Okay, I’m cheating. This isn’t mine. But it is bizarre.

• Here’s a good (short) article I found about “The Clean Plate Club” that includes some interesting facts about when and why it started.
• Here’s the zucchini bread recipe I use (I omit the cinnamon and walnuts, and use wheat flour when I can)
• And speaking of food, the 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating are the best “diet” I’ve ever encountered.
• If you think small press signed limited are expensive, check out these high priced limited, $75,000 but they mixed the author’s blood into the paper pulp.
• 11 Blockbusters that are on record as losses. (And why you seriously need a savy agent/lawyer if you get into movies.)
• And Rot is now only $2.99 at The Merchant’s Keep. This version includes the interior artwork by Mechelle Sizemore

It’s been a rough few days here. My zucchinis are under attack from squash bugs, and I’m not sure if it’s too late to save them. The car wouldn’t start on my way home and it looks like our already tight budget will be strained more. Plus we’re still having work done, and as lovely as it all is, I’m worn out on it. Also, I discovered that pretty much all the stories I had out have be rejected and I lost the rejects in the wipe, so I feel like I’m a total waste writing wise.

On the good side of things the wasp nest in our backyard is almost taken care of, the car did start (and a neighbor showed up out of the blue at the store to help me with it, and changing the starter will be less expensive than what we thought it was–the timing belt, also less dangerous seeing as apparently if the timing on a Rio goes out while driving the pistons will punch through the intake valves and the whole engine is a bust. Nice to know that now, but again, no fear that the car will explode on me.) we have a new front door and the walls are all insulated (they’re working on the pipes under the house now, so hopefully we’ll have no more $300-400 energy bills in the winter and we might even get to turn on the central air for a change). and I did get three chapters of edits done, the kids’ rooms cleaned and got hang out time with them.

Honestly I’m having a hard time not focusing, to the point of clenching headaches and sour stomach, all the bad things; the lack of money, car problems, problems dealing with other people, the not having a bathroom for three weeks, the list of things that still need to be done to the house (and the lack of money to do them), feelings of personal shame/guilt/stress (you know, not exercising every day and not eating better, because I don’t have the money to buy my favorite good-for-me snacks, but it doesn’t matter because I did exercise and watch my portions and didn’t lose any weight, then I stopped and I lost five pounds. Yea gods the only way I’m going to get down to a standard deamed “healthy” weight is if I cut a limb off….you know.)

I swear it’s a coat I can’t take off right now. So why am I hear complaining? Because I’ve been planning a big analytical post on The Witching Hour by Ann Rice a real critique kind of piece, but I’m not sure I can pull it off right now without coming off as complainy. So I’m complaining because I can’t blog because I’d be complaining too much.

Yeah, it’s something like that. So I’m going to have a bath and hopefully a good rest and hopefully I’ll have a more entertaining blog for you tomorrow.

I’m blogging over at the Apex blog today about writers and living part of your life online.

So as it turned out the virus was gone, there were no malware programs on my drive, just an error left behind by it that was causing my computer to freeze up. I rolled the computer back, which improved thing somewhat, but I was still getting random freeze ups where the only remedy was to pull all power sources and reboot.

So I took drastic action, saved all my important stuff (pictures, reviews, manuscripts) and rolled the Beautiful Beast back to factory settings. I’ve not had a single problem since.

But the bad news is I lost all my saved mail, my saved links, and my favorite programs. I’m recovering them, one slow download at a time. So please bear with me. And if I owe you an email, please, please resend it.

Yesterday I got a virus while looking for a digital copy of the owners manual for our lawnmower (which broke down, however, it was fixed not long after. Loose wires.) I caught it right away, had to reboot to safe mode to get rid of it, but I’ve run Avast (2 times), AVG (2 times) and Trend Micro Housecall (once) and all scans came back clean.

The virus was a trojan downloader that claimed to be AV virus protection and kept prompting me to download crap (luckily I have a switch on my computer that turns off the modem, so nothing else was downloaded.

Except now I can only run the computer from safe mode with networking (vista). I can boot it into normal mode, but when I try to use a program it’ll either freeze up when trying to load it, or run for a bit then freeze trying to load something (a webpage, or saving a document or a picture, as I’ve been trying to go through the pictures I took last night.)

I’ve run CCleaner and its registry detector applications and cleared all that up. I’m at my wits end. Anyone else have a clue?

Some great ones to share this week

• Seth Godin blogs about Hoping and Dreaming vs Working Hard and “The Magic Lottery”
• Lilith Saintcrow blogs about how it’s always a fight to write a book (One of the things I’m facing now is this, the fact that though it gets familiar, the challenge of writing a book doesn’t get any easier)
• Here’s an interview with Biggest Loser contestant Kai Hibbard, where she talks about some of the unhealthy method behind these popular weight loss shows (and why they are VERY bad for you)
• A Summertime Guide to Avoiding Stings, bites and nuisances
• A blog detailing what it takes to immigrate into the country (and why people might choose to come illegally)
• Fish with hands discovered: Bad new– 9 of the 15 species are endangered
• Scams in publishing aren’t always straight forward–the tale of a very successful agent who vanished with her client’s money

My husband and I were handfasted, barefoot in our back yard (at the time). This past February we marked 11 years together. Neither of us is big on the sappy stuff, and while we spend a lot of time making each other laugh our normal jokes don’t seem appropriate. So I’ll just leave it at Happy Anniversary, my love.