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Posts tagged with: Joan Kayse
Random Thoughts of a Birthday GirlPosted by Joan Kayse Apr 13 2012, 12:35 am in birthdays, Joan Kayse, paranormal romance
Yup, today is my birthday! Feel free to bring the presents of yourselves and a birthday cake or too wouldn’t be amiss. It’s my birthday and I’ll blog if I want to, blog if I want to…. Today is just going to be a free flow post of things I’ve been thinking about this past week as I approach…um, my next year in age. Tradition. Last weekend I attended Easter Vigil Mass. This is the service where the Catholic church accepts new members. A handful of people of various ages were baptized. Four of them were kids whose nationality was Hispanic. Those four kids wore beautiful white dresses/suits. The boys had an elaborately embrodiered arm band on. The girls? Oh, my. They were so pretty! Long white dresses, with crinolines, lace gloves, a matching shawl and flowered headband. It was so nice to see the occasion accorded their best. Yes, I was humbled by the simple white slacks and blue top I had on. Which brings me to my next observation.
Clothes. Really designers? Really? I went shopping on that Saturday eager to find a nice dress or skirt to wear to Easter services. I found some styles I liked but the colors! The prints!! Ugh, ugh and ugh!!!! The one dress I did find they didn’t carry in my size (and it wasn’t Easter colored) but I did like it. Why? Because it was a “retro” style. A style that was in when I was a teenager in the 70′s. (Uh, uh, uh,…you all put down those pencils!! Don’t try to do the math.) A simple short sleeve shirt colloard dress with a slightly flared skirt. Sigh. Pets. I admit it. I admit it right here, right now in The Lair. I used to “make fun” of pet parents. Not true ridicule but I just didn’t get their devotion to their pets. Not to the degree that they lay on the floor while their sick pups lay on the couch just to be by them. The missing of them on vacation to the point of pouting. I get it now. Oh, I’d started to change early on when Cricket was only 2 months old. She had an episode of low blood sugar. She was in a stupor and I had to treat her with corn syrup. She rebounded back but….I slept with her on the couch that night to monitor her. Then, left both the kittehs for a week for the first time two years ago. Yes, every duck, bird, dog, fish, topiary at DisneyWorld reminded me of my baby cats. The yearning I felt for them, the concern and worry that they were missing me too about did me in. My only salvation was Creme Brule. The depth of my total conversion happened Tuesday. Took Grayson in for an issue and his treatment for it required him to stay for about 4 hours. “Go out and do your errands,” the vet said. Um, ok. My gut churned the whole time. Returned to pick him up and had to wait for over 20 min. (the vet was dealing with an emergency). I thought I would jump out of my skin! I was this close to barreling into the back to get my baby. Explained to the tech this was my first time leaving one of them. She laughed and said “What if he’d had to stay overnight?”. Um….then I’d be on a pallet next to him the whole time. I get it now, people. I SO get it. Friends. I am so blessed. I have the best friends in the world. And each friend brings some unique gift to me that helps me through life. A handful REALLY get the uniqueness that is Joanie…warts and all and still they love me. Can’t discount that enough. Writing. I love crafting stories. I want to write gut wrenching ones, fun ones, h So that’s about it for this 2012 Birthday Meandering. What about you all? What have you been contiplating lately? Share some of your blessings with us. Oh, and here…have a balloon New – For Members Only – April’s Exclusive Interview and Excerpt!Posted by Anna Sugden Apr 1 2012, 9:07 am in Anna Sugden, Exclusive excerpt, exclusive interview, Joan Kayse Check out our Members’ Den for this month’s Exclusive Interview with Brit Bandita, Anna Sugden! Also, we have a special sneak peek of Joan Kayse’s latest manuscript, Guardian Isle – The Beginning in our Exclusive Excerpt. If you haven’t become a member yet, what are you waiting for?! There’s loads of extra, exclusive content available for our loyal BB’s, a monthly newsletter to keep you up to date with the latest goings on in the Lair and a special Members Only prize each month. So, make sure you sign up! BAZINGA!Posted by Joan Kayse Feb 13 2012, 2:00 am in Big Bang Theory, characters, Joan Kayse
