Aloha Kitchen is Now Rhymes With Tao!

Hmm.

It appears as if many of you read Aloha Kitchen from a feed reader or aggregator, and have thus missed out on the fact that Aloha Kitchen is now Rhymes With Tao. I had to change things up a bit, for so many reasons. One of them was that I kept getting hits for a restaurant in Las Vegas, and if they're tracking their Google Alerts, I bet they were sick of getting my hits. So, it's over. I moved.

You can now find me, all of the AK posts, and an increasing number of Stepmom/Real Mom, et al., posts at http://rhymeswithtao.blogspot.com. As I begin freelancing a little more (or, at all), I'll redirect that to my actual website ... but that's some time off. In the meantime, please update your bookmarks and feeds to Rhymes With Tao!

Thanks!

Off Limits! Or, Why Mommy Can't Have Nice Things

{ Image source: kamerakamote }

Like most of the U.S., we had Monday off in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was also really, really cold. As a result, I found myself yelling at the kids most of the weekend to GET OFF THE NEW SOFA WITH THAT SNOW GLOBE or GET OUT OF MY CLEAN UNDERWEAR or STOP MESSING WITH THE GARDENING SHEARS or ... well, you get the picture. They were climbing the walls. And the furniture. And occasionally the baby gates.

There are a lot of areas in our house that are off limits: our bedroom, their own bedrooms, the living room, the kitchen, the office nook, the stairs. And I had to think, if I had that many places in my house that were no-fly zones, would I even feel like I lived there?

The thing is, I did have that many areas off limits to me. When I lived in Alabama, I wasn't allowed in my parents' room or my brother's room. We weren't banned from the formal dining room or the sitting room, but we better have had good reasons to be in them. The same went for the laundry room and the front, back, and tool sheds. As for my mother's sewing room, we were allowed to go in because it also served as the craft supply storage area, but we could only go in to get what we needed and then get out. Frankly, I spent most of my time either in my room, in the family room, in the office/game room, or outside.

When we lived in Ohio, it was much of the same: I was banned from my parents' room, my brother's room, and the office. When I was home, I was either in my bedroom, the dining room, or the living room, if I was in the house at all.

Now, as an adult, there are still areas of my parents' house that I consider off limits. I don't go into my parents' bedroom without permission, unless they're not home and I need something in there. Even then, I go in, get what I need, and get out. I rarely go into my father's office or the laundry room, unless again, I need to grab something quickly. When my brother is there, I stay out of his lair. I dare not set a single toe in my mom's sewing room unless I need the iron. Do I feel welcome? Absolutely. Do I feel like I'm walking on eggshells? Not in the slightest.

It comes down to boundaries. (And, in our case right now, safety.) I want to teach the kids to respect others' privacy and to expect the same treatment. I want to help them understand that it's not only okay to claim ownership of something, but that they should respect that someone else owns whatever that something is and LEAVE IT THE HELL ALONE.

But really, I would like to put out my nice things without Petra picking them up and throwing them.

How about you? Do you have off-limits areas of your house? What are they and why are they off limits?

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Journey to Becoming a Freelancer: Week 2, When Reading Counts Towards Writing Time

{ Image source: Alexander Lyubavin }

My Journey to Greatness 2012 officially kicked off last week when I chose what I was going chase: selling a manuscript. Or, perhaps I should reword that so that it sounds a little less monetary and more professional and dream-fulfilling: becoming a freelancer.

I spent an inordinate amount of scheduled writing time last week reading through my copy of the 2012 Writer's Market (Deluxe Edition), an annually-updated listing of book publishers, literary agents, contests and grants, etc., from F + W  Media. I've received copies as gifts from my kids two years in a row, and I never cracked open my 2011 edition.

In the front of the book, there are articles on the craft and business of writing by established authors, freelancers, and agents. This immediately became my favorite section because it was chock full of tips. How to write, how to break into the market, how to build a platform, everything. If you can extract the main ideas from each article and follow them exactly, you have a really good shot at getting into the business.

In the middle of the book is a fat, juicy section filled with listings for consumer magazines. Each listing gives the general topic (e.g. women's), pay rates, how to submit manuscripts, when they pay, what rights they buy, pretty much everything you need to know about that publication.

Here's where I ran into what I consider a stumbling block: most publications want you to query with published clips.

Hmm. What we essentially have is a major catch-22: you must have published clips in order to submit an idea for publication, but you can't get published clips until you have an idea approved for publication.

It makes sense. Why would a publisher take a chance on an unknown freelancer without seeing some of his or her work? From a business standpoint, that's ridiculous. If a publisher accepts material from an untested author and then it sucks donkey nuts, the publisher is out money AND time and will have to call in a quick favor to an old standby, therefore wasting MORE money ... no. It ain't happening.

There's a way around this roadblock: submit to--and win--contests. The problems are that a) one must win the contest and b) most contests are literary in nature, not commercial. And the general idea is that you should not query with clips published in a genre or on a topic that isn't related to what you're currently querying. Which, of course, sets up my next roadblock: despite the fact that I've been published before (under a nom de plume), it's not in a form in which I particularly care to write.

