The Ultimate Geek Challenge from The Nifty Nerd

I saw The Nifty Nerd's challenge and knew I had to do it. Not only did I have to sit down and answer these questions, I wanted to share the challenge with you!

My Answers:

1. Hufflepuff, all the way!
2. 221B Baker Street, please
3. That's a crit! (D20)
4. This one was a tough one for me, actually; but I have to go with the Winchester's Impala. I mean, Mr. LL and I are huge Supernatural fans, and are always on the hunt for the '67 Impala IRL.
5. Hunter. As usual.
6. Ugh, another tough one. I'm torn between the XBox and the Computer, but if I'm honest with myself the true answer is the PC.
7. Amity. Totally.
8. I think I have to go with Marvin.
9. GLaDOS. 😠
10. Forgotten Realms, baby!

What are your answers? Leave them in the comments! Or, if you want, do this on your blog and leave a link below!

Like a boss

When I tell people about my blog, the most common response is "You are anything but lazy!" I smile and mentally say to myself "you haven't talked to my husband about this topic." Verbally, however, I say "Thank you! That's the purpose of the blog! It keeps me from becoming a lazy slob which is my default mode."

On paper, I'm not lazy. I work a full time job as the senior designer for a New Orleans alternative newspaper; I built this blog from design up all on my own and do my best to be consistent with new content every week; I'm always working on some kind of side-project, whether it is illustrating a children's book and working to get it carried in local stores, trying to create a web comic (that one has been stalled for awhile, unfortunately), teaching myself to create a podcast for the Books, Booze + Bajingos bookclub, to my new venture of creating an online design business. Not to mention I am a wife and care-taker of three fur babies and one turtle. Yes, yes, on paper I am not lazy.

However, my typical day goes like this: get up with Mr. LL and help him get ready to go to work. He leaves a full hour before I do, so I help him get his lunch together, make coffee for the both of us and I find his wallet and keys while he gets ready. Once he's gone, I sit down and watch YouTube or read a book while I really wake up and enjoy my coffee. Then I get ready and drive from the ‘burbs to the city for work. I spend all day at the office and then come home and crash onto our very, dangerously comfortable couch. I watch some more YouTube or read a book, then I'll get around to making dinner...sometimes. I spend some quality time with Mr. LL if he isn't playing a video game. I stay up later than I should reading/playing a video game/watching YouTube and then crash around 12am or 1am. Rinse and repeat. On the weekends, if Mr. LL is working, I will do house work and work on the blog. If he is home, it's more couch time and some husband and wife time. So you see, in actuality, I'm super lazy.

Lately, though, something in the air at Casa Lazy has changed. I've found something that has put a new spark in my drive. I've been getting up same as usual, but instead of farting around once Mr. LL leaves, I'm on the computer, getting posts ready and working on my new project. When I get home from work, as long as it wasn't a soul sucking week like last week, I am on my computer working more on my project. What has gotten this lazy lady off her tuckus and hard at work? Well, that's a secret. For now.

I don't mean to be all secretive about it. I really don't, because everything inside of me wants to scream it from the roof tops! I've already mentioned that it is a design business, but I'm graphic designer, so that's not really giving much away. However, with announcing my now-shelved web comic as well as the it's-almost-ready-finally podcast, I feel like I set myself up for disappointment by not delivering those products by the imaginary, completely pulled out of ass deadlines I had set for them. I'm not putting that kind of pressure on this project. I'm very dedicated to it and have been putting my heart and free-time into like my life depended on it. I don't want to rush this project. I want it to launch with as much going for it as possible.

