Tag: photos

Bingo!

Have you ever gone to one of those bingo halls located in some unfamiliar suburban location? A big utilitarian building with fluorescent lighting that makes everyone look ten years older? Where the non-smokers are put into a separate, smaller room because the majority of the bingo players are smokers?

My sister loves bingo and she wins. A lot. She’s been able to take vacations with her bingo winnings. She buys those little pull tabs at the bingo hall and wins with them, too. When she comes to Houston, I generally find one of those bingo halls and go with her. I do not win. But that’s okay. I’m not there for the bingo. I like to watch the people.

For one thing, this is the ONLY place in Houston where people gather quietly. We truly have the noisiest restaurants and stores of any city I’ve ever been in. But the bingo hall is hushed. Players are concentrating on their bingo sheets and the caller’s voice.

I enjoy checking out the good luck totems people bring and set up around their bingo sheets. It reminds me of when I travel. I like to carry favorite stones and crystals with me and set them up in my hotel room or condo. I usually have nag champa incense with me, too, and if I get a chance to buy cut flowers, I’ll add those. I don’t know why I started doing this, but it always makes me feel safer and happier in an unfamiliar place. When I did it on my first visit to New York, it made the hotel housekeepers smile at me and ask me questions. In countries like Bali, my friend Tandy tells me, hoteliers and innkeepers actually do this for their guests–leave little iconic gifts with fresh flowers in their rooms.

So I totally get why bingo players like to arrange their little space with their lucky charms, their dabbers, their ashtray–everything just so. I was sitting at my computer today when I suddenly realized that in my busy-ness, I’ve kind of let things collect on my desk. Though these things have no particular significance to me, I told Tom I feel like a bingo player.

I hope I win.


Stress ball from Tom, Happy Meal doll, champagne cork from New Year’s Eve, bookmark from our niece.

Murder! Mayhem!

Today I took a writing break and went to Houston’s Murder By the Book bookstore to support a good friend and meet a new (to me!) author.

Dean James, who used to manage the store, has been a true friend to my writing career, giving me encouragement to be a little braver about writing and submitting. Dean has written several mysteries under his own name, but his latest is under his pen name Jimmie Ruth Evans. As Evans, Dean’s first two Trailer Park Mysteries, Flamingo Fatale and Murder Over Easy, gave us feisty, independent Wanda Nell Culpepper of Tullahoma, Mississippi. Wanda Nell has a bad habit of getting involved in murders, and her new misadventure is Best Served Cold. I picked up a copy today at Dean’s signing. It’ll probably be the first book I read when I can take a mini writing vacation after March 1.

Also signing today was author Leann Sweeney. Leann’s Yellow Rose Mystery series, based around Texas heiress Abby Rose, is set in Houston. I have to admit that since I haven’t read them, I splurged today and bought all four: Pick Your Poison, A Wedding to Die For, Dead Giveaway, and the newest, Shoot from the Lip.

Reading mysteries is one of those not-guilty pleasures that I can simply enjoy without thinking, Damn! I wish I’d written that! since I don’t write mysteries. Of course, if I came up with a really good plot and an engaging sleuth as my favorite mystery writers do….


Houston-area writers Dean James and Leann Sweeney.

Mea culpa

For all y’all who are e-mailing and calling me, I hope you read here, so you’ll know that I’m not ignoring you, and I will respond, just slowly. I love hearing from you, I truly do, and I appreciate hearing what’s going on with you (if only you all had LiveJournals!). I’m just overwhelmed right now with the writing stuff. It’ll get better.

I did take a little break on New Year’s Eve, my least favorite holiday of the year–though it’s always okay if I keep it low-key, and I did. Lynne brought Greta the Dowager Doberman, Sparky, and Minute for a slumber party with Margot and Guinness. You can’t pay for comedy like that. Greta’s got some continence issues, so she has a snazzy snap-on diaper that she wears in the house. No pictures, because she IS the dowager and deserves to hold on to some shred of dignity. Sparky’s blindness didn’t stop him from playing hard with Minute, but it also didn’t serve him well in a strange place with hazards he can’t see, like steps, bushes, brick walls, and other dogs. Margot sometimes wanted to play, but mostly she just arranged a pillow on the bed and perched on it like a princess, staying above it all. Guinness by turns wailed, barked, and passed out–which is what many of you were probably doing on New Year’s Eve, too.

After we prepared and ate a Tex-Mex feast, Tim went back to the Satellite Office to continue writing. Lynne and I got to Lindsey and Rhonda’s minutes before the year changed. Lynne played The Simpsons Clue with Lindsey, Ileya, and Adam, while another of their guests approached me with, “Did you used to work at Bookstop?” Amazingly, after all these years, I was able to recall Patrick’s name and met his cool wife, who was patient with us while we reminisced, as former Bookstop employees are wont to do. She also had the coolest black leather trench coat.

As we were leaving later, Rhonda and Lindsey offered us one of their remaining bottles of champagne, so we got to come home and share a toast to 2007 with Tim. Lynne and her canines went to bed shortly afterward, and Tim and I sat up until five a.m. talking about the things that Tim and I talk about (conversations that often get repeated by characters a year or two later).

Monday, Lynne and I hung out and talked about the things WE talk about. After we made a trip to Whole Foods, she went back to Green Acres with Greta, Sparky, and Minute. I did a dash to Shady Pines to make sure my mother got her black-eyed peas and greens on New Year’s Day. Tom got home safely from his trip to see his side of our family (and to bring more fabulous presents to me from them, including a big stack of canvases, YAY!).

And now it’s all about work, because TJB5 is due January 15 and Coventry 2 is due March 1. I’ll probably be a horrible friend for the next eight weeks.

a few photos here

As if I needed more proof of my dorkery

Yesterday, doglr was so kind as to provide me a link to a webcam of Old Faithful, and I’ve kept it on my screen for most of the time that my computer’s been on since. The photo updates every 30 seconds. Since dogrl has actually been to Old Faithful, I asked her if I’d ever see any wildlife via the webcam. She said maybe not during good viewing hours, because there are always people there.

I don’t know WHY I’ve been spellbound by Old Faithful and its spectators for the last 24 hours, but the nice thing about being a writer? I’ve already figured out a way to use it even after the obsession passes (and it will, when something new replaces it). Therefore, whenever I pull up the site, instead of calling it “wasting time,” I get to call it “research.” EVERYONE should have a profession like this.

Meanwhile, look. I captured TWO wildlifes! 😉

Then, like dogrl said, the people came and the wildlifes left. But here’s a pretty picture of why the people came.

Last night (New Year’s Eve pictures and stories to come at some point), Lindsey’s friend Ileya was talking about traveling among the mountain ranges of Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. At one point, as she spoke of the natural beauty, she said it made her think, This is America. I knew exactly what she meant. We really have a beautiful country and, in fact, a beautiful planet. I hope 2007 finds us being kinder to it.