So.

Problems, eh?

My self-assigned task for this week, then, is two-fold: one, narrow down in which genres and in which forms I want to write. Two, find a handful of publications that allow queries WITHOUT published clips. I think that further defining my parameters will help propel me towards my goal of becoming a freelancer.

How about you? Take any steps towards your 2012 goal this week?

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Photography How-To: Create a Lomo-Like Effect in GIMP

{ © Lynn Daue, 2005, 2011. All rights reserved. }

Back in March of last year, I posted a Thursday 13 with a bunch of pictures that I had processed using GIMP, a freely-distributed photo-processing program. At the end of the post, I asked if anyone wanted to know how to do it ... and then never followed up. Is it too late to drop some knowledge on you?

How-To: Create a Lomo-Like Effect in GIMP

1. Start with an unedited picture. It can be of whatever you want, really. I'm going to use this one from our family camping trip this past year. (Truthfully, I've already edited this by cropping and minor color correction, but let's pretend I didn't.)

{ © Lynn Daue 2011. All rights reserved. }

Note: Make sure that your foreground/background colors are BLACK and WHITE, respectively.

2. Crop it to your desired size. I'm a big fan of using the Golden Sections or Rule of Thirds guide when cropping. This picture was previously cropped using Golden Sections. See how the right hand vertical of the grid is (mostly) aligned with the foreground of the fence?

3. Color-correct your base image. For this photo, I applied an automatic white color balance. This won't always work, so read more about color-correction in GIMP here.

4. If you used an additional layer to color correct your base image, flatten your image. You can find this command under the Layers menu. In the Layers sidebar, click on the uppermost layer. Go to Layers>Merge Down.

5. Sharpen your color-corrected image. For overall sharpening, use the Unsharp Mask. I prefer to use the Unsharp Mask with the preset values. Find by clicking Filters>Enhance>Unsharp Mask.

6. Add a layer of black. Yep, that's it, go on and add that all-black layer by clicking on Layers>New Layer>Foreground Color. Change the name to something like "Vingette" as to not get confused.

Warning! If you changed your foreground color in Step Three, make sure you change it back to black before proceeding!

7. Change the mode to Soft Light. In the layers sidebar, go to Mode and select the Soft Light mode.

8. Add a layer mask. On the black layer, add a layer mask by clicking on Layers>Mask>Add Layer Mask. Select White (Full opacity).

9. Freehand select a section of the photo. On the Toolbox sidebar, select the icon that looks like a lasso. Select Feather Edges and set the radius to something high, like 80. Freehand a section of the photo, presumably the subject on which you want to focus.

10. Fill the selection with black. While your lassoed area is selected, click on the paint bucket icon in the Toolbox bar. Then scroll over to your picture and fill the selected area with black. You should see your selected area come through brighter and fade out towards the edges. If you don't, hit Undo (Ctrl+Z), make sure that your layer mask is selected (the white layer next to the all-black layer in the Layers sidebar) and try again.

11. Deselect the filled area.  Click on Ctrl+Shift+A.

12. Blur the layer mask. Ensure that your layer mask is still selected. Go to Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur and set the Blur Radius to something really high, like 300. A general rule of thumb is 10% of the image's larger dimension in pixels (e.g. a 3200x2800 pixel picture would have a blur radius of 320).

13. Adjust the opacity of the black layer. On the layers sidebar, click on the black square. Adjust the opacity until there is only a hint of black on the edges of the photo in the main window. For most photos, something between 60 and 80 percent opacity is good. I used 60 percent for this one.

14. Flatten your image. As before, make sure that your black layer is selected. Go to Layers>Merge Down.

Congratulations! You've just applied a vingette to your photo. Now, on to the fun part!

15. Warp the color. Open the Curves window under Colors (Colors>Curves). Pump up the white and dial down the black until the previously straight diagonal line forms an S. Play with the colors until you get what you like.

16. Dial down the color (optional). If you warped the color enough in the previous step, you probably got something overly vibrant. It may be a bit much, especially if you used this process on pictures of people. To dial down the color, add another layer of black (Layers>New Layer>Foreground Color). In the layers sidebar, change the mode to Color and the opacity to about 40%. (If you don't remember how to change the mode, refer back to Step 7). Play with the opacity to get what you like. For this, I used a 30% opacity.

17. Final touchups. Merge your color leaching layer down (Layers>Merge Down) and apply another Unsharp Mask (Filters>Enhance>Unsharp Mask), if needed. Voila! You're done!

If you used this with people, you may have other issues like spotty skin, red eyes, or just plain weird shadows. I don't know how to do this well, so you're out of luck here. Try Googling "gimp+[whatever correction you need]" for more tutorials. And good luck!

Have you tried this photo enchancing process in GIMP? How about any others? What's your favorite and how do you do it? Leave your link in the comments section; I'd love to see your work!

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Thursday 13: Goals for 2012

{ source unknown }

In 2010 and 2011, I set out 13 goals for myself for the coming year. Technically, this could be a one-per-month-plus-one-for-good-luck thing, but it's more because ... hey, it was a Thursday 13 post. You need 13 items.