BAZINGA! That’s what Dr. Sheldon Cooper would say when he was “joshing” you. Oh, we’ll still talk about fun, inventive and totally compelling characters. The gang from The Big, Bang Theory my favorite show! The writers of this sitcom are brilliant! Two nerdy college physicist share an apartment where, along with their two equally geeky friends and a sexy, community college educated and aspiring actress neighbor live their day to day lives in their own little world. I’m ashamed to say, I didn’t latch onto this series till last year but have spent that year (thank you rerun land) catching up and can pass a trivia quiz with flying colors. Let’s look at the gang:
LEONARD. Leonard is the most socialized of the crew. He’s an experimental physicist and one smart lactose intolerant cookie. He really longs to be normal but his IQ gets in the way….that an a emotionally distant mother . He acts as a buffer between neighbor Penny and half the world around his roommate Sheldon who has no filters. He excels at such things as HALO, Klingon boggle and trying to fit in with “normal” people or rather “muggles”. HOWARD. An Aerospace engineer, he is singularly noted to be the only one of the group without a Phd. He still lives with his mother with whom he has a classic love/hate relationship, considers himself a “sex god” with all the smooth moves including his dickey….CLOTHES PEOPLE! CLOTHES! His wardrobe is a mish mash of skinny, low slung god awful looking pants with HUGE beltbuckles and color coordianted turtleneck dickey under his shirts. He uses his master’s degree in engineering to hardwire things including the Mars rover which he remotely crashed in an attempt to impress a woman. One of his greatest claims to fame is that he only has 3% body fat….which prompts his buddies to call him a human chicken wing! Raj. Poor Rajesh. An astrophysicist, he suffers from selective mutism, his deep shyness keeping him from being able to speak to women unless he’s had alcohol. Faced with having to speak to a female FBI agent, he resorts to stuffing rum cake down his throat. A rebel, he eats beef here in America, but still deals with his parents remote control video chats from India urging him to settle down with a “nice Indian girl.”
Penny. The beautiful neighbor whom Leonard falls for at first episode. A transplant from Nebraska, she works at the Cheesecake factory and aspires to be an actress. Over the course of the series, she’s had a relationship with Leonard and delights in aggravating Sheldon. Except for the time she took care of him when he was sick.
Sheldon. My favorite theoretical physicist. I swear, after watching five years worth of episodes, I believe I understand string theory. Sheldon considers himself a rare mutation, possibly a progeny of some advanced civilization left in the crib of an East Texas Evangelical mother. As a child, he tried to build a nuclear reactor. His IQ is immearsuable but he lacks social skills and emotional maturity. He’s baffled by the mundane social rituals of everyday life distilling it down to the protocol of offering a visitor “a hot beverage.” He is logical to the nth degree and has no filters. This makes it difficult for him to keep a secret. He’s passionate too, holding a grudge against Will Wheaton, the actor from Star Trek: Next Generation for years and nearly suffers a breakdown when an unknown person invades his Warcraft online world and steals Glenn, his battle ostrich. The past few years have seen the addition of Howard’s fiance Bernadette and Sheldon’s girlfriend and Penny’s “bestie” Amy Farrah Fowler. Throw in an array of secondary characters like Stuart the comic book store owner, sweatpants guy, Leslie Winkle and Kwpkri and you can’t help but laugh. Do you watch The Big Bang Theory? Who is your favorite character? Can you relate to any of them? Name three things that would earn you “nerd” status. * Click on the images for snippets from the show. CBS and Big Bang…you rock!
