What I Did On My Summer Vacation Blogfest!

Guess what. I signed up for another blogfest, this one hosted by Michael Di Gesu at In Time . . ., whose blog you should definitely hop over and check out because it's awesome.

The objective?

"I want you to write a 300-500 word composition to what YOU did on your Summer vacation. Now for those of you who haven't had a vacation in years, I understand, but you can still join in the fun and post on what projects you worked on this summer.
Pictures are a must! I had posted dozens of my pics for all of you to visit gorgeous Canada with me. Let's relax and have a bit of fun. It could be about a great BBQ you had on the Fourth of July. Any memorable moment that took place over the summer."

So here's what I did on my summer vacation:

(Though I don't really get a summer vacation, per se. I'm homeschooled year-round, always have been, which I actually find is rather fun--I'd get bored if I didn't have stuff assigned.)

1. I went to my first dance competition.

I've been to Nutcracker auditions in the past, but hadn't competed in something outside of the dance studio before. So it was new for me, and I had fun. There were an awful lot of people there--hundreds of numbers, hundreds of people (though a lot of dancers had multiple dances, so there were quite as many there might have been). Everyone I knew placed, but what I really got out of it was the experience of being at an event like that. :) The studio is going again next year, and then I will be doing a pointe solo (cue nervousness). Yes, I do mean pointe as in ballet with shiny pink shoes and ribbons.

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2. I started a new Science Fiction/Young Adult/Adventure novel.

I made a lot of progress during the summer. I'm still a few thousand words behind, but I plan on making that up this weekend and part of next week (if I manage to stick to the schedule), and then really moving into the home stretch during October.

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3. I started building a website.

Just a summer project I decided to start, mostly because I wanted to find out about the nuts and bolts behind websites and play around with graphics. (My dislike of certain browsers *ahem* has increased with the knowledge that some follow World Wide Web Consortium (W3) HTML/XHTML/CSS rules and others do not.) No, I still am not going to tell you what the website's about. Though I do plan on posting on it once it's up.

(SOURCE)

4. Worried about flooding.

We ended up with a flooded basement. It wasn't that bad comparatively, but the furnace (which is huge and has oil in it) got lifted up and wedged into a corner . . . so it wasn't an insignificant amount of water.

5. Other miscellaneous stuff:

To end on a positive note, I randomly won a Barnes & Noble gift card from my library for writing book reviews. I pounced the second I learned they only wanted you to review things--after all, I do it already. As I was writing this post, what I ordered was delivered by UPS. Hooray!

And that was pretty much my summer . . .

What happened at your end? Anything noteworthy occur?


-----The Golden Eagle

An Update: Poll Results, Writing, And Random Stuff

I haven't done one of these kinds of updates in a while. Here we go:

As for the poll "Do you think people will ever live someplace other than Earth?" I had up for July, here are the results, out of a total of 62 votes:

Yes--and I think it's important that we do (17 votes, 27%)
It's possible (28 votes, 45%)
No, not really (12 votes, 19%)
No--and I don't think we should (4 votes, 6%)
I don't know (1 vote, 1%)

Thank you for voting, to the readers who did--62 is the most votes a poll on my blog has ever gotten.

I hadn't expected so many of you to think that moving off of Earth was important. Personally, I agree with the majority--I do think it's possible (even likely) that humans will be living on other planets or in spacecraft or in orbit; and in the very, very long-term (should an asteroid hit Earth or there's some kind of other disaster which is not impossible), yes, moving off the planet might be a good idea. Someday. But regardless, should technology reach that point where we can move elsewhere, I hope to be around when we're traveling to new frontiers.

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I started a new novel on Monday.

It's going well so far, and I've got the plot for the story set out from beginning to end. I'm excited about the project, since it's in first person, present tense, something I haven't tried before. And in case you're wondering, it's SF, Young Adult, and the main character is a girl. The antagonist is a tyrant who took over the city in a coup de tat over twenty years ago and now aims to control the planet.

Yes, he's just a lovely fellow.

I want to finish this novel by November, so I can start something brand new for NaNoWriMo. (Hey, it's only three months away! Not too early to start planning for it . . . right? I have even come up with a potential idea for that story.)

(SOURCE)

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The grass is probably thanking the sky right now. It's been hot and dry and hot and sunny and also warm for the past week(s), and it's finally cloudy and rainy, so the water doesn't just run off without being absorbed.

(SOURCE)

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Well, at least the stock market went down only 500 points. It wasn't the enormous percentage drop that happened in 2008 . . . though it came pretty close. Thank you, Washington D. C., for stalling until the very date USA was set to default on its 14+ trillion dollar debt. It certainly helped the stability of things. Not.

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I have decided I really like Blogger's new format. It's faster and sleeker than the old one, and while I sort of wish there were scroll bars in the Post Editor, I do like that the edges shift as a part of your window does. The old one didn't go anywhere. I keep forgetting to add tags, though, since they're over to the right and not below anymore.

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So: what do you think of the idea of living on another planet, or in space? How's your writing going--have you got any new projects in the works? Is the economy getting better, or do you think we're going into a double-dip recession? What do you think of Blogger, now that it's been around for a while?


Finally, have you done anything exciting lately? :)


Hope you're all having a great weekend, bloggers!


-----The Golden Eagle