JD, everyone will probably laugh at me, but I have about 500 ceramic molds and 2 kilns.  I love to work with porcelain and pottery underglazes.  I paid for a few semesters of college by making Llardo knock offs.  I quit making them for a while becasue I could not keep up with the demand.

I especailly like this because in working with raw porcelain you have to be very gentle or it shatters.  I make doll faces and in regular pottery also make figurines.  My favorite is doing the faces becasue it takes an exteremely steady hand and total concentration.  If I do not concentrate only on the painting, the piece is ruined.

Golf of course I play for the same reason.  I have to concentrate on the game.  Letting outside thoughts or work creep in makes for a lousy play.

One of my hobbies is to write historical romance novels.  I say it's a hobby because I haven't published any of them.  Of course, I haven't tried to in a long while, but I would love to.  It's hard to get an agent.  I also love to read historical romance novels.  I also do genealogy.  I love books.  I'm a geek, what can I say? 

I've made a couple of quilts for my kids, but I've never shown any.  I write poetry and songs.  I won some awards for my poetry and short stories in high school, but haven't really done anything with them since then.  Gretchen Wilson is from near where I live.  I may have to try and get hold of her and let her hear my songs to see if she's interested.  I doubt I can get hold of her, but I should try.  I wanted to go an American Idol, but I'm too old.  Sigh.  Damn Simon and his age restrictions.

I also have a rose garden and love to tend my roses.  Yellow roses are my favorite.  They remind me of my great-grandmother, who loved them also.  When I look at them, I see her.  She was a great lady. 

Halloween and Playmobil.

I love making detailed costumes and decorating... it's my favorite holiday because it stresses creativity - as opposed to Xmas which I more often than not just stress about. I spend way to much time making costumes and decorating, but love it! Plus it's all about partying, adult and/or child, versus hanging out with dysfunctional extended family.

Playmobil is an expensive toy I enjoyed as a child and buy "for my tyke", loosely translated, that means she doesn't get to keep it when she grows up and moves out.

Yes! Tom Robbin's Still Life with Woodpecker. One of my favorite books and a favorite author. I've found people either love him or don't.

Hey Trish-

If/when you have the time- could you give us a run-down of how one would go about starting a geneology research of one's own? Do you have a set process for research, where did you find a goldmine of info etc?

Thanks,

JD

In the early to mid 1990s, being an English major, I really really dug short fiction and poetry. I was part of a writer's group at the university that I attended, and it was pure competition on a weekly basis to create the best work to workshop in the group each week. I am sure anyone that has ever tried to be a creative writer knows this- nothing kills creative thinking more than having to head to work for 40+ hours a week.

I am rediscovering, now that the spring cometh, that grilling out is quite the hobby I enjoy. I had a rough day at work, and it was the thought that it was sunny and warm out, and that I had cold beer, burgers and vegetables to grill out once the work day was done that got me through the day! All day in the back of my mind, it was "5...3....2 more hours of you turkeys and I am SO outta here!"

-- Edited by JD The Jazz Doctor at 23:28, 2005-04-05

Since this topic has been resurrected, I'll resurrect another portion of it.

There are places you can go to get your book published for a price.  The major ones are I-Universe, AuthorHouse, and Xlibris.  I used to work at AuthorHouse.  These are print on demand publishers.  If you just want to see your book in print and be a published author, these are the way to go, but if you're looking to sell a bunch of books, you really need an agent and to be traditionally published.

The way it works, you submit your manuscript in finished form (and cover if you have one), they put it in a print ready file and send it to a printer.  Then you get a copy of your book.  Then, as people order copies of your book, they will be printed, one at a time, at the printer and shipped to the consumer.  Your book would also be listed on Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com and available to order from almost any bookseller. 

