Too Many Books

I'm home for lunch. It's such a treat to get to compose a blog post during the day. Oh, wait. I don't know what to write about. I need a topic. There are several things I could tell you about -- my new job, the amount of money I have spent in the last two weeks due to  not coming home for lunch, how cold it is in Kentucky today, and (in related news) about the snowstorm that we may or may not get tonight or tomorrow morning. So, there's plenty to choose from. Let's start with the new job -- I love it. I have really clicked with the staff, the customers are all friendly, and it's been an easy transition (with the expception of the 8:15 a.m. arrival.) However, I'm still really glad it's Friday. I'll be even happier when it's time to lock the bank doors at 6:05 tonight. I am looking forward to the weekend, and the possibility of being snowed-in is, which is quite appealing. I will watch movies and college basketball and read books a...

Now, first and foremost, let's just get one thing straight. Yes, this post is going to be rather churchy, but I'm not here to talk you into having more or less faith that you have today. This is not a sermon. There will be no altar call. There will be no cold and broken Hallelujah. That being said, I used to be a bona fide Jesus freak . My family started attending an Assemblies of God church when I was in middle school. (We're talking about a tongues-speaking , slain-in-the-spirit type of place. Think: charasmatic as the Pentecostals, but with shorter hair and in pants, occasionally.) (No snakes.) (Btw.) So, yes. In those days, Christ (and not caffeine) was my personal savior and I was supposed to "go...into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith blasted from my boombox, and in the family car we all sang along to our local Contemporary Christian radio station, WJIE. (Where...

I should be writing. I mean, like, actually working on my manuscript. I feel like such a fraud. There are the excuses -- I just started a new job, American Idol was on last night and is on again tonight, my husband is looking over my shoulder (when he isn't hogging the laptop.) Then, there is the reality: in 2010, nothing has changed. I still don't write every day. I can't even churn out 500 little words with daily regularity. Here we are, 1/12 of the way through a new year, and I haven't really accomplished much at all in the I-wanna-be-a-writer department. The old Amber would call herself predictable and let the disappointment fester. Ohh, yeah. That's so me. There I went again, not following through on my promises to myself. I'll never change. I suck at life. But, do you know what I just said to the old Amber? I said, Shut up, old Amber. Who cares? It doesn't matter what you haven't done. Just start doing it. Now. I don't of...

I got to be live and on the air on a local radio station today! (It was really exciting.) Here's what happened: When I left my house at 7:50 this morning there was maybe a quarter inch of snow on the ground. It was my first day at my new bank branch, and I needed to be there at 8:15. It's really only a ten minute drive at the most , but I allowed extra time like any responsible, ready-to-look-good new employee would and should. Well, the roads. were. horrible. Apparently, salt that was put down didn't stick because there wasn't really much snow on the ground for it to stick to. Falling temperatures caused flash freezing and black ice. When I pulled out of my neighborhood, vehicles were stopped in both directions -- a solid line of cars, like interstate rush hour -- on what is normally a two-lane highway with a very average amount of traffic. I take a right turn out of my neighborhood (as you well know, from the time I almost died pulling out several weeks ag...

It's probably better if I don't blog today. I mean, it's the night time now, so everyone has already posted and you've all read each other's entries and commented by now. What's the point? Do I even have anything to say? Plus, I should be balancing my checkbook and paying bills online. (And it's hard to concentrate because my husband keeps trying to talk to me.) (Leave me alone.) It's definitely been a Monday. Today was my last day of downtown-Louisville training, and tomorrow I start working in my new bank branch. My days of strutting around between skyscrapers and eating yummy sushi or Jimmy John's for lunch every day were short lived (and expensive.Thus, avoiding the balancing of the checkbook.) Things I won't miss: * A fourty-five minute commute * Paying $15.00 for parking (hopefully this will be reimbursed!) * The wind between the downtown buildings (which seems to gust and blow and have no concern for the time it takes me ...

Is it completely lame to take a nap at six p.m. on a Friday night? I'll be honest, crawling into my bed right now for a little shut-eye is more appealing than: eating dinner reading watching a movie writing drinking listening to music shopping watching television sex. I'm clearly still adjusting to my new work schedule. I haven't been this tired since that time the hubster and I went to bed at eight o'clock on a Saturday night. (You should have seen us the next morning -- up and six and saying, "Um, now what do we do?" We obviously don't normally wake up so early on a Sunday morning. I think we sat on the couch in a daze until the basketball game we wanted to watch actually started at noon. And we discovered breakfast, which is actually a morning meal. Who knew?) Oh, I did want to watch that Hope for Haiti telethon tonight. (Good thing, too, since it's going to be on like everysinglechannel there is.) I just checked and it starts at 8:0...

On Tuesday, I told you about how I had such an exciting weekend that you may have thought it was all for Thursday blog fodder. (It wasn't.) But the events of my Saturday, though spontaneous and without pretense, do contain some definite TMI material. After drinking at a dive bar, I headed over to a gal pal's house. After continuing to drink at my gal pal's house, it at some point became a good idea to talk about boobs. Perhaps the subject came up because the majority of the guests were guys. My gal pal's fiance was celebrating his birthday, afterall. So, boys party = boy topics. I guess. Anyway, my gal pal and I are both pretty well endowed. T to the I to the double D, remember? We decided a contest was in order, to determine whose are bigger. So, my friend and I went up to a spare bedroom with her sister and a kitchen scale. We got topless and stood with our backs against the wall while her sister conducted the weigh-in, one teat at a time. Due to ...

Good morning. (No, I'm lying. It's not a good morning. This morning seriously sucks.) (Don't mind me, that's the tired talking.) I am just not used to this new schedule yet. Before yesterday, I could not tell you the last time I left my house before 9:00 in the morning. I'm sure those of you with kids or other early morning responsibilities are singing Cry Me a River in Justin Timberlake's beautiful falsetto even as you read this. Which is fair, I guess. I mean, it's my fault you had babies. Just kidding, friends. Pausespice to make coffee so to summon the nice amber... And... here she is. So, yesterday morning was a bit easier than today. I guess there was the novelty of the darkness that greeted me when I rolled out of bed at 6:30 and rushed through a blog post. Hubs, who had gotten his shower Monday night, crawled back into bed for a few minutes, so I had the peace and quiet of the house, my coffee (all I had to do was push the start butto...

I mostly stayed offline yesterday. I think it was my first weekday without a post in months. Pardon me, as I spent the day recovering from a hangover that hung for the better part of the weekend. I had so much fun on Saturday, you would have thought I was looking for fodder for my next installment of TMI Thursday. (I wasn't. But, that sounds like a good excuse.) The friend I was with said, "You know, I don't think I've been drunk since New Years." "Neither have I!" I realized. She and I were feeling really proud of ourselves, and toasted to that -- she with her MGD 64 and me with my full-flavored Coors Lite. Then I pointed out that we weren't even three weeks into 2010. Not that much of an accomplishment. Still, bottoms up. Well. It's early, world. I'm off to my first day of a week-long bank training to prepare for my new job, which starts next Tuesday, seven little days from today. I have to get myself to downtown Louisville ...

In the past little while, I have received several blog awards. Blog awards make me feel warm and fuzzy inside and cause me to jump up and down and clap my hands together. Sweet Shandal gave me this happy award and now I am supposed to tell you ten things that make me happy. So, I will. 1. Peace and quiet when I get home from work, which I am so not experiencing at this moment. 2. Sleeping in until noon. Or, waking up earlier than that and not needing to rush around to go anywhere. 3. Breakfast for dinner. 4. Blog comments. (Seriously, I think it causes a spike in my seratonin.) 5. Wearing purple. 6. My niece, Carley, who is specialspice. 7. Ending things with spice because I jock busybeelauren . 8. icky love stuff. 9. karaoke. 10. water: of the ocean, the pool, and the hot tub variety. For the record, Pink Flipflops bestowed this award on me about a month ago, and I would like to publicly thank her now, though I did so at the time on a blog comment. I am also sup...

Shannon at Ramblings of a Wannabe Scribe  is hosting a poetry celebration day. (I'm a sucker for sonnets, a supporter of stanzas, and a glutton for punishment.) Misery loves company, so head over and sign up. the rough draft With petals and paintbrushes, we pick and paste pain, and soil a pure canvas with shallow shades of shame. Condolences ring out in firey reds, tears rush in watercolored blues. We attach our brushes to could-be beautiful hues. We trample on the sacred grounds of artistry when we carelessly slosh sponged up imagery on plastic pages or write weary/wasted watered-down words. We have forgotten the frailty of language. We bend; we break. We the writers, risk ruin, and find our treasure that way. about a boy god's thumbnail decorates the night sky like he's stamping his imprint onto earth, and barefoot, I drive familiar roads home, tuning the radio adjusting the air thinking of him and wondering if he saw god's thumbprint ...