Simple PleasuresPosted by Joan Kayse Aug 13 2011, 6:00 am in Joan Kayse, simple life
Lately, I’ve been feeling really bummed about all the angst and bad news floating out in the world today. It can really get to be too much and I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even watch the news much. I think I’ve sprained my cringe muscle! I was contemplating this during Mass a couple of weeks ago when I saw something that, brief as it was, lifted me up. A simple pleasure, something that is positive, evocative of the good things in life, something that buoyed me up. And so this blog was born. Here are some Simple Pleasures I enjoyed this past week. First, of course was the one at church. It was a young father bringing his two year old daughter BY HIMSELF to services. She was a cutie patootie and he had the diaper bag thing going and he was so capable and self assured. Suffice to say, being a Daddy’s girl, I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for watching guys with their little ones. Next stop, the Humane Society kitten display. I know, I know ya’ll are probably sick to death of me taking about my baby cats but this one little thing made me feel good. It was a tiny little black kitten who reached its paw out from the cage, caught the tip of my finger. My heart tripped and it took everything to walk away.
The Waltons. Ok, so this is kind of odd but Hallmark Channel has been showing reruns of this series set in simple times. Drastic times, yes with the depression and all, but the setting of the rural mountains, the bits of wisdom from Mama and Daddy and especially Grandpa (Will Geer perfect for that role) reminds me of the base values many of us were raised with and reassures me the world will survive tumult. Even if Mary Ellen gets on my nerves.
 Last, but not least a trip to the grocery store capped my week of simple pleasures. As I approached the entry there was a Little League cheerleading group holding a bake sale. Four 10 year old girls standing in line cheering “C. A. TS Cats Woooooo”. Their enthusiasm was contangious and I found  myself joining in on the woooooo (Silently of course). It also got them a $5 donation sans cupcakes.
So what simple pleasures have you enjoyed this week? B. A. NDITAS, BANDITAS…WOOOOO! It’s My Party…..Posted by Joan Kayse Apr 13 2011, 4:15 am in Happy Birthday, Joan Kayse  …and I’ll blog if I want to, blog if I want to….you would blog too if it were you!!!!
Not surprisingly, today’s post is a bit self-serving because you see….TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY!!!
Now, we’re not gonna get into a lot of nit picky details such as age but I thought I’d chat a bit about memories of party’s gone by.
Alas, I grew up in…ahem…an age when most kids did not have a birthday party every , single year. Don’t get me wrong, I love attending my little underage friends party with balloons, cake, ice cream, high pitched squealing and the occasional ice cream smeared kiss but “back in the day” (Gulp, I’m starting more and more sentences like that) you usually only had them on special birthdays. I had two.
The first was for my 6th birthday. I wore a fancy party dress and had a special birthday girl tiara made, appropriately, from foil (Yes…we HAD foil “back in the day”). I got to invite all my class buddies. We had balloons, cake and Mom got “special” Neopolitan ice cream bricks from the bakery. We have photos of all the fun we had including my harried Mom directing pin the tail on the donkey. What’s that you ask? It’s a game….a game we played “back in the day.” Oh, yes we had a time including the mean girl who snuck upstairs and went into my bedroom and kidnapped my Raggedy Ann doll!! Ahem, that’s a story for another day.
I have a photo of me in my tiara but because (grits teeth) “back in the day” our parents thought it a great idea to put the pics between acetate in an album where, the course of time, has MELTED them making them impossible to remove with out destroying the historical treasuresm I can’t share it.
My second foray into birthday celebratory antics was for my 13th when I got to have my first ever sleep over. We talked about boys way into the night, ate, listened to records and conked out on pallets. Fun all around and I had hidden my Raggedy Ann doll.
Those were the parties. There are lots of other memories. Like the year my birthday landed on Easter. Mom had carved and put together a birthday cake in the shape of a bunny. My gift came wrapped in a Leggs egg. I got to pick out my favorite dinner (roasted chicken and Mom’s dressing). G
My birthday took on a different aspect after my Mom passed. No more birthday cakes I was sure. But then a bunch of friends from the hospital took me out to lunch and brought a homemade cake. I cried. That same special gift was repeated a while back when not only did Bandita Donna remember my dearth of birthday baked goods but remembered I like chocolate cake with chocolate icing and brought me one!
Sniff, sniff…
Anyway, me and the kitties will celebrate together. My brother is taking me out to the movies and hopefully adoring me. I have wonder
So today is my day to celebrate and I want to celebrate it with you. What are you bringing to the party???