You have to keep a few things in mind when going POD.  First, keep in mind that they work differently than traditional publishers.  Traditional publishers are looking for bestsellers so they can sell millions of one book.  POD publishers make as much money from selling publishing services as selling books.  POD publishers will accept just about any manuscript, so they get a bad rap because they do have a lot of bad books.  Also, you have to pay them to get your book published, and the services in between are normally ala carte.  Usually, editing services are not included in the price.  If you make changes to your manuscript after you submit it to them, you usually have to pay extra.  Usually they will design a cover for you, but if you don't like it, you'll have to pay to get it changed, or pay extra up front for custom design services.  They don't market your book for you, unless you pay an extra charge.  If you want your book to be shelved in bookstores, you usually have to approach the bookstore manager directly yourself.

POD isn't bad, but most people don't realize what the service really is and what the purpose of the company is.  You have to be prepared before you sign on with them.

JD, you're asking two totally different questions...

I do a lot of stuff, reading, painting, computer art, but the hobby I spend the most time on is probably video games.  (Am I a geek or what?)  I'm currently playing Diablo II, and I play the Sims II a lot too.

The favorite place I've been for vacation would be Key West.  I went there once with my grandparents, and I loved it (even though I was with my grandparents and too young to dirnk at the time).  We went back for our honeymoon.  We loved the Hemmingway House, and our favorite bar was probably The Bull because of the great live music.  It's also a great town to just walk around because of all the awesome old houses.  We stayed in a bed and breakfast, and it adds a totally different feel to the island than staying in a hotel.  If I could live anywhere, it would probably be Key West.

I love Grand Theft Auto too!  Either one, but I like the soundtrack on San Adreas better.

Way back in college I made a decision to take one passion and earn a living, and keep one passion for enjoyment.  I got into commercial design to pay the bills and would get on stage for the creative outlet.  Since then I've been able to stay in packaging design, and I have been blessed by the ministry that our whole family is involved in at church.  We provide the dramas, and music for our kids ministry called Promiseland.  The overall creative buzz you get from acting, singing, dancing is hard to describe briefly.  It truly is a "bug" that you get and never shake.  The process of molding, shaping, investigating a character and making it come alive, taking that and seeing if you can get an audience to believe what your presenting, holding peoples attention for a given length of time, it's a rush!

More mellow pastimes for me are the YMCA Adventure Guides with my girls and fishing.  I like golf but I'm just starting, and my youngest is pulling me towards joining Tae Kwon Do with her.

I have not had time for any hobbies lately.  I love to do all the things I said before, but I just don't have time to do them.  It sounds sad, but lately my hobby has been going out and getting soused once a month.  I go out and party, get drunk and dance the night away.  It's my night to destress for the month. 

When I saw this topic up again and read through them all, I realized I never answered JD about the genealogy.  You can get a good start by tracing backward through you family.  If you know who your grandparents are and where they got married, go to the courthouse where the record is and look at the book.  It will list their parents.  Then do the same for their parents.  You can also find death records, birth records, etc.  Each state has its own laws, so you have to check into it.  You can't get a copy of someone's birth certificate in Illinois if you are not them until it has been 100 years.  It's all because of identity theft.  Gotta love it.  Ancestry.com is a great place, too.  I have some of my stuff posted on there.  Just remember, some people post things without doing the actual research.  Be very careful of accepting it as 100% fact unless you know they did the research.  Genealogy without research is mythology, as one person once said. 

   I like to antaganise red heads  

Thanks Mz . . .

I built a little rig I can hook to a kite line that lifts my digital camera. It has a couple little gear motors that while one slowly turns the whole thing, the other motor clicks the shutter every few seconds. I put it up about 300 feet and just let it go around a few times and see what I get. I keep the good ones and just delete the bad ones.

At the risk of offending Star with more of my pictures, here are a couple shots taken from a kite during a local festival a couple years ago. It was really dry here that year so it's all brown instead of green, but still kind of neat.





The kite I use to lift my camera rig is a single line "Rok" about 8ft. tall and 6ft. wide. It is a big yellow smiley face that I sewed up on my wife's sewing machine.

In the bottom left corner of the bottom picture, there are three lawn chairs. We were lazy that day and three of us sat in those chairs and flew our identical stunt kites around each other most of the afternoon. Great fun was had by all!