I’ve been doing something new this summer…swimming laps! I’m loving it!

Granted, the weather is perfect, and I swim at the end of the day when the neighborhood pool is pretty quiet. I can’t guarantee I will be quite as enthusiastic about this form of exercise in December, but for now, I really look forward to that hour of the day. The solitude, the exercise, the fitness results…everything but turning my hair green.

When I’m not swimming, I’m working like a fiend on my third in the Stoney Ridge Seasons series–the one that features the youngest sister, Mary Kate, who is a PISTOL. It’s not due until January 1st, but I have an incredibly busy Autumn with a lot of travel, and I’m in the zone right now. Yesterday, I had a quiet day at the house and woke up early. I think I wrote 8,000 words! A record! I wasn’t even trying to hit a word count…I just had a breakthrough moment in a critical plot logjam.

Anyway…with all of the time I’ve been spending with my computer, I’ve collected some bloggy info that everyone should know, just in case you are in a clutch moment on JEOPARDY someday:

The average person’s left hand does 56% of the typing.

The sentence: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” uses every letter of the alphabet.

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.

The words ‘racecar,’ ‘kayak’ and ‘level’ are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes).

There are only four words in the English language which end in “dous”: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous

There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: “abstemious” and “facetious.”

Women blink nearly twice as much as men. (This, I believe, is because we spend too much time writing novels at the computer.)

Lots of good things coming up this week–some exciting news that I hope to share later on, as details firm up. And Thursday’s guest on Amish Wisdom is Erik Wesner of AmishAmerica. Erik is a very interesting guy who lives part of the year in Poland, part of the year among Amish settlements in Pennsylvania and Ohio. His insights about the Amish are quite fascinating–he has an eye for detail and a sense of story. Excellent writer, too. I can’t wait to see what Erik has been up to this year!

Thanks for stopping by! Hope your week is off to a great start.

2 Comments

Lo on August 8, 2011 at 3:54 pm

I loved hearing about the swimming..something I used to do…and it sounds like it is not only good physical exercise but mental..the writing !! Yay
Robin Grossbier on August 8, 2011 at 9:36 pm

I see Harvest of Grace has hit the shelves! Being one of your readers of the transcript…I would love to win a copy for my library!