Neither year resulted in accomplishing everything on my list, but at least trying to reach set goals made me a better person. (I think.) I don't expect to finish everything on my list of Goals for 2012 either, but I do expect to try. (Not like 2011. 2011 was bad for Getting Things Done.)

1. Finish my Year of Awesome. In May, I made a list of things that I wanted to do before my 30th birthday. I could cheat and list each of those items as a separate goal, but I'm not going to do that. I would just like to finish the list, even if it means running around the weekend before and trying to hit four new states and a bunch of places of historical value.

2. Finish my current novel. Also in May, I started work on a new novel. It was a one-off of opening chapters for a contest that I entered, and as it turned out, I did quite well. Not winning well, but I was in the top 25. Not bad for something that I dashed off over a few weeks while wiping butts. Anyway, I polished it and tried again two months later, still landing in the top 25. Then,I discovered Will Write for Shoes and The Weekend Novelist. My writing has been transformed, as well as my approach. I have a year--well, about 50 more weekends--to finish this novel. And it's going to rock. (I hope.)

3. Start--and finish--another Journey To Greatness. In 2010, I was a fairly avid reader of ThoseGirlsAreWild.com. I was a little old for their target audience, but I liked what they had to say. I've stopped reading regularly--they're still wonderful writers and lovely women, but I don't relate to the content as much as I did two years ago. What I do still relate to is setting an overarching goal for the year and doing something EVERY WEEK to accomplish that. They called it a Journey to Greatness, something that I wholeheartedly support. I haven't settled on my goal, but it's likely to do with writing. Because I love it, yo.

4. Decorate our living room. Late last year, I cut a deal with Matt--if I stop stressing about keeping the entire house magazine-neat, then I'm allowed to go all designer on one room in the house AND he'll help me keep the kids out of it. I chose the living room. So far, we have a half-finished gallery wall with photos of our children and pieces of cultural art and our rocking piano bar. Our couch was delivered this week, and I have an old foot locker that's either going to become a table or a chair. Not sure which yet. We just need a few more things in there and it is DONE. Give us the year.

5. Replenish our savings account. This year was a little rough for us financially. We had a few unexpected expenses come up, and our savings took a small hit. We're only a little short, but I'd like to get back to that comfy spot.

6. Start a salad garden. I grew herbs and tomatoes last year, and it was lovely. We had fresh basil on damn near everything in the summertime, and it was so satisfying to start the plants from seedlings and watch them grow. The kids enjoyed being part of it too. This year, I would like to grow something a little more substantial. We don't have a yard anymore, so I'll have to figure out container planting, but we should be able to grow a few things!

7. Make money writing. I think this one makes me a bit selfish ... but it's true. I would like to finally make a little coin doing something that already sucks up 1-3 hours of my day, nearly every day. It could be from a book advance or from magazine articles, but a little fun money would be awesome.

8. Go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. I can go by myself, with the kids, with the family, with Matt, with friends, whatever. I just want to go. And call me a nerd if you want.

9. Read five classics. As depicted by my 2010 and 2011 Books Lists, I like chick lit and popular literature. I have a deplorable knowledge of classic fiction. I must rectify this immediately.

10. Try a No Spend Month. Thanks to Pinterest (I think), I started reading smallnotebook.org, a wonderful blog about living simply. The writer and her family, every July, do a No Spend Month. They set a very small budget and, aside from rent and bills, don't spend money outside of that budget. They've learned the real difference between wants and needs, which is inspiring. I want to do February, but that would rule out living off of things that we grow. Maybe June?

11. Set up and stick to a writing schedule. When I accounted for my writing time recently, I came to the conclusion that I'm about halfway through the 10,000 hours required to become an expert at something. If I keep at my current pace of about 8 hours per week, I'll be well over forty before I can assume that I'll be published to the degree that I would like to be. If I can up it to about 13 hours, that brings me down to seven years. If I can squeeze in the recommended 20 hours per week, or about 1000 hours a year, that lowers my expected rate of success down to about five years. If I'm going to hit any one of these goals, however, I need to create and stick to a writing schedule. For real.

12. Take more pictures. We do stuff, I promise. But I never have a camera on me and my phone is too dirty for taking real pictures. I want to change that, because my babies are growing and I don't want to look back on this time and say, "WTF, Lynn, why didn't you take more pictures when the kids still liked you?"

13. Take a gymnastics class with Petra. I'm determined to have a gymnast in the family. I don't know who it's going to be yet, but my money is on this one. She's a rough-and-tumble baby with powerful legs that is still pretty flexible, and I want to encourage that before she learns fear. Also, I didn't get to take a regular class with Malia, and I would like to do it with at least one baby before they all get too old.

It's interesting to me to see how self-centered my list has become. Over the past two years, I've spent some time focusing on my husband and children, but this year, it's all about ME. Am I ashamed of that? No, not in the slightest. It's my list for my self-improvement, and it should focus on me. Also, things with the fam are pretty good now, so no need to spend extra time fixing what ain't broke, right?

Right.

Have you set goals for 2012? What are they?

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