Tales of Beedle the Bard to Be Published

Tales of Beedle the Bard

Remember a while ago when J.K. Rowling’s auctioned for charity a book of fairy tales related to the Harry Potter universe? Well, there was a bit of good news for Harry Potter fans today.

It turns out The Tales of Beedle the Bard will be published in the United States and Britain, with the proceeds once again going to charity. According to the article, the book will be published December 4th, just in time for Christmas!

I’m excited and will totally be picking this up. I was hoping they would do this.

*************************UPDATE**********************************

I just received an email from Amazon Associates regarding Beedle the Bard.  There will be two editions of this book published, one for $7.59 and a special edition for $100 *drool*.

Win Some Stuff

I’m still not 100% right today, so I’m gonna hold off on a big post. My brain still isn’t 100% (though some might say it never is).

Anyhow, I came across a few contests. First, you can win an Advance Copy of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard book. Here are the details for that:

Kindly compose some Very Final Thoughts for three people, as follows:

1. A famous (or infamous) living character of your choosing

2. Someone on the very cusp of dying in a very stupid manner

3. And you, personally — in the brief moments before you shuffle off this mortal coil

Be funny if you like; death can be hilarious. But if you’d like a real challenge, make your concluding thoughts profound, or poignant.

Next, over at FreeAndFlawed, all you have to do is write a caption for a photo and you can win a super cool laptop skin.

I’m totally going to enter both these contests. Wish me luck! 🙂

The Plague Again

I was all set to write a funny post today about the only valid reason to grow a “mullet”, and I wound up getting the Plague last night. It’s currently 2:30 in the afternoon and I haven’t eaten anything. Not cool. I hope to feel better tomorrow and give you all a proper post. Check back then 🙂

On Our Way Home

Well, the reunion went well. My wife’s uncle is a doctor and has a really lovely house. We spent much of the time in the pool.

The hotel was very loud last night, we called the front desk 4 times, so we didn’t get much sleep. Perfect for out 400 mile car ride home 😦

Maybe I’ll post some pictures in a couple days. Take care everyone!

Got Our Money’s Worth

Thanks everyone for the comments about the baby’s first picture. I’ll respond Tuesday when we’re home.

We just got back from the $10 breakfast at the hotel. I tried to eat my money’s worth in sausage and bacon. We also may or may not have scored a few little boxes of cereal and a banana for tomorrow’s breakfast. I’m not telling.

Next, we’re off to the family reunion. Luckily it’s only six miles away, which is much better than the 400 miles we drove yesterday. Yep, it cost a bunch in gas. I think my credit card is gonna catch on fire.

More tonight if I have energy. 🙂

A First Picture

As you read this, I’m probably in my car on my way to Rhode Island for my wife’s family reunion. It will be a good time once we get there. The only bad part is that it’s going to take us probably ten hours.

Thursday, we had our first official doctor’s visit for baby #2. Luckily for you, we took pictures. The baby is in the top left corner of the picture below. Looks just like me, huh? Except for the tail, of course.

It was neat to see, especially the little blink of the heartbeat. Anyhow, it all feels a bit more real for me (it has been feeling all too real for my wife since day 1 I’m sure).

1800 Year Old Elvis?

My daughter was sitting on her little potty this morning, big tears running down her cheek, telling me “You’re not going to work today Daddy?” I hope that doesn’t happen every day, because I might have to quit my job.

I found something pretty cool at Boing Boing today, as I often do. They posted a picture of a sculpture from the 2nd Century AD that very much resembles Elvis. The original article is from the Daily Mail. Here’s the picture:

Isn’t that fascinating?

Get Off My Lawn!

Image Source

So, I was mowing the lawn yesterday and looking over my yard. It’s not a lot of land, but it’s mine. There are times, such as last night, when I wish I could just abandon it and start with a new yard, because mine is so unkempt.

It’s not that I don’t care about having nice landscaping. It’s just hard with a little one in the house to get much yard work done. When I get home from work, I try to do as much parenting work as possible, to give my wife a break (she still does a lot). This leaves little time for the yard.

The biggest offenders I have are some lilac bushes at the front of the house. These are the first things seen as you drive up the road towards our house. I love the lilac bushes. They look so nice when they flower in the spring. After that, they just get huge.

Last winter, in fact, I trimmed them all WAY down. Think of a guy holding a hedge trimmer, slight twitch in his eye, covered in lilac bush guts. That was me. I thought this would keep it from getting huge. Wrong again.

Anyhow, I was out there last night, depressed at the state of things, and decided to do a little work. I noticed one of those weed vines was growing on the lilac bush. So I yanked it. Then I yanked some more. And more. When I was finished, the lilacs were considerably smaller. It turns out 30% of what I thought was the lilac bushes was these dastardly, parasitic weeds.

So, things look much nicer and I learned something. Maybe this post was boring. Still, it made me happy.

I’m A Winner!

As most of you know, my story, Ar’n Man, took fourth place out of sixty-four entries in the writing contest at The Clarity of Night. I’m so happy about that. This feels so good because there were so many good entries. Maybe I am OK at this writing thing. At least I know I have the potential to be. Thanks everyone for your encouragement!

I’ve already worked out what I’m going to buy with my $10 Amazon prize. There’s a pretty cool graphic novel called Captain Stoneheart and the Truth Fairy that I came across recently that looks right up my alley. Even better is their website. They have a really cool story preview on the site containing artwork as well as a pirate sounding guy reading the story. Check it out. It’s really cool.

Check out this week’s Book Roast. There’s prizes. Free books!

Finally, Julie K. Rose has her podcast interview with me available at her Writers and Their Soundtracks podcast site. Give it a listen and let me (and Julie) know what you think. She does such a great job with these. I’m scared to listen, though, because I’m worried my answers were too silly and also because I don’t think I’m in the same league of the other writers she interviewed. That confidence from the first paragraph of this post. Gone already 🙂

Budweiser Theorem

My family and I were in Pittsburgh over the weekend, mostly because my wife’s sister had a baby and we wanted to see the bundle of joy. This is my third niece, so that’s pretty neat. Holding the newborn, however, I realized I forgot almost everything I learned in the two years since my daughter was a baby. I have a lot to learn in the next seven months. *Sigh*

While we were there we also attended my father-in-law’s picnic for his karate dojo. There was volleyball, a sprinkler for my daughter to get soaked in, a bunch of food, and a lot of sun. It was a pretty good time.

They also had beer there. Not the type of beer I would say that I enjoy. In fact, they had beer I mostly avoid. They had something something Light and Budweiser. I’m no beer snob, I prefer Sam Adams or Yuengling Lager, but I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with Bud.

This time was different. I’ve been avoiding having beer in my house ever since my we found out my wife was pregnant because I would feel guilty drinking in front of her when she couldn’t have any. Also, I’ve been a bit thrifty with the money lately (for good reasons), and I would be a bit hypocritical spending our money on beer. Anyhow, this time the Budweiser tasted like heaven.

This led me to develop my first theorem, which I call the Budweiser Theorem. Here it is:

The Taste of Budweiser is directly proportional to the Amount of Time Since My Last Beer.

y = kx

y is The Taste of Budweiser

x is Amount of Time Since My Last Beer

k is the coldness of said beer

Feel free to quote me on that. 🙂