The point of this post is this: if you find something to light the fires within you, a lot of the laziness you might be experiencing will start to melt away. I think laziness has a lot to do with apathy and depression. While I love my home life, my work life has been unfulfilling as of late. I've been feeling directionless and unchallenged, even during stressful times at work. The stressful times weren't challenging me in a creative way, the stress came from having to wait for other people to do their jobs so I could do mine. And I was just working to be able to get home. I spend the majority of my time at work, and to have it bringing me down was reeking havoc on the rest of life. Once I found something that challenges me, makes me excited and rekindled my passion for graphic design, every thing else started to get better. So, it's possible to be lazy (I still need to do laundry) and be a boss. But the being a boss part helps make you way less lazy, in my case anyway.

Review: Destroying Angel by Missy Wilkinson

My friend, coworker and fellow blogger, Missy Wilkinson, (I did a Follow Friday on her a while back, and she wrote a guest post for Lazy Lady) wrote a young adult novel called Destroying Angel. I went to her release party a few weeks ago picked up a copy of the book and had her sign it. Unlike when I signed books at the release of Allen the Alligator, in which I just signed a very simple signature, Missy was writing personalized messages to everyone at the party. I told her she was crazy, and she laughed, agreeing that it was hard to think of something for everyone. I told her to just write a poop joke in mind. She wrote "Thank you for being my fellow author, blogger and Gambit homie. Your support and poop are invaluable!"  LOL.

I sat down and read Destroying Angel in two evenings. We start with meeting our protagonist, Gates McFarland, just as her mother passes away. Gates then starts a new school and has to deal with this loss. She struggles to make friends and find herself torn between two popular girls who are mean to her and the outcast named Penny who tries to befriend her but who Gates shuns so as to not be labeled an outcast. She finds and befriends John Ed, who is the protégé of her father, the high school band director.

Thrown into the mix of this high schooler trying to find her place in a new school, Gates is also curious to find out what happens to her mothers organs after she passes. The mystery really begins when Gates discovers that her mother's organs were never donated as her and her father were told by Dr. Asciutto. Well, I take that back. The mystery really begins on the in the very first chapter, when Gates's mothers disembodied voice tells Gates to find her heart. She also goes on to be a bit more cryptic, not that telling your teenage daughter to find your heart isn't cryptic enough.

With all this loss and confusion surrounding her, Gates is shunned by the popular girls she had mistakingly tried to befriend. She decides to give the eccentric Penny a chance, even if she is the weird outcast obsessed with unicorns. At first, I wanted to like Penny, thinking that she was just an innocent, immature and misunderstood her teenage girl whose love of horses stretched on longer than society would deem appropriate; but when Gates goes to her house and they play a video game together, we see a hint of a darker side to Penny. However, it is when Gates agrees to a slumber party at Penny's house that the book takes a real leap.

I had to read this section twice because everything happened so fast that, if you're a primarily "skimmer" reader like I am, you might miss something. In this world, there is a drug called Amanita, and Penny along with her "roommate" I think his name is Steve our growers and providers of this drug. It is a fungus and the spores of which open the human mind to see warm holes to other worlds. Penny takes Gates to her "castle" in this other world filled with bird people, a pegasus named Thunder and, yes, a unicorn, named Moonbeam. Here Gates find herself a true piano prodigy like she had never been before in the "real world". Gates returns home shaken by some things she sees and experiences in this world that I'm not going to go into detail about because I don't want to spoil anything.

I find myself struggling to continue to tell you about this book's story line, because I really don't want to spoil it for anyone. However, let's just say the action really picks up after this point and you won't want to miss it.

When I started reading this book it was hard to get out of my mind that my friend had written it; however, by the time I was reading the last page of the epilogue I had long been completely lost in this world. This book takes you to a rich world created by Missy, much like Amanita takes you away to new worlds.

I have to be honest, I was apprehensive about reviewing a book on my blog that was written by someone I know personally and see almost every single day. But I truly enjoyed this book. I cannot recommend it enough to anyone who enjoys young adult, fantasy books. It deals with the organ donation and draws attention to a discussion that no one really talks about, but it is also a wonderfully written and beautifully imagined world. I look forward to reading what Missy brings us next. If you want to keep up with Missy, go check out her blog Now Listen, Missy.