A Little Catch Up

Still alive. Things are hectic in the Elliott house. I came home to this huge stack of notices and permission slips and today, I realized I’d forgotten what I’d volunteered for and what day was what. Agh! So, I sat down and wrote out the children’s schedules and you would not believe all the end of the year activities! Some of them require drop offs at 3:30 a.m. and pick-ups at 1:30 a.m. the next night. Another night, the drop off is 10 p.m. with a pick up at 5 a.m….

The school is trying to kill us — or maybe torture us through sleep deprivation.

In other news, I hope to have some pics from the conference soon. Had a blast! Ended up spending a couple of evenings with Jennifer Blake and the wonderful ladies of Romance Ink. Saturday night, we shared hilarious stories until after 1 a.m.

I got to sit with people from NY, Canada and Indiana. That is one of my favorite parts of the conference– meeting new people from different areas. We swapped local flavor stories and in the case of the editor from NY, she had asked her shepherd to take her for local food.

Guess what they had.

Lamb fries.

Let me say that again.

Lamb fries.

I’ve lived in OK a long, long time. I moved all over the country for a long time, but came back here twelve years ago. Was born here. I’ve never even seen them on a menu. I asked a few locals if they thought of lamb fries as authentic OK food and heard some prefer calf fries. Does one ball taste different from another? (Am I going to seriously regret typing that? (g) )

One man said there’s nothing better than to drop them in a vat of hot grease.

Oh man.

I’m sure my face resembled the hell going on in my stomach with those words. I’m also sure if I wasn’t still so exhausted from the conference, I could go into some incredible snark over this…

To me lamb fries do not represent Oklahoma. Maybe I’m not an authentic Oklahoman.

So, while sitting late at night gabbing with my writer’s group and the very fun, Jennifer Blake, we decided that the man who liked to drop lamb fries in hot grease should be forced to wear a speedo. This of course degenerated into titles of Nostalgia stories or Confession stories hence… “I Fried My Balls in a Speedo.” Of course, we were exhausted and well, there was wine, so the laughter was hard and loud. Incredibly fun.

I looked up lamb fries on the Net and found this page. For a chuckle, read the paragraph under the title. rocky mountain oysters and fries

Conferences are hectic and whenever you’re trying to find people, you can’t. I looked all over for the ladies from OKRWA after the banquet to see if they wanted to have some wine with us upstairs. I’m sure I was walking circles around them. Sorry I missed you guys that night. I did see Laura in line then someone moved me and I couldn’t find her again.

As for the contest, my novel, Dweller on the Threshold, took home 2nd place in the sci-fi/fantasy/horror category. (Yes, they’re all lumped into one in this contest.) I was pretty excited to get second after I heard the judge was into men’s fiction and my protagonist is definitely female.

I did write up my topic challenge while sitting in a couple of workshops but I have to type and polish. I planned to do that today, but my parents recently moved — down-sized from a 6000 sq ft house to 2500, so my mother was pushing items into my hands all afternoon. She did give me some beautiful flower arrangements, huge pottery pieces and some amber glass that belonged to my grandmother. I have a serious thing for amber.

So, since I’m sleepy and barely coherent, I won’t bore you guys any longer tonight. Hopefully, the Write Snark will be back to a full rumble within a day or so.