Identity

New URL: elizabethradewahn.blogspot.com (please replace jamiesjottings.blogspot.com with this new url. Thanks!)

I've been contemplating this for a while now and have finally decided that I need to tell you all a rather big secret. 

I am not really named JocelynRose and there's no one named Jamie in my family.

I'm actually one person in and of myself and, for several reasons I have decided that it's for the best that all of you, my dear followers, know me for who I really am.

My name is Elizabeth and I'm 19 and though Jamie and JocelynRose played their parts admirably as the dual sides of my personality, it's become too difficult to split their posts and decide who gets what. It's been fun - awesome really - and the idea is good, but the main reason I'm doing this is because I fully intend to be published someday and it's best not to have more than one personality out in the internet world, blogwise. 

It makes me sad to lose the fun of Jamie's hyperactive nature and JR's more staid personality, but really, I'm not losing them at all. It's who I am and I hope that you can have as much fun with me as you had with JocelynRose and Jamie. 

I resolve with this change to blog more and I sincerely hope that you will all continue in the adventure with me!

Until next time!

Unofficial Announcement of Something Slightly Official

Hey folks, Jamie here! 

JR (how do you like my new nickname for her? She's in protest/denial about it) is supposed to be working on her fourth post from DC, but progress on that is going about as slowly as a  very - erm -  slow thing.

*ahem*

In her defense (I can't believe I'm saying this), she's been pretty busy lately.

So my news - thought I'd give this blog a little life! - is that I have officially decided (after years of waffling) to do NaNoWriMo this year! 

*firecrackers*

For those of you who don't know what NaNoWriMo is, it's basically a thing in November where a bunch of crazy people decide to write 50,000 page novels somewhere between the 1st and 30th and probably mostly in the wee hours. 

I really wanted to do it last year but I had school the first week of November and I wouldn't have been able to get much down for those seven days. Judging from what I heard from friends who have done it, you can't just miss seven days. 

So, here I am - a month early - impulsively jumping into what is most likely one of the crazier decisions of my life. 

But not to fear - for once I am thinking ahead! 

To get ready for the intensive experience, I have already researched key points that I need for my plot; mapped out my storyline; semi-written bios on the central characters (still need to get to the secondaries); plotted out some tangles and important areas so that I can glance in and know exactly what I'm supposed to do and where I'm going; and tapped out the first line so that I don't need to agonize over it later. 

Thus far, I feel prepared. 

And it's only September. 

I think I'm a leetle too psyched. Hopefully it'll carry over a month and five days and not get spoiled.  

That's me and the latest update from my most clandestine and adventurous life! 

Keep up the ... whatever it is you keep up! 

Post No. 100

I can write 100 things too!

Well, I thought I'd never get here! Post number 100 has landed!

And, as promised, I sat down to do something special. Jamie and I were in an interview and came out on top (at least, that's what we're saying...). This is going to be one interesting read once it's finished, but we had to cut the questions short for now because Jamie's attention span gave out and the questioner ran out of questions.

So now it's your turn!

If you have a question you'd like to ask Jamie and Jocelyn, leave it in a comment and check back on the Jocelyn & Jamie page for their answers!

Have fun and be creative!

 Till next time!

&

A Shout Out for Team Orange!

Hello all! This is Jamie hacking again!

It's been a pretty busy week with camping and work and the Olympics and all, but I'm pretty excited right now about something that happened today!

For the past five years, my brother, two sisters and an assortment of friends have been competing in a Ultimate Frisbee tournament at a church in our (sort of) area.

The first year, we had a put-together-while-we-were-there team, called Roberts (the company that provided the custard we all ate at the end) and got second. The second year, as Team Orange we got third. Then the next year, still Team Orange we got second again. The fourth year (Orange again!) we dropped again to third. But this year (keeping our ambiguous name), we scrapped it out and got first!!!

It's weird, because we seem to carry around this curse where we carefully put a team together a month before the tournament and then generally have some of our best players drop out at the last second for various reasons, leaving us scrambling for anyone we can get. This was the first year we actually had the full eight person team the rules allow.