What email program do you use at work? At the bank where I work now, we use Outlook . I've always found it easy to navigate, straight-forward, and user friendly. Next week, I start a new job with a different bank (my bank is actually merging into the new bank where I'm going to work ) and I'll be forced to make the move to Lotus Notes. I recently took a web-based training, which overviewed the application, and my reaction was as follows... Um, I think I might need to take a full-on college course, grad school style, in order to understand this madness. Seriously. I am not qualified to use this application.    I just printed out a "quick reference guide" to have at my fingertips next week. There is nothing quick about it. It is a bible: twenty-one pages devoted to general user knowledge. I don't know if it's just me (and my occasional aversion to change) but the program seems old-school, archaic. It reminds me of when my parents first...

Why is it that I'm the most creative right before I fall asleep? Maybe it's because I'm free of distractions -- no basketball games in the background, no ABC Bachelor drama to captivate me, no husband yammering in my ear (unless you count, at that moment in time, his snoring.) Yes, I lay awake and stare at the ceiling and the internal monologue/ narrative of my ms just flows through my thoughts as if it had been there all day, waiting for my undivided attention. I'll think of a phrase so beautiful, long to get out of bed to write it down, but stay where I am -- because if I get up I'll start writing and I'll never get any sleep. My husband will wake up and find me hovering over the laptop (or sitting on the floor of the bathroom with notebook paper) and gauntlet's will be thrown about what lack of sleep does for my overall sanity well being. Yes, I stay where I am, warm and full of words. I'll keep repeating things I particularly like -- sentences...

I am not a morning person. (Hell, I'm not even a morning blogger.) This morning was particularly bad, though. My stomach is all crampyspice. I didn't feel well all weekend -- sat around the house like an agoraphobic. My couch is all butt-indented. Luckily, I was able to take a half day off. Now I'm home sitting on my butt-indented couch, chillaxing. Ahh, the afternoon is mine. Aside from stirring my husband's chili every thirty minutes, I can do whateveriwant for the rest of the day. Perhaps I can start book number two of the one hundred I vowed to read in 2010. (Yeah, I'd better get a move on. I can't be taking ten days to read one book... but in my defense, THE LITTLE FRIEND was 555 pages long.) So, in case you're interested, here's my to-be-read list. These titles, recently purchased from Half Price Books, cost me a mere $24.90. Sue Miller's LOST IN THE FOREST Nick Hornby's HOW TO BE GOOD Kelly Corr...

I almost forgot to post about this writerly contest over at Shooting Stars . Follow the link to find out how to enter. There are some great prizes, including some first-five-page critiques. That's certainly the prize I'm hoping to win. There's only a small window of time left to enter, so scoot on over there. So, I've been hard at work on my manuscript and even considered posting my prologue here for feedback, but I thought it might be a bit premature/ irresponsible (you know, paranoia about getting it ripped off.) I wish I was ready for beta readers. I have the prologue, and the first three chapters, which are solid. Complete. Chapter four is half finished, but one character appears at the beginning of the chapter with no real introduction. He's mentioned in the prolgoue, but I need to clarify how he and Laurel meet, or at least set the stage for their friendship prior to chapter four. (Note to self: don't forget to do that.) A later chapte...

Yeah, winter sucks. I just commented on a blog and referred to snow as the white devil. I know, I don't have it too terribly bad. Here in Louisville, Kentucky we got three-ish inches of that powdery posion yesterday, and today we've had pretty constant flurry of activity. The main roads in town are better now, but the driving through my neighborhood is still akin to a death wish. Enter: me, yesterday, sliding through my subdivision at a respectable hour of the morning, so for to get to work on time. I was so proud of myself for a) pre-starting my car to let it get warm and toasty for me (and isn't it supposed to be good for the vehicle as well?) and for b) allowing extra time for my short commute to work. There I sat in my shiny snow-drenched little Pontiac Vibe -- she's cherry red, and all sportyspice. This is our first winter together, so all the way up the icy hills of my little piece of suburban Louisville I gave her a little pep talk that went, "Come...

