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Jun. 3rd, 2011 12:56 pmI see I've only been posting about once a month lately here. Oh, dear. ;-) Let's see if I can try to summarize everything I've been up to lately to catch up!
I've been keeping very busy at our Friendship Center, particularly now that most of our volunteers have left for the summer. Our ESL and tutoring programs rely heavily on volunteer help, but right now it's pretty much me and a couple of others left to teach all the women English who decided winter was over and it was okay to come out again and get back to learning English. ;-) Prior to this I was getting away with just being the director involved in directing others, but now I am doing that plus teaching myself. Which is okay, too. Just busier! That along with all the other things I do at the Center because they have learned that I am good at computers, good at writing newsletters, good at editing, etc.
One of my new students is a young widow from Pakistan who has only been in the country 4 months. Her husband sent her over here, then died before he could join her. :-( Her 3 year old son is so naughty that we can't have him in the Center while she is studying, so I have been going to her house (it's just down the street) three days a week to teach her English. It's quite nice! Her boy is a bit better behaved at home, thankfully. I'm hopeful that we can eventually help him learn to behave himself so her live won't be so challenging. She also has a baby, born just after she go here to the US!
My family is doing well for the most part. My dad will be 86 on Sunday, and he's still living on his own (with multiple visits per day from my brother). He did say something not long about about "maybe we should think about assisted living" so we're looking into that. His health is very good, so that's a blessing. My in-laws are in assisted living and they like it, but they are still struggling with health and other issues that keep them stressed out, so that's something we have to keep up with whenever we go up to Wisconsin. Our DS is doing well, still working at McDonalds and trying to write his stories. They are begging him to become a crew trainer at Mickey D's, but he's dragging his heels, unsure of whether he can handle the extra hours and the added responsibility. We think he can, but he's the one who has to make the decision in the end.
I'm very busy this month in my writing pursuits, as well. Though it may seem to some who have followed my stories faithfully that I am not updating my tales, I am actually doing quite a bit of writing, and every single Work In Progress is being thought of and worked on every day. I realized recently that, even though I haven't been updating my WIPs as I should, I have still been busy writing, and I found a bunch of stories on my computer to prove it. I recently posted them at various archives, so I feel like I've accomplished something, even though it actually wasn't recently. ;-)
I am currently trying to finish up my Finish-a-thon story about Boromir and Thorongil, which is due this month by the 24th. I also have a 20,000 + word goal I am striving for in a story for the LotRGFic Big Bang Challenge, coming due in mid July. I'm having fun with that one, though I haven't made much progress lately. Mostly because of Real Life stuff and this other story that needs to be done sooner. ;-) My goal this weekend is to actually try to finish the one so I can work on the other.
I also have a pie-in-the-sky goal of finishing a WIP that hasn't been touched for some years, in the hopes that I can enter it as a completed work in the 2011 Middle Earth Fanfiction Awards, but hat may be too much for me this month. I might be better to just concentrate on writing a new chapter for each of my ongoing WIPs (of which there are currently 3) and prove that I haven't actually stopped writing them.
Anyway, it's pretty busy around here, but it's all lovely and fun and I'm enjoying myself, doing what I'm good at and also what I enjoy doing!
I've been keeping very busy at our Friendship Center, particularly now that most of our volunteers have left for the summer. Our ESL and tutoring programs rely heavily on volunteer help, but right now it's pretty much me and a couple of others left to teach all the women English who decided winter was over and it was okay to come out again and get back to learning English. ;-) Prior to this I was getting away with just being the director involved in directing others, but now I am doing that plus teaching myself. Which is okay, too. Just busier! That along with all the other things I do at the Center because they have learned that I am good at computers, good at writing newsletters, good at editing, etc.
One of my new students is a young widow from Pakistan who has only been in the country 4 months. Her husband sent her over here, then died before he could join her. :-( Her 3 year old son is so naughty that we can't have him in the Center while she is studying, so I have been going to her house (it's just down the street) three days a week to teach her English. It's quite nice! Her boy is a bit better behaved at home, thankfully. I'm hopeful that we can eventually help him learn to behave himself so her live won't be so challenging. She also has a baby, born just after she go here to the US!
My family is doing well for the most part. My dad will be 86 on Sunday, and he's still living on his own (with multiple visits per day from my brother). He did say something not long about about "maybe we should think about assisted living" so we're looking into that. His health is very good, so that's a blessing. My in-laws are in assisted living and they like it, but they are still struggling with health and other issues that keep them stressed out, so that's something we have to keep up with whenever we go up to Wisconsin. Our DS is doing well, still working at McDonalds and trying to write his stories. They are begging him to become a crew trainer at Mickey D's, but he's dragging his heels, unsure of whether he can handle the extra hours and the added responsibility. We think he can, but he's the one who has to make the decision in the end.
I'm very busy this month in my writing pursuits, as well. Though it may seem to some who have followed my stories faithfully that I am not updating my tales, I am actually doing quite a bit of writing, and every single Work In Progress is being thought of and worked on every day. I realized recently that, even though I haven't been updating my WIPs as I should, I have still been busy writing, and I found a bunch of stories on my computer to prove it. I recently posted them at various archives, so I feel like I've accomplished something, even though it actually wasn't recently. ;-)
I am currently trying to finish up my Finish-a-thon story about Boromir and Thorongil, which is due this month by the 24th. I also have a 20,000 + word goal I am striving for in a story for the LotRGFic Big Bang Challenge, coming due in mid July. I'm having fun with that one, though I haven't made much progress lately. Mostly because of Real Life stuff and this other story that needs to be done sooner. ;-) My goal this weekend is to actually try to finish the one so I can work on the other.
I also have a pie-in-the-sky goal of finishing a WIP that hasn't been touched for some years, in the hopes that I can enter it as a completed work in the 2011 Middle Earth Fanfiction Awards, but hat may be too much for me this month. I might be better to just concentrate on writing a new chapter for each of my ongoing WIPs (of which there are currently 3) and prove that I haven't actually stopped writing them.
Anyway, it's pretty busy around here, but it's all lovely and fun and I'm enjoying myself, doing what I'm good at and also what I enjoy doing!
