But first…a little bookishness…

I’m having a lot of fun reading all the feedback from people about the third Sucks to Be Me book. Looks like I’ll definitely be incorporating both Paris and London into the book. The final title is still up in the air, but there have been some good suggestions. And, from the answers from the newsletter subscribers (who I’d asked whether they thought the book should be in first person, present tense like the first two books or in first person, past tense, it looks like the books will probably be in first person, present to match the first two. Close vote on that though, so we’ll see if any other subscribers respond).

Soap! This batch is lemon scented.

But I’m doing other stuff too. Like making soap again. I hadn’t made a batch since before we moved here. I had to buy all the supplies again. The cool thing is that here I can literally walk a few blocks and get ALL the ingredients I need to make soap (sodium hydroxide/lye, oils, butters, etc.) whereas in the US it wasn’t nearly so easy. You had to sign an affadavit over there to buy the lye and swear that you weren’t going to do anything evil with it (muuuhahahahawaaa) while here you can go in pretty much any shop and buy it off the shelf.

Heck, I even made the soap in a leftover Pringles can (hence the roundness). Hubby has been making pickles and we’ve all been making bath bombs (Max LOVES bath bombs). So we’ve been very crafty lately.

Finally got to meet a Twitter author friend of mine last night — Sarwat Chadda (you should totally go check out his books if you like kick butt heroines…and I know you do!). He joined in the D&D game I’ve been playing every other week in the city. Very funny guy.

Lego Ranger FTW!

And we managed to not die last night, which was amazing considering the number of orcs we were up against. Best part of the night though was when (and this is where I’m gonna go all geek on you, so if you’re not all D&D geeky, feel free to skip ’cause you’re gonna be going Whuzzah?) a bloodied and almost dead Sarwat proposed picking up a freshly dead orc to use as a shield and the DM let him roll on it and he rolled a 20! Orc shield for the win! </end geek> Fun times.

I’m playing a Ranger character and The Max, who is still the cutest most cleverest most amazingest little dude ever, made me a Lego version. And speaking of The Max…I can’t believe it’s already June. And he’s going to be full time in school in September. He is such a little man.

In other news…we’re still exploring London and trying to make sure we “act like tourists” every now and again (you know, get out and do stuff vs. getting caught up in day to day life and not doing anything). Took the hubster to the Proud Camden Cabaret the other night. That was…interesting. Fun, really. First time seeing Burlesque. It was…burlesque-ish. Lots of glitter. Pretty cool.

And we explored a new-to-us area this past weekend near Elephant & Castle in the SE (Southwark which looks like you’d call it “South Wark” but you pronounce it more like “Suff ulk” which can confuse you to know end when you first move here and here them announce it on the Tube). I was checking out an old herb shop for some essential oils and stuff. We wound up stopping at a little museum there too and it was quite cool. Called the Cuming Museum. It’s like a family’s collection of oddities. Max really liked it. They had a little Dickens exhibit that was neat…and smelly. Like smells from the times. So, yeah. Stinky smells. Kind of an odd thing. But now I know what a rope picker smelled like and what boot black smelled like, so there’s that.

And that’s about it. All the non-bookish stuff.