(Candid photo of my baby cats contemplating the existence of balloons…POP!) That Which Does Not Kill Me, Will Make My Head ExplodePosted by Joan Kayse Nov 13 2010, 6:09 am in computers, Geek Squad, Joan Kayse, modern technology, romance bandits by Joanie
No, I’m talking of a slower demise….modern technology. Seriously, the tech world has painted a big target on my back these past two months and I’ve about had it! First my DVR on my cable screwed up. couldn’t record vital shows like DWTS for corn’s sake!
First, the arranged tech guy who was supposed to come hook everything “wirelessly” up was a no show. In an effort to satisfy me, the customer, the store got a special ok for a tech manager to come do it. Great except he never hooked up the printer to PRINT, only to fax. That’s when I first met my new love. The Geek Squad Agent. In two seconds he had me connected and running. No problems. Even hooked up my cute little Acer to the printer. Woohoo! I was cooking with gigabytes. Then the cat ran over the keyboard. What do my precious little babies have to do with technology? Well, ends up they are psychic. When Grayson danced across the keys while I was reading email, it disappeared. Could not find it no matter where I looked including under the desk, in the closet, out the window…it wasn’t there. Oh, honey….I need you. Agent Bob answered online. His remote analysis (which made my head spin as I watched on my screen) revealed bad news. My hard drive is on the verge of failure with corrupted files that he states cannot be fixed. My new 2 mo. old computer! Lovely. Now I have another new computer that my guy is coming to hook up tomorrow (Hmmm…will it be Ted, Bob, or ummm…Roberto>) even as I wade once again through the features, the monitor, the wireless capability I recognize that I am hooked ENOUGH on it to feel out of kilter when I’m not connected. What about you? How dependent are you on technology. What could you NOT live with out? What would you like to see invented? (Me? I’d like an automatic cat nail trimmer). Now excuse me….but my garage door opener is making noise…Oy! I Have to Cut the Grass!!!!Posted by Joan Kayse Oct 13 2010, 5:43 am in house hunters, houses, Joan Kayse, moving
I have a new addiction. No, it’s not chocolate….that’s an OLD one. Not Diet Coke, that’s just necessary for life. And NO…it’s not cats either. I have WAY too many friends on “cat watch” to be sure I don’t turn into crazy cat lady. (But I do confess to visiting the orphans at the pet store and browsing the Humane Society website. Really. Who could resist a kitty named Brenda? Who can resist that face??)
But I digress. My new addiction is the HGTV show “House Hunters”. It’s a fairly recent addiction. My friend Lisa had it on in the hotel room last weekend at Moonlight and Magnolias. She conked out and I was left to find out if the picky divorcee would pick the house with curb appeal, the fixer upper or the one with only 4 and ½ baths. So it has become apparent to me, that the majority of these folks looking for their dream home are well heeled, so to speak. Now I also realize that it has been 20 years since I shopped for a house and the prices are higher than the used to be. But man, these places are GORGEOUS!!! Ok, seriously? You’re getting ready to plunk down $500,000 for a beautiful 4,000 square foot home with 8 fireplaces and you’re worried about mowing? Seriously, my little 3 bedroom ranch with the kitty habitat is nothing in comparison and I can pay somebody to do it for me. Bet you could too. I like lots of house plans. My wish list would include laundry on first level, finished basement, nice big kitchen with a pantry the aforementioned tub. A skylight would be nice and a huge wraparound porch. And the yard? Ohhhhh Vince….bring your mower on by. What about you? Have you moved in recent years? What were some of your experiences? (One couple found out their paradise move to Hawaii required tsunami insurance) What features are on your wish list? One Word Says It AllPosted by Joan Kayse Sep 13 2010, 5:08 am in Jo Beverley, Joan Kayse, Reading romance, romance bandits, word games Joanie So, I was sitting here on a rainy Saturday cleaning up some tasks before revising a synopsis I’ve written. A synopsis made up of words.
