So I didn’t get a chance to put up a blog post yesterday because we lost our power in the nor’easter. It didn’t start out too badly, and I hoped we would escape the worst of it.
It started coming down heavy after noon.
My husband came home from work around 3:30. He started cooking a pizza a little after 4. Power went out 3 minutes after he put it in the oven. (He left it in the hot oven for a couple of hours and eventually deemed it cooked enough and ate it!)
The heavy snow took its toll on the trees, including ours. We are lucky the branch landed behind my husband’s car, leaving only one small scratch on a brake light.
We played some games by lantern light, read a little while, then crawled into bed a bit early. After my daughter fell asleep (after insisting she could NEVER fall asleep without her fan running for white noise), I poured hot water in the fish tank to bring the water temp back up to normal. Then I went to bed.
Around 2:30 AM something started beeping, and I was the only one who woke up, so I traipsed around the cold house with a flashlight until I found the culprit–the CO/natural gas alarm in the washroom, whose battery was running out. Replaced the battery and climbed back into bed.
3 AM the power came back on! Got up again, went downstairs to turn off the lights that were on and plug in my phone to charge. Went to my daughter’s room to turn on her salt lamp and her fan. Happy to see the heater in the fish tank was running. Dug my daughter’s head out from under the blankets so she could breathe. Went back to bed.
It was a long, chilly night. I am grateful to the power crews that got things back online so quickly. The kids will go back to school tomorrow, and things can get back to normal.
And that’s why I don’t have some pithy writing-related post ready for today!
November: Full Speed Ahead
This week I have back-to-back book gigs. The first is the New Jersey Association of School Librarians fall conference on Friday. I have a fondness for the NJASL conference—my very first book event when my book got published last year! I look forward to meeting many awesome librarians and chatting with them about books in Authors’ Alley.
The next day, Saturday, I travel to Elkins Park in Pennsylvania for a multi-author children’s book event. I have never been to Open Book bookstore before, but with 20+ authors expected, with readings and a panel, it sounds exciting. My first ever panel—eek! Hopefully I will not trip over my own tongue. Come on down and join the fun!
Then we have Thanksgiving, which is always a whirlwind in and of itself. Traveling, family visits, stuffing ourselves until we need to wear sweatpants…By the time everything is over, I need a vacation to recover from the holiday!
I will not get said vacation, though, because on November 30th I will again venture into Pennsylvania—this time at my high school alma mater as part of an Author’s Panel. Five of us (all female, all alumnae) will talk to the girls about how we got where we are and what it’s like being a female author today. I don’t know who the other authors are or what they write, but I am eager to find out.
Oh, and I am trying to get materials together to start querying one of my novels.
So that’s my November in a nutshell. How’s yours shaping up?
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