Waaay back when, I started a story dedicated to Juno Magic. I only had a few chapters done when it was published in her LJ Fangirls group. It's finished and posted.

Each chapter is one thousand words in honor of Juno's 251 chapter masterpiece The Apprentice and the Necromancer"

For Juno Magic, here is Afternoons at St. Mungo's.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8968613/1/

After a long hiatus (also known as a dry spell), I put up a new story at FF.net. It's a companion piece to "A Few Thoughts on Turning Thirty" that tells how Hermione saved Snape's life and where it went from there. The new story is "A Few Thoughts on Turning Fifty", which is about how Snape saved Hermione's life and where it went from there.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8964844/1/

When my sister died, it pretty much took the heart out of me for writing. Maybe that's finally getting better.

This year, I took an assortment of gift cards, added birthday and Christmas money to it, plus some on top of that and bought a new notebook computer, printer, and Microsoft office. This is the first time in forever that all of the parts are compatible. Now, I'm learning my way around Windows 8, which isn't too bad once you get past the start screen to things that you recognize. I just got the new Lenova notebook computer (now named The Professor) back from having the data from the old one transferred.

For the last week and a half, I've been using my seven year old Dell notebook. On New Years, I wanted to do the purse dump, so I took a couple pictures, downloaded the photos and tried to get it to post here. Nope. Not one bit of cooperation.

I'm going to settle back with my Windows 8 for Dummies manual and learn a few things. Like how to download pictures from my camera.

Oh, I really want to learn to use Evernote. That looks useful!

What a lousy armageddon. I was hoping that the least it would do is zero out my credit card balance.

One of the nice things about living in a small town is being able to park, go vote, and be done in ten minutes.

I'm thinking positive thoughts and lighting a candle for the safety of friends on the east coast.

Thanks to Draco of the Perseus and Draco fame, a link was posted on another site that showed a marvelous specialty terrarium. It was all done up as a cemetery. Of course, with my fascination with cemeteries, I had to have one. They didn't have any more of the one I really liked, so I made my own. I now have a cemeterium.




Everything except the jar, pebbles, and soil were ordered on line. Living in a rural area does limit ones access to tiny tombstones.



In the center is a ghost, because no cemetery is complete without one. Likewise, we have a few cemetery cats.



I'm now looking for an owl of suitable size and maybe a Santa to add for Christmas.

As I rapidly approach my 59th year on this earth, I am endeavoring to explore aspects of technology that heretofore have left me behind. Among other things, I still don't know how to text, even though I have a phone that is capable of it.

I decided to buy a tablet. I wanted something small enough to fit in my big honkin' purse and I want to be able to use it during work meetings to take notes. That's not asking too much, is it? So, I asked my seventeen year old great nephew for his recommendation. I figure that individuals of his generation will know more about it than I would. He suggested that since Aunt Barb is on a budget, try the Samsung Galaxy Tab in the seven inch size. He said it is less expensive than the Ipad, versatile, and highly intuitive to use.

My first mistake was asking advice from the 17 year old great nephew who wants to major in engineering instead of the 24 year old nephew who majored in sociology.

If this is highly intuitive to use, they must have meant the psychic from my team, because I am finding nothing intuitive about this and cannot even locate a meaningful HELP function.

*grumble, grumble*

Have just ordered "How to Do Everything" book for this thing. I will not be defeated by another piece of technology. I am beginning to understand why my mother refuses to learn how to operate the dishwasher or the DVD player.