This year's Team Orange consisted of 4 boys and 4 girls (which is rather unusual, since the few teams with girls generally have one, two, or in some cases three). It's tough because when you're playing a team with all guys, you have to start a girl against them. Most of the time, this works out, but for some teams it would be nice to be able to put out the all-male front.

Basically the tournament has a seeding round where every team plays seven fifteen minute games with a bye for the eighth, then we break out for lunch and a devotion and come back for the round robin tournament.
This year we went 6 and 1, losing only to the team that had won last year. We knew they'd be tough because most of them are actually our friends, some of whom we play with on a regular basis.

It was about 90 degrees, extremely humid, and we were playing in full sun. So we went in to lunch, exhausted and very drained.

The long lunch break and devotion rested us a bit, but most of us had stayed up the night before watching the Olympics until 11:00 and got up early with adrenaline already rushing. I, for one, had to go to my caregiver job at 6:45 and stay until 8:30. I literally could have fallen asleep on the sidelines at any given time. :P

We had to wait for the 8th and 9th seed to play each other and then we played the 7th seed and beat them to advance to the next round.

Playing the third seed was tough. My legs were about giving out underneath me, but we couldn't let up or we'd give up the second place finish and the chance at playing for first against the last top team and would have to battle it out with another team for third. We weren't going to settle for third again.

We managed to pull off a pretty good win over the three seed (I was dying by that time) and, with second firmly ours if we lost, we headed back to the field to play the team we had lost to last year. Last year's champions - and our very competitive friends with a 7 male/1 female team who all happened to be quite good.

I elected to stay on the sidelines for a rest and my younger sister joined the exhausted guys for a face off. (I will insert here that the team we were about to play had just come off from a come-behind victory with a very scrappy, four seed team who had worn them out quite a bit) All in all, we were both not very impressive in energy totals. I figured we'd get crushed and that would be the end of it.

Well, as I sat on the sidelines with the other two girls from our team and cheered my head off, our worn-out team swung out in front with a 6-1 lead. I figured we had a chance by then, but there were still seven minutes left in the game and they were still fighting to defend their title. (I've been steeped in Olympic broadcaster speak for the past week; it's rubbing off, if you couldn't tell. :D )

Somewhere in the scoring of the six points I went back in. The other team posted a slight comeback and scored three to our one in the next few minutes. At the two minute warning, I was back on the sidelines, the score was 7-4 and I was cheering and hoping that we could, after five years of going strong and fading at the end (sometimes because of injury, sometimes because we just don't have enough people to sub out to keep the energy levels up, or sometimes because the teams we play are just too stacked for anyone to beat), we might actually win this year and finally get those commemorative t-shirts that every winning team receives and also to beat the team that handed us second last year.

The fact that we would win wasn't accepted in my mind until there were twenty seconds left in the game and our team scored their eighth point, sealing the victory. No one can score four points in five seconds.

We actually won the t-shirts!

And a year's worth of bragging rights and a gift card and vengeance for the four seed team that had almost beaten them.

It was pretty awesome. After watching tons of Olympic champions, it was nice to win a sort of championship of our own. And I got a pretty sweet sunburn on my face. Hopefully it won't peel... :-\

I was pretty tired. And I wanted a shower. And a nap.

I got one of them, but I intend to sleep very well tonight. =D

Till next time!

Announcing the 2012 Short Story Contest!

Hello everyone!

We're so excited to be announcing the first If You Give A Girl A Pen Short Story Contest!

This is for all of you out there who love to write - or perhaps just love to read and have always toyed with the idea of writing something of your own - and would like to get some recognition and reward for your work!

