Saturday, September 10, 2016

How'd I Do with My Summer To-Do List?

Well, Labor Day is almost a week ago already, so I guess that means summer is kinda over, huh?  Time to see how I did on my Summer To-Do List!

~ Finish reading Sixguns and Society by Will Wright  Check!  I reviewed it here.  TL;DR:  It's wonderful!



~ Read The Shadow on the Mesa by Jackson Gregory  Semi-Fail.  I started it, decided I didn't care for it, and donated it to the library.

~ Read Much Ado About Anne by Heather Vogel Frederick  Check!  I reviewed it here.

~ Read 6 other books from my TBR shelves  Semi-Fail.  I read 4, not 6:  Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart, Greenwillow by B. J. Chute, All the Stars in the Heavens by Adriana Trigiani, and I, Claudia by Charity Bishop.

~ Read 3 books from the library  Check!  In fact, I read 5, so that makes up for my TBR pile fail, in a way, right?  Anyway, the five I read were:  The Murder of Mary Russell by Laurie R. King, A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich, Unnatural Causes by P.D. James, The Last Kind Words Saloon by Larry McMurtry, and The Dragon Turn by Shane Peacock (review coming soon!).

~ Try a new pie recipe  Fail.  I did bake pie this summer, but not from a new recipe.

~ Make Lemon Blueberry Cake  Check!  I made it when my mom was visiting, and it was delicious.  But a LOT of work.  Not something to make on a whim.


~ Watch the Ioan Gruffudd version of Great Expectations  Fail.  Again!  Man, I need to just sit down and watch that thing already.

~ Re-watch and review Branded (1950)  Check.  My review is here.

~ Watch one of the Rudolph Valentino movies I own but haven't seen yet  Check.  I watched Beyond the Rocks (1922) for the first time, and reviewed it here.

~ Watch 5 other movies from my TBW shelves  Check!  In fact, I watched 6:  The Iron Mistress (1952), Ant-Man (2015), Appointment with Danger (1951), The Great Gatsby (1949), Meet the Robinsons (2007), and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939).  (And only half of those starred Alan Ladd :-o)

~ Find out if it's okay to build a tree house on our property.  If it is, build one like this.  Half-check.  I did the research and found that it is okay to build tree houses here IF you get your design approved by HOA board in advance.  And I never drew up plans and submitted them because I don't have it entirely worked out in my head yet and... yeah... we don't have a tree house.  Yet.

~ Meanwhile, make at least one of these  Check!  And the kids have used it quite a bit this summer.


~ Visit Colonial Williamsburg while the flowers are all pretty  Check!  We only stopped for lunch one afternoon, in May, but what we drifted through was quite pretty.  

~ Make myself a new skirt  Fail.  I got the fabric measured and cut, but haven't sewn it together yet.

~ Order my costume for the Star Trek convention -- and SOON  Check.  Obviously.



~ Get a significant amount of editing done on my YA western novel, Fickle Creek  Fail.  Terrible, awful fail.  I apologize most sincerely to all the dear characters in it that I have neglected.

~ Pick which novel to begin writing next  Check.  Except I ended up deciding to write another short story instead, a western reimagining of "Little Red Riding Hood."  I don't have a good title for it yet, but I do have a Pinterest board for it...

I hope to post an Autumn To-Do List soon!

How about you?  Did you have certain things you hoped to do/read/watch/eat/enjoy this summer?  Did you get them accomplished?

10 comments:

  1. Congrats on getting so much done! So what did you think of Ant-Man? I keep meaning to watch the Ioan Gruffudd Great Expectations too. It's my last hope of there being a film version of it in existence that's really good. :P

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    1. I thought Ant-Man was really funny and sweet. Liked it so well, I bought a copy.

      I've been wanting to see Ioan's GE since it came out like 20 years ago. I finally bought a used VHS copy a while back and just need to watch it already! Silly me.

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  2. I think you should definitely keep writing Western fairy tale retellings--it's a super neat concept and not a lot of people are doing it. Plus, you're good at it! :-)

    I got 35000 words of my novel written over the summer . . . which was my one main goal, to write as much of it as possible. So I'm happy :-)

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    1. Thanks, Jessica! It's an idea I've had for a while, and I'm excited about doing more.

      I envy your wordcount. Kudos! I have had the busiest summer I can remember and haven't written much at all. Nuts.

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  3. Very cool!

    Am I the only one who doesn't do to-dos and bucket lists? LOL!

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    1. DKoren, yes, you are the only one in the universe. What's wrong with you? :-D

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  4. I tagged you for the Power of Words tag! :)

    https://theoddlifeofegy.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-power-of-words-tag-spell-not.html

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  5. Wow! Your summer to-do lists resemble mine, only you seem to be getting your stuff done. ;-) Instead of books all those to-do items are usually movie watchings or blog articles on my list. Did you have any short stories published? I checked out your Pinterest board on your next story. Judi Dench is grandma I assume, but who could Alan Ladd represent? Surely not the wolf!

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    1. Of course Alan Ladd is not the wolf! Perish the thought! (Not that he wasn't good at playing bad guys...) He is the woodcutter. Fassbender is the wolf.

      My story "The Man on the Buckskin Horse" was published this summer in the "Five Magic Spindles" anthology, which is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The collection is all retellings of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, and mine is a western :-)

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