Catching Idle Butterflies

Cool Birthday Writing Anxieties w/ Potatoes

One of my favorite forums on this site is "Technical Support Forum" . In reading the questions and answers, I have learned many tips and tricks that make doing things much easier. Plus I’ve learned about features I didn’t know existed.

For instance, I learned something uber cool yesterday! I’m sure all of you have added web sites with super-long URLs that widen out your blog to the point a reader has to scroll from side to side in order to read it. Very annoying. Kinda like this entry. Sorry.

Well, boys and girls, there’s a way around it! The code is {popnote}. As an example, the actual URL from yesterday’s entry looks like this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

The code structure to shorten it looks like this:

{popnote:"Pearls Before Breakfast"}http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html{/popnote}

That yields:

Pearls Before Breakfast

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721....

Isn’t that the coolest?!

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Today is Kenzie ’s 55th Birthday! She hopes to receive 55 comments in her blog as a birthday gift, so as soon as you’re done here, go wish her a Happy Birthday and help make her wish come true!

Oh, you want a link to make things easy for you? I suppose: "Each Day Already is a Challenge" 

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After I rewrote 7 chapters of my novel, I decided to email Mark The Prospective Agent and ask him how many chapters he wanted before I continued on.

He emailed me the next day asking for the first six (I sent him 5 last time). Sooo, after I edit a hard copy of the first six chapters (I found three boo-boos on the first page alone), I’ll email it to him. Strange, I’m more nervous now than all the other times I sent him my chapters.

Actually, it’s not all that strange. I took his advice as much as I could, and I can’t help but worry it won’t be enough. That being the case, I’m done – or more accurately, he’ll be done, and I’ll have to pound the pavement for a different agent. I’m not overly concerned about it, because I can think of two agents off the top of my head, and I know there’s more who’ll take a look at least. I just despise research.

Gotta question fer ya. I’d like to submit something to The 76th Annual Competition

https://www.writersdigest.com/contests/annual/76th

sponsored by Writer's Digest due May 15, but I have no idea as yet what to submit. It could be something in my portfolio you read and liked, or perhaps a blog entry you liked I could expand on? What do you think?

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And now for a spelling lesson:

If GH can stand for P as in Hiccough

If OUGH can stand for O as in Dough

If PHTH can stand for T as in Phthisis

If EIGH can stand for A as in Neighbor

If TTE can stand for T as in Gazette

If EAU can stand for O as in Plateau

Then the right way to spell POTATO should be:

"GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU"