I’m going to regret insisting that the new garden fencing go up today after a very busy day at the day job. But for now I’m just exhausted, enjoying a Mike’s strawberry margarita and so flippin’ happy that the whole family chipped in.

Mister and Mini hauled paver stones, dug post holes, raked up and bagged trash and filled in holes the dogs had dug over the winter. Jason put a bunch of stuff out for junk day and help me put up the actual wire fencing (okay, he did most of that part). I raked, moved pavers, dug bricks and pavers out of the ground (previous owner put cheap concrete pavers over one huge section of the yard, but didn’t sand or anything under them, so they got grown over by a few inches), put in the posts and helped with the fencing bits.

I hope to build raised beds and as soon as I can get some assistance from a friend with a truck I’ll be building trellising to give my grapes more space to grow. Silly me I assumed 20 feet of fence space was plenty for two small grape vines. It’s not really.

But after having watched Astrid and Georgie delicately nibble tomatoes from my vines last summer and tear open my upside down planter and eat my strawberry plants over the winter (and Astrid, who was here longer ate my pumpkin plants twice last year and ate some jalapenos then promptly punished the plant for being way too hot by digging it up and shredding it) I knew a fence was going to be an absolute must if I wanted a garden this year. So now I have a nice, new, basic welded wire fence with a recycled gate (left behind by the previous owner. Sometimes it’s convenient to inherit junk during a move.)

Its been dog tested and not only did the whole family work on it…they didn’t complain either. So not bad for a day’s work. Now, to my heating pad and aspirin!

After years of being Zombie Review Editor at Monsterlibrarian prepping/survival is not something I’m unfamiliar with. But I can’t say it’s been something I’m educating myself on. Prepper’s Home Defense is just about the perfect place to start. The narrative is informative and light without becoming dry or overly paranoid. It’s a crash course in not just apocalypse survival but ordinary safety and disaster preparedness. Cobb writes in a conversational tone that assumes nothing of his audience’s expertise. He doesn’t talk down to the reader, seeks to include something new (even if it’s only a resource or idea) and maintains a level of easy readability. This isn’t the only survival manual you’ll ever need, but it is a great introductory volume with tons of ideas on where to go next. Highly recommended for collections and as a first go-to volume for beginners (whether just writers doing research or true budding survivalists).

The only regular day I have off I try to sneak in a nap on Mondays.

McDonalds claims both dog beds in my room.

So Astrid just takes my bed over.

After going without since September I finally have a new laptop. Blogging, typing up and editing stories and many other things are infinitely easier on the laptop. I’ve seen a number of people on Facebook asking if they should get a new laptop of just an ipad/tablet/whatever. allow me to ramble.

I love my tablet. I use the hell out of it for everything from silly games (and I’ not just talking Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds, I have three horse raising/training apps) to typing up reviews, email, music,  and general life organization. It’s mega useful because it fits in my purse and I can keep track of my books and movies so I don’t double buy, keep a current schedule and to do list, a digital checkbook and even my dogs’ shot records all on one thing. I have Uno with family mode if we’re at a restaurant and it’s taking forever for food to arrive. It’s use at tweeting and uploading pictures to my facebook is fantastic.

But some things on it just sucks. There are mobile version of websites that suck (like Facebook, which for some reason wouldn’t let me edit pictures/albums or Mapquest which wouldn’t let me get directions because I denied it the right to log my location, despite that I needed directions to help Jason get past three miles of a highway being closed while I was safe and relaxed at home in my jammies). There are somethings I’ve never really found out how to do on it, like making cover art for my self published books, editing the epubs or editing my stories (I can read them, but the app versions of open office and word won’t let me change the documents.) Then, there’s autocorrect. And finally, the truth is, love my tablet, but I type so much faster than it can keep up with that I went back to writing by hand. If I didn’t watch it the sentence would turn to complete gibberish unless I stopped every few words to make sure the tablet was keeping up. And hitting the wrong buttons on a touch screen can be so insanely irritating.

So I ABSOLUTELY advise writers still keep that laptop around.

My new one is an HP, she’s purple and her name is Beauty. I have this thing about naming my computers. The very first one was a Dell named Baby. When I told Jason I wanted to work toward being a professional writer he bought her for me to encourage me. I had her for nine years. She worked very well for me. In fact it was while I was transferring my files from her to an upgrade that she died. Seriously, she died right after I transferred the last family photo with my second laptop on my lap.

The second laptop was a Toshiba named Behemoth. She was a beautiful beast, 17 inches and maxed out on everything when I bought her. After no problems for about 4 years in September she started having power/overheating problems. It’s sad because we totally abused her. We got her running again, but in October she took a fatal cup of water to the keyboard. I still have her quite corpse and hope to frankenstein her back to usefulness.

In between I got a Cruz ereader I named Little B because she was a little bitch. Slow, grumpy about the internet, not licensed to use Android apps she looked slick and pretty, but was the back alley, cobbled together version of a tablet made by someone who had never actually used one before. And my current tablet (a real tablet), a Toshiba Thrive named Bug (as in Ladybug) who has been a totally awesome sidekick but can now let someone else take the hard work and go back to just being a sidekick.

Anyone else name their electronics?