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Aussie Expats Update – Just Another Day in Our (American!) Life
Well everyone (American everyones), It’s Friday again, and despite some considerable challenges, here is my weekly update. The reason I’m late off the mark today? I have done a lot of writing recently. I spent the vast majority of last weekend writing (and rewriting and rewriting), my entry to the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge, Round 1. I was allocated to Group 45, and having been assigned Genre: Romance, Location: Nursing Home, Item: Locket as of 11:59, 22 July 2016, I set to work. I plan to do a post early next week detailing how I set about creating an entry for the challenge, but suffice to say, despite cracking out a…
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Flooded Anthology – Get Aboard!
Helllooo everybody and happy Monday! I feel like I can say that because I’ve just finished cleaning the house (yuck!) and I have this blog post ready to go on time. I’m excited about putting this post up, because I’m really excited about getting involved in the ‘Flooded’ project. ‘Flooded: A Creative Anthology of Brain Injuries’ is the pet project of Victoria Griffin, a writer and editor at Blue Pen Editing Services, who suffered a concussion while playing softball in early 2016. Now, I’m fairly sure most people have heard of concussion. You get them from hard hits to the head and in tv shows, they always shine a light…
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Aussie Expats Update – Curtains, Kohl’s and Burritos
Here we are again everyone! Happy Friday America (and welcome to the weekend Australia). I know that your anticipation over the results of our DIY attempts last weekend must have been simply destroying people throughout the week… But wait no longer! I’m happy to report that, for the most part, our efforts were not in vain. Having gone out for Kim’s birthday dinner on Friday night after a huge home gym training session in the heat, we were pretty wrecked. Despite sleeping in until 10am the next morning (I did some reading, James did the sleeping), we managed to bestir ourselves to get to Home Depot later on to purchase…
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A Post about Networking
Happy Wednesday everyone! There have been a few things going on in the past week or so that have really made me think about networking and building a blog readership, so that’s what I’m focused on today. To start with, I’ve recently started to get a bit more traffic on this blog, so a big HELLO! Hello to everyone who is reading this post or any other, and has made the time to leave a comment or like a post. If you’re a new blogger, you’ll understand just how empowering, encouraging and downright exciting this is; if you’re a more seasoned blogger, you may have forgotten, but let me remind…
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The Battle with the Churn
Happy Monday to all you Americans out there! (Australians, I sincerely apologise for bringing up traumatic Monday memories for you). We’ve had a busy weekend, but this blog post has been on my mind since last week, and I’m keen to share it with you. I want to talk about the ‘Battle with the Churn’. I’m not sure how familiar a term this is to Americans (or even to Australians…?) but it’s a fairly common one in the Australian Army: basically it refers to self-generating work and/or stress. With that loose definition in mind, I’m sure the idea of churning is quite a familiar one. It’s what happens when you’ve…
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Aussie Expats Update – Prairie Dogs, Gym Equipment and Lasagna
Well fellow humanoids (and any who identify with other species and still use technology to read this blog), Welcome back again to our American Life! This week has been the first one where James has really been teaching American Army students as part of his new position, so we’ve been busy. Luckily, we haven’t been tooooo busy to have some adventures! [Disclaimer: what normal people call ‘everyday living’, I tend to call adventures. I make no apologies for this fact, but I want to ensure I’m not practicing false advertising.] James’s mum and brother we were with us over the weekend, leaving on Tuesday evening, so we wanted to make the most of…
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Getting Back into the Grooooove
Well everyone, it’s a Monday again. Happy Monday! I’m sure most people are rolling their eyes at that statement, but sometimes we just have to get excited about stuff and today I’m excited about life, so I’m wishing you all a happy Monday. I decided late last week that enough was enough: it was time to start writing every day again. Before leaving Australia, I was fighting to finish our moving admin and finalise all of my uni assignments for submission. The result of that and moving to Oklahoma meant that for quite some time, I only worked sporadically on my novel. Any excuse would do. I couldn’t decide how…
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Aussie Expats Update – Fourth of July and Visitors
Welcome back to the weekly update! I’ve been busy studying this week in an attempt to wrap my head around some new ideas and forty-page readings for uni, and have to admit that it’s a lot of work! I’m studying two writing subjects, a political ideology subject and an introductory psychology subject; there’s a bit of variety and some interesting stuff to learn every week. I can only hope that I will get more effective and efficient at the whole business! I’ve also managed to do some work on my novel this week, which is really exciting. I’ve decided to write for at least thirty minutes every day from now…
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The Great Writing vs Editing Juggle
Happy Hump Day everyone! I hope everyone in the US enjoyed their long weekend and Fourth of July celebrations. I decided not to post anything on Monday, since it was a holiday and we were spending too much time relaxing (also studying. Sigh). It was our first American Fourth of July and if that’s not exciting, I don’t know what is. We spent about $200 on fireworks and burnt ourselves firing them; we ate freedom cake and pecan pie; there was a slip’n’slide and Flip Cup (an American game that we were introduced to), and I got to cuddle a really cute puppy. It was a day that ticked all…
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Aussie Expats Update – Hiking, Buffalo, Wings and Sonic
Ladies and gentlemen! Well, here we are again for the weekly Friday ‘It’s Your American Life!’ update. I know… The title needs some more work still (it’s on my list of things to do), but I’m not on top of my game today. We were up until 3 am last night (babysitting, not even partying!) and I am consequently worn out and late in getting this post up. I also haven’t done any uni at all today. Oops. But anyway, have a pinch and a punch for the first of the month! It seems crazy to think that it’s already July, especially when we realised that Monday, 4th of July, marks our…