Words? Hmmmmm….. So I latched onto my trusty Google (I do NOT like their new process for searching.) and looked up word games. Word association! What a fun challenge for our Lair, both writers AND readers!!! So we’re going to do a little experiment. I’m going to start by posting the first word. The winner of the GR will take that word, put it in a sentence then post the next word. Yes, ya’ll will have to find the last comment to get your word and …there will be some overlap but how fun to see how different people think!!! (I was going to do ink blots…put that scared me :-0 ) The poster with the most original sentence wins a ten dollar gift card from Borders. So gang…let’s go. The first word is BALLOON…. Stuck in The MiddlePosted by Joan Kayse Aug 13 2010, 5:05 am in Jo Beverley, Joan Kayse, middle names, romance bandits
So the other day, I was fussing at my daughter. “Cricket Marie! Get out of the toilet bowl!”
 Ahem, yes I’ve managed to give my sweet furry little girl a middle name. That got me to thinking about middle names. The origins, the stories behind them. Mine is, as you might surmise Marie. This reflects my Catholic heritage when it was common (whispers) back in the 60’s to honor the Blessed Virgin by giving your daughter a variation of her name: Marie, Mary, Marion etc. It has a good ring to it. “Joan Marie get your chin away from that hot cookie sheet!” Um, despite the exhortation from my mother, I didn’t and have vivid memories of the burn on my 4 yo chin and the great big Band-Aid on it. Middle The source of middle names began with lineage connections…great grandfathers, favorite aunts, rich relations. Many women took their maiden names as their middle names. This is the case our own Suz who can trace the practice in her family back to the 1800’s Eventually, bestowing middle names became a way to differentiate people as the population increased where in any given area you may have fifteen “John Smiths”. So now you had “John William, John Davis, and maybe a John Jacob Gingleheimer Schmidt. Soon doing so became a custom and people drifted from familial monikers to names of people they admired. So here’s a short quiz. 1. This new teenage idol’s middle name is Drew Even the Banditas have middle names. Susan’s middle name was a tribute to her father, Roberta. JoMama’s middle name is Jo which often happens if you don’t care for your first name, hence my mom was always Thelma instead of Frances. And in the course of composing this, I found out one of our Bandita’s middle name is JOAN! Can you guess who it is? So. What about you? Do you like your middle name? If you’re comfortable sharing we’d love to hear it. If you’re like Jeanne and Anna S. who have no middle name, or would change your I’ve Got Nothing to Wear!Posted by Joan Kayse Jul 13 2010, 5:55 am in Florida, Joan Kayse, romance bandits, RWA conference, shopping
Rags. All of it rags. Ok, not really but one thing I always look forward to before conference is buying new clothes for the occasion. I have “adequate” clothing for the business end of it and several cocktail type dresses, sparkly heeled sandals with sparkle still left. But I like to get something new to wear. Something fresh, something stylish, something that will make me look like the perfect next bestseller. Chic instead of comfy. Satin instead of worn cotton. So, armed with this elevated enthusiasm, I trotted out to the malls. (Quick, somebody pick up Nancy…she hates malls). Macy’s here I come! I ran in and headed for the Misses department, my eye keen for shades of teal, of royal or sea blue, navy, white and the occasional pink. Maybe even some white or black capri’s. ….a girl can never have too many. I circled and circled and circled…nothing. I stood in stunned silence. Everything was so UGLY! The prints were loud, in startling shades of bright orange/yellow/green or incredibly dull shades of pewter or faded puce. Electric brown melded with globs of mustard yellow. I was in shock. How could one of my favorite stores let me down? I scanned the racks for a dress. A casual, cotton knit dress to wear breezing around the Magic Kingdom. I searched and searched finally seeing one in the perfect shade of teal, the perfect cut, the ideal material. I couldn’t catch the woman wearing it walking across the Food Court fast enough! Hours I spent looking for the Orlando look, mentally taking an inventory of my closet. It will be too hot to claim Caren’s Chico jacket though Nancy’s jewelry is still an option. Those white capri’s from last year aren’t too worn out. Came home with two pairs of sandals and a beach towel. Sigh. I can always accessorize. Oh, Nancy!!!! So, what about you all? Do you have a favorite store? A favorite brand? What works best for you, the tried and true or the impromptu shopping trip. If you’re going to the conference, have you found the perfect outfit?
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