Last Week in Review

I have several days' worth of blog material saved up, so instead of writing a bunch of individual posts, I'm just going to drop a bunch of knowledge all at once.

First things first: nobody got to pinch Gemma on St. Patty's Day because she was very festively decked out.  (I too was wearing green; however, that did not deter her from pinching, biting, attacking me, etc.)

Second, we have a new addition at our house: a swing set!  Even though Gemma's not quite at the optimal age for maximum swing set enjoyment just yet, when we saw this toddler swing set with (free!) infant swing on sale at Toys R Us, we decided to go ahead and invest in our child's future.  She seems to like it so far.  I am loving it - it lets me get outside for a little bit each day.

Meanwhile, as Cy and Pops were putting the swing set together, I was taking an all-day continuing education class on digital photography at Trident Tech with my friend Renonna.  It was a pretty good class - I definitely learned a lot of things about my camera that I had found a bit overwhelming and confusing before.  After the class I read through some tutorials on Canon's website and ordered a few accessories for my camera.  Now if I can just find the time to actually go take some pictures...

This was my favorite picture that I took while doing "homework" for my class at lunchtime:

And finally, in other news, the list of quarterfinalists for the Amazon Breakthrough Award Contest was released today...and Norfanger Plantation was on it!  I was so convinced I wouldn't make it any further in the contest that I had actually forgotten that the list was even coming out today, and only found out because I received an automated email update.  At this point there are 500 quarterfinalists (250 general fiction & 250 YA) remaining, which will be whittled down to only 100 (50 & 50) on April 26.  The good news is that someone from Publishers Weekly will actually be reading my entire manuscript as  part of the next phase of the contest, so I will at least get some professional feedback on my novel if nothing else (and I am definitely not expecting to make it any further!).