I See What You Meme

As promised, I am bringing you a sneak peek excerpt from my forthcoming book, Four Seasons for Charlotte . The book will be available May 15th. You can currently pre-order at Amazon and Barnes and Noble . You can also add the book to your Goodreads queue ! Stay tuned for book release party info! This is an excerpt from Chapter 10, titled "Bringing Up Baby". I'm including the very beginning and very end of the chapter so you can get some context. Believe it or not, I reach a startling epiphany around....poop.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen.  You read that correctly.  Poop.  Here we go... Before Charlotte was born, well-meaning parents and friends kept repeating the same tired mantra, “You know, after your baby is born, your life is never going to be the same.” Roger and I both thought this was one of the most ridiculous things anyone could say to us. Wasn’t this a given? Who, in their right mind, had any idea that after a baby entered your life it would continue to be

While strolling ( not  trolling) through some of my favorite blogs, I found a fun new meme on Avitable's website.  It seems he got the idea from The Verdant Dude . The gist of the meme is to put each letter of the alphabet into your browser and see what website comes up. If you're working in Chrome or Firefox, you will get a pretty accurate collection of your most frequently visited websites.  As I type this, I haven't even tried it yet so I have no idea  what is going to come up. I promise to share my results just as I find them. Drum roll please... A - The official ABC website .  I will admit that I have been catching up on Desperate Housewives lately. How is it all going to end? B - The CJSTUF blog  (since the official web address is blog.cjstuf.org) C - The CJSTUF website . No surprise there.   D -Google Docs.  I use it a lot for work.  E -My Eagle Rare Life entry . All that daily voting certainly paid off! F -There's this thing called Face

This was quite a weekend! First, Roger and I competed in our first "official" Comedy Sportz tournament. If you follow our CJSTUF blog, you may remember that back in November, we joined forces with Comedy Sportz Richmond and Richmond Mom for a CJSTUF fundraiser .  We had so much fun that we ended up auditioning for the troop in January and we got in! I will have to share more about the program and what we do in another post, but let's just say we get to laugh a lot, and that's a good thing! Our Story Corps interview area On Saturday morning, Roger and I met at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden for a very special event. We were invited to participate in a Story Corps interview promoting the garden. About a month ago, the folks at Lewis Ginter made a call for personal stories that could be used for a special Story Corps promotion. They wanted to know how the garden has made an impact on families in the community.  Roger and I submitted a story about our experiences

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green My rating: 5 of 5 stars I tread lightly when venturing into "terminal disease" territory when it comes to books, movies , or TV shows. I approach the work (regardless of the medium) with more than a bit of caution. I don't want something that will be schmaltzy or emotionally manipulative. I don't want anything that shies away from the truth. More importantly, I'm worried that the story will resonate so clearly, it will upset me emotionally . With all of this in mind, I dug in to The Fault in our Stars with some degree of cautious optimism. I had heard Scott Simon's interview with John Green on Weekend Edition one Saturday and bought the book the following week. Green quotes the book in his interview, stating, "There is only one thing in this world [worse] than biting it from cancer when you're sixteen, and that's having a kid who bites it from cancer." With that quote, I understood fairly well that

So this is my 100th blog post.  Can you believe that? I've been writing this blog for almost 15 months. Thank you for continuing to show up for my ramblings and musings.  I think that it is incredibly fitting that I hit the century mark as I am poised to make an exciting announcement.  ( Drum roll please...) I have a release date for my book! Four Seasons for Charlotte  will be available in wide release on May 15th of this year. The book is already available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I searched for it today and found it! How exciting is that?   Electronic versions of the book will also be available.   We will also sell copies through the CJSTUF website.  I am also excited to let you know that 50% of all of my royalties from sales of the book will go directly to CJSTUF.  We will have details about a release party and some local signings coming soon. As some of you noticed via my announcement on Twitter and Facebook on Friday, I am currently sending

As a rule, I'm not a weepy person.  I have my moments.  We all do.  There are certain topics ( favorite Charlotte memories ) or commercials ( Damn you, St. Judes! ) that push me over the edge from time to time but I am not, by nature, a person who cries easily.  Except when it comes to music.  I have always thought it was my connection to music as a musician  that made me feel the emotion more closely than others.  There are certain songs (we will get to that in a moment) that are guaranteed to trigger the tears, regardless of the time, date, or setting.  I always figured, "Well, maybe it's me." It turns out that it's NOT me. There is actually some science  behind the weepy triggers in music.  A recent article in the Wall Street Journal    explained this phenomenon, highlighting Adele's music as a prime example of the powerful emotions a well-crafted tune can bring.   On the Media covered the same story and gave similar examples.   So with that i