a surprise visit, and I found out that I have PCOS, which has bestowed upon me both acne and insulin resistance (frowny face).  Which, in a way, is good.  I knew I didn't eat enough to be as overweight as I am, but you can't say that, because no one ever believes you.  But now I can, because a doctor told me so.  I was not overeating, at least not to the degree that my waistline would suggest.  It was my ovaries all along.  My poor, cyst-ridden, hateful ovaries, sending out their dirty little hormonal signals for my body to produce copious amounts of insulin and facial oils.

My doctor suggested I go on a low-carb diet, which I started last week and I LOOOOVE. The last time I went on it, I lost 60 pounds in 3 months and felt better than I had in years. Let me say that again. 60 pounds in 3 months. You read that right. The only reason I quit the diet last time was because it’s expensive. But, thankfully, now that I’ve gotten a raise, we can afford for me to do it again. I’ve been on it for about a week now, and I’ve already lost 5 pounds. It would be more, but I had to take that stupid glucose tolerance test earlier in the week, which threw my diet off for a couple of days. Ah, well.

Before you even ask:  It raises GOOD cholesterol, not bad, because without carbohydrates your body can’t hold on to saturated fats (in most cases; in a few instances it slightly raises bad cholesterol, but it’s completely overridden by how much it boosts good cholesterol). It’s also good for your triglycerides and lowers blood pressure, not to mention the staggering weight loss and, in some cases, the fact that it can almost eradicate Type 2 diabetes.

Yes, I do eat bacon and steak and eggs and cheese, but I also eat chicken and turkey and tons of vegetables. I eat broccoli, salad, cucumbers, mushrooms, green beans, asparagus, and/or black olives every day. I never eat so many veggies as I when I’m on the Atkins diet. The best part, though, is that I don’t have to starve myself or exercise like a demon in order to slowly (if I’m lucky) lose a piddling 1-2 pounds per week. I’m never hungry and even if I don’t work out, I still lose weight. Although I should work out. And I will. When it gets warmer outside.

As for cravings…I never much cared for bread and I can live without pasta, though I did enjoy potatoes. The one thing I REALLY miss is sugar, because I LOVE me some sweets. But at least there are some awesome sugar-free candies etc. out there to help satisfy my sweet tooth.

And, last but certainly not least, I got a partial request from an agent for Eyes of Stone! WOO-HOO and TRIPLE HUZZAH!!  I also sent a query to a publisher, although it was with my previous, less-awesome query letter. That older one was was ok, but I think the new one better represents the feel of the book.  I haven't hear back yet, of course, but we'll see.  Also, I learned that not everyone in QLH knows what the duck they’re talking about.

Alright. I didn’t mean for this post to degenerate into a post about dieting, but it happened anyway. I’m going to go eat some more meat and wait for my pants to get looser.

Have a great weekend!! :D