A decade ago, I was minding my own business as a sophomore in college. At the time, I attended the University of Kentucky in Lexington. (That was my lone semester there, and the story I'm about to share made the semester a memorable one.) So. It was November -- in fact, it was the first Tuesday in November -- the day of the Presidential Election. My then-boyfriend then-lived in Louisville, and came over to Lex. for a visit. The day before, I had started to experience intense back pain. The walk from my Monday math class was a literal trek across campus, and I had to stop and take a break because I was in so much pain. I didn't know if I would make it back to my dorm room. My then-boyfriend arrived and we attended a folky concert Monday night. After, I laid in my bed with a heating pad beneath me and moaned and moaned. The next day, I felt only slightly better. The boyfriend and I decided to do something low-key, so we went to a movie. Halfway through th...

I got my first spammy-anonymous comments today. I am not happy about this. I have no interest in seeing Miley Cyrus nude. If the commenter left a link about seeing Ryan Reynolds in the buff -- well, that might have been a different story. Anywho, I hope this does not become a regular occurance on my blog. I post enough smut on my own, and don't need the from some nameless commenter in that arena. Nor do I need viruses to infiltrate my computer. Stay away, H1N1 of the internet! Moving on. Many of my followers are the writerly type, and I so enjoy your tips and advice and reading about your journeys. I wish I had the focus to blog about writing every day. But, it's six days into the new year and I am not happy with a word I have written in 2010. (Well, except for the no kissy blogfest scene. I definitely dig that.) I was stressing about the middle of the book -- it was sagging, it was lacking something -- so after struggling through a few scenes I decided to abando...

In less than two weeks, I start a new job. Usually, musings of amber murphy doesn't really go there. I tend to blog about my (intermittent) questionable behavior/ my writing woes/ my grandma/ procrastination. Occasionally, I do mention the bank, usually when I am in the mood to sucker punch either customers or coworkers in the face. (Sometimes I get a little pissy.) So, in two weeks I will go to work for a different bank. However, in about six weeks, the bank where I currently work will convert into to that same different bank, via a buy-out merger buy-out that has been in the works since October 2008. Change, it is a'blowin' in like wind. I don't much care for change (says the same gal who tried on colleges like they were shoes, attending three schools in four years.) (I graduated, and on time, thankyouverymuch.) And here's my resume -- settle in for a hell of a paragraph -- I have worked at a nineteen screen movie theatre, Old Navy, TJ Maxx, as a ...

Well. I know it's only been three days, but I think twenty ten is going swimmingly well so far. But, it was still a hell of a Monday. In honor of my Sweet Niblet, who is MIA for personal reasons (and whose blog handle has been hijacked!) I think it's time for yet another edition of Make Me Laugh Monday, where readers "who got jokes" leave their best funny in the comments section for the sole pupose of making me giggle. Go on: leave 'em. Sometimes there is talk of a prize being awarded to a winner. Now pardon me while I try to track down miss Tina Lynn Sandoval. Update: My Sweet Niblet's blog handle was not hijacked. I was just entering the address incorrectly. Sweet Niblet. Blogspot. Com is some random girl. Our lovely Niblet's is Her Name. Blogpot. Com, and is linked so you can go over and give her some love, as we try to will her back to the blogosphere using jedi mind tricks.

Cozy up and let the sexual tension in: it's no kiss blogfest . (Note: scene written exclusively for no-kissy blogfest, but may just find its way into my WIP.) This scene takes place when my main character, Laurel, returns home from college for her fall break. She arrives in town too late to attend the play at her former high school -- but she and her best friend Paul stop by to inquire about the plans for the cast party. Paul is still in high school and has the "in" with the artsy crowd, but didn't perform in the school play because of commitments to Community Theatre.  Laurel's ex-boyfriend directed the play, and he and Laurel haven't seen each other since she left for college a few months before.      She and Paul walked toward the auditorium well after the lights had come up, just as the stars of the show were leaving, their stage make-up unnatural looking now under the harsh flourscent...

I'm off to a quick start on my quest to read 100 books in twenty ten; eighty pages into Donna Tartt's THE LITTLE FRIEND, which (as I just tweeted) is as good as slow sex. If only I could get the new year to give me a swift kick in the writing pants. I'm struggling with the middle section of my WIP, bogged down with lack of subplot/ juvenile writing/ Donna Tartt making me feel inferior. I just wrote one sentence, went back and read the first and last lines of each chapter, and exited out of the document. Stellar progress. I've been catching up on my google reader this evening, and was inspired by  Melane's post over at Chasing the Dream. She's decided to write everysingle day in 2010. Obviously, this is a fantastic quest. And, Melane is smart and didn't give herself some ridiculously steep word count to meet each day. 500 little words, because sometimes that's all that happens for her. That is okay. There is nothing wrong with that. I have th...