Here's how the contest works:

Entry Rules

- You must be a follower of If You Give A Girl A Pen

- You must email your wish to enter the contest to us at jocelynrose26@gmail.com by July 5th

Stipulations

- Your story must be at least 1000 words long - it can be more, but not less

- Your completed story must be emailed to us at jocelynrose26@gmail.com before or on 

September 1st

- It must be appropriate for readers of all ages (this doesn't mean that you can't use hard-hitting topics, but it can't contain any offensive subjects or language)

- It must be a work of fiction. No biographies or poems

- It must be all your own work. You can quote sources, but they can't make up the bulk of your work.

- Limit of one entry per person

- All entries must be typed up on a computer and emailed to us. No handwritten entries.

- We're not grammar Nazis, so some mistakes and errors are fine. But please try your best to make the grammar, spelling and punctuation neat and readable to the best of your ability. An entry that is difficult to read is easy to put aside.

- Any genre goes, so write what you write best! 

Prizes!

The winner of the contest will be given the choice of one of these prizes which will be mailed to them by us upon their achievement of the If You Give A Girl A Pen 2012 Short Story Contest title. 

And here they are! 

American Girl Lanie's Garden outfit (including everything

in the picture except the doll)

The Hunger Games boxed set

The Ultimate Writing Tools Collection: A set put together by yours trulies 

including the things we can't write without. 

- The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing A Novel

- A 12 pack of the best editing pens in the universe

- An adorable spiral-bound notebook

- and more!

A $25 Amazon Gift Card

2 Nancy Drew PC Games

- The Ransom of the Seven Ships and Warnings at Waverly Academy

The Wholesome Romance Collection 1

(Three of our favorite feminine, sweet, wholesome and well-written romance books!)

- Emily of Deep Valley by Maud Hart Lovelace

- Calico Captive by Elizabeth George Speare

- They Loved to Laugh by Kathryn Worth

Ending Notes

- The winning entry will be published on my blog If You Give A Girl A Pen with kudos going to the author

and a link to their blog (if applicable). If you would rather not have your work made public please contact us and let us know.

- A blog button with the winner's title will be designed and given to the winner to display on their blog

Good luck everyone!

&

 

My New Baby

So, as you all know from the fact that I posted about this a week or so ago, God surprised me with another job and I am so humbled and amazed by how He works. If I never believed in the power of specific prayer, I do now. Many times while I was sending in applications and so on and so forth I prayed and asked God for specifics. I asked Him for something close, something Christian, and preferably something that was four hours a day, and not at 5 in the morning and something that would allow me to spend time and vacations with my family and please, please, please something that I could handle (which basically meant that I didn't want to go with a job where I'd have to endure the dreaded 'morning rush' (getting a million residents up in the morning for breakfast by 8).

God didn't send conclusive evidence of an answer right away and I got a bit worried. I finally forced myself to accept the fact that I would probably have to get a 2nd shift CNA job (which meant that I would be working 8 hours into the night and spending about 1-1/2 hours at home on weekdays due to my other job in the morning) and completely cut myself off from normal living.

Not the most welcoming thing to contemplate.

And then God comes along and works it out so that I am now employed to take care of one young and wonderful Christian woman for 4 hours a day, 4 days a week, in a setting that is more comfortable to me than an agency, and she lives 7 miles away. Don't anyone ever tell me that God doesn't listen to specifics or care about every detail.

And the first thing that my dad said when I told him I got the job was "you need to get a car."

Erg.

Let me begin by stating that my interest in cars is about nil. I had a few preferences and little to no knowledge of what I was getting into.

That ended the minute I started looking.

To get down to the point, I basically told God "You dropped this job into my lap, it's fifteen minutes away from my house and I need a vehicle to get me from point A to point B without taking a bus. Please either drop a car in my lap or give me the wisdom to see the right one when it comes along."

I was figuring on the wisdom.

So I began my search.

My dad and I traipsed through car lots, my brother and I traipsed through websites. My dad and I took a road trip to a dinky little car dealership only to find that they had just sold the car we were looking for. We went to another lot and test drove a car that fit my criteria almost perfectly but my dad ruled it out because it made to many unidentifiable noises.

I was getting a little discouraged.

