Rain and leftovers and writing, oh my

It is raining! How mah-velous. We need it. A girl just ran past my office window and I'm jealous. It's been way too long since I had a good rain run.

Apologies for my negative attitude in the previous post. The buyers I was talking about made an offer on a third house yesterday and, miracle of miracles, it looks like we're going to make it to contract on this one.

I need volunteers to come over and eat leftovers from our refrigerator. In the past week we've had lots of company for dinner and as a result we are overflowing with Tupperware containers. Tonight is the first fantasy football draft and I wanted to serve leftover delight but fried chicken has been requested. If you are hungry or know any hungry people, please call me.

This week I have really focused on getting in some Writer's Market work. I scanned all of my clips, which was a huge task but well worth it (now I can submit queries by email). I sent a query letter to Parade, which has such cheesy articles but pays well. Since it's 95 percent freelance written, it seems like any decent writer with a decent idea would have a decent shot at breaking in. I also submitted an essay for Newsweek's "My Turn" column, where everyday people can get published, but of course only one per week can be printed, and apparently they get 800 submissions a month. So that's not very good odds. But I had fun writing it and it took only a couple of hours and I'll just resubmit it to some lower-paying publications unless an act of God occurs and Newsweek accepts it.

I'm going to try to start going home after lunch at least one day a week to work on writing. Even if I'm not doing real work when I'm in the office, it's hard to concentrate because there are people talking all around me and phones ringing, etc.

I never got around to blogging about last weekend (Stephen K.'s surprise birthday party and game night with Amanda and Stephen T.) but Amanda just saved me the trouble. Click here. Check out Amanda and Lauren's gorgeous new haircuts, and Amanda's highlights!