All I wanted was a four-door car for 6 to 7 thousand dollars with less than 100,000 miles on the odometer that had a cd player, air conditioning, power windows and remote entry and preferably in a sane color. I was even willing to give up the windows and entry to squeeze in a possibility.

I went into work last Monday, after another round of car-less-ness had occurred over the weekend and one of the guys who works for my dad asked me (naturally) if I had gotten a car yet. I said no and he pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and said "I've got one for you" (or something like that. I'm not going by the gospel of the letter right now when it comes to recording conversations...).

His son-in-law was upgrading and selling his old car for an extremely low price. I looked at the paper and immediately figured it was another wash because the odometer read 105,000 miles. But my dad said we might as well look at it because it had everything else I wanted and was several thousand dollars less than I had expected to pay. I said why not. I had already been disappointed once, so what did it matter?

We went in and looked at it, took it out for a drive and my dad said we'd be fools if we didn't take it. It was really a neat little car - a little more sporty, perhaps, than I would have preferred, but beggars can't be choosers - and I could come up with no real, legitimate reason to say no.

We shook on the deal, and picked it up yesterday. I got plates for it this morning and here it is! (Yes, my camera and I are still estranged; I was lame and took this with my phone. I hope no one wanted interior shots.)

(Yup, and that's my house in the background...)

And that's my testimony for today on the provision of God. Thanks all for reading!

Till next time!


P.S. Take a gander at the new blog design. Rachel over at Rainy Days Blog Design and I spent a good...erm...many hours working through the rigmarole of HTML and Gimp and stuff (I wasn't much help with all my picky opinions) to get this on the page. Hope it suits!
JR

Jobs and Cars = Praise and Frustrations

I got the job!

Actually, she called last Friday and asked if I wanted it, but I wanted to get past today - which was sort of an orientation day - before I made the official blog post. =D

We did a few more transfers, which made me a lot more comfortable with them (though the car transfer was hard!) and her other caregiver showed me around the house and gave me the 411 on how things are done. She's really nice and we had a lot of fun.

But now, I must buy a car. Ugh. What a frustrating bother it is! I've got 11 tabs up right now with prospects, but my dad isn't very enthusiastic about going out with me. And I'm kissing my poor savings account goodbye - just when it was reaching new levels too! Life seems to be a mixture of blessings and curses right now. Cars and insurance stink, but having two jobs worth of income is nice. Once the tangles get worked out, I'll stop complaining to you all, I promise. =D

Just thought I'd bring you up to speed. I'll post with pictures of my new car when I eventually get one. (That's a big promise for me, just so you know. My camera and I aren't too close.)

Till next time!

Versatile Blogger Award

So, this is the newest thing going around in the blog circle I'm in and I've been nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award which, I must say, is probably undeserved since I'm such a scatterbrained blogger anyway. Let me see...

Versatile: embracing a variety of subjects, fields, or skills; also :turning with ease from one thing to another

All right, I can buy that. Thank you Rachel for nominating me! 

Here are the obligatory rules:

1. In a post on your blog, nominate 4 fellow bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award.

2. In the same post, add the Versatile Blogger Award.

3. In the same post, thank the person who nominated you with a link back to their blog.

4. In the same post, include 7 random pieces of information about you.

5. In the same post, include this set of rules.

6. Inform each nominated blogger with a comment on their blog

7 Random Things About Myself

1. I am 5'6" in my bare feet - which is why I like to wear heels

2. I keep a crazy journal with more stuff about what I think than what I do

3. I love word searches

4. I have an extensive Ann Rinaldi book collection

5. I adore Foxtrot comic books

6. I collect pens and have been known to buy them on the internet - frequently

7. I'm planning something for my 100th post, but there are no guarantees on who (including myself) will find it interesting

That's seven!   

I know of no one, really, to nominate, except for Leah at psalm34-1 and she'll probably hate me for doing it. Such is life, though. At any rate, it's a nifty little button to put on your sidebar. 

'Till next time!

'Heart' Release!

Just received the glad tidings today! :)
Audrey Assad's new album Heart is going to be released on February 14th!

I fell in love with her debut album The House You're Building and have waited eagerly to see if her next release would be as good. You can listen to the audio samples here and it sounds like she's done pretty well for herself (except for the title, which is, in my opinion, rather uninspired compared to her debut. Oh well, you can't have everything). Anyway, I can't wait to buy the cd! :D

'Till next time!

P.S. Don't forget to check Scribbles for new updates of Jamie's short story: The Redemption Ring!

Obligatory Announcement for Jamie

Hear ye! Hear ye!
A new short story has flown from Jamie's illustrious (or shall we just say Papermate...) pen and will soon be up on Scribbles!
Due to the number of complaints she received from those who read Holly & Ivy that the storyline was too morbid, Jamie has promised that her new story The Redemption Ring will have a happy ending.
I was skeptical myself at first, because for Jamie a happy ending usually means that she didn't kill off all the characters as she normally does and/or was originally planning too.
This time, though, I have read her new story in its entirety before posting and it's my opinion that she did a pretty good job of keeping her word.

It'll be posted in segments as usual, so if you want more you'll have to go to Scribbles to find it.

Enjoy!

Oh, and here's the first paragraph to dip your toes in:

The Redemption Ring

A short story by Jamie Channing

The ring I hold is an ugly one. The gold is scarred from many owners; there are black cavities where the diamonds and rubies have been dislodged over the span of passing years; and it’s twisted and bent and no longer a circle to slide around a human finger.

It’s ugly and dulled and, for the purpose of any but one, useless.

We call it the aruna-mani – the redemption ring – because it has the power to save a guilty man’s life.

'Till next time!

Branching Out

Jamie and I have decided that after years of putting it off and saying we can't do it, we will try our hands at writing forms other than our sole venue, the full-length novel.

*cue deep breath and heroic gesture*

I am going to attempt a poem and Jamie is going to write a short story.

Currently the poem -- entitled He Says -- is a pile of scribbled post-it notes on top of the armoire in my room. The short story (hopefully she can keep it from turning into novel-length...), which Jamie says is still in the thought stage with an outline in the works, will be called Holly and Ivy. 

We'll share them both when they're finished, unless we absolutely hate them.

'Till next time,

&

May I Have Your Attention, Please...

Just a quick non-post. :)
I'd like to draw your attention to and make you aware of the newest feature of the blog. Drumroll, please. The 2011 Shelf of Read Books! (Since changed to Books I've Read in 2011 - less drama there...) Thanks are at the end if you make it all the way through. :)
All undeserved hype aside, this is just a concise and ordered list of all the books I've read in the year, along with authors and personal ratings. I have done my best to provide informative links to each book which will take you to a site where you can read a synopsis, look inside the book, and find reviews. (Most of them are linked to amazon.com which has the best features for reading first pages, reviews, ect.) Some of the books, however, are out-of-print or unavailable, so these features are also unavailable. If you want to see my personal reviews, I compile them at this site (click here). My username for a review there is JocelynRose. If you can't find mine (or don't have the time to find my review in the list) the site is full of amazing reviewers who write better ones than I do. As a side note, I don't review every book I read.
I follow the Goodreads criteria for reviewing which means 5 stars is "it was amazing", 4 stars is "really liked it", 3 stars is "liked it", 2 stars is "it was ok" and 1 star is "didn't like it" (which can be an understatement sometimes...).
I'll be adding more books to the shelf as I go along, so please take a look every once in a while. :)
One last thing: If I come across a book whose praises must be trumpeted in a place more auspicious than the list, I will do so on my blog. I don't want to bore everyone with itty-bitty reviews on every book I read. (This is sort of just an excuse to avoid writing reviews for every book I read and have read in the past, but there are probably a million reviews already for the books I really love. My comments would most likely be very redundant and unoriginal.)
Thanks for reading!
-- Jamie