I don’t really believe in New Year’s Resolutions. Not of the sort like “I will exercize/write/whatever-makes-me-feel-virtuous more” variety. They generally don’t work out.

I do, however, believe in New Year’s Plans. Things like “I will go to the pool and swim half an hour three mornings a week.” I did that several years ago and have kept up with it pretty religiously. Or “I will work on my mess-in-progress for so many hours a week”. I find that as long as I make it specific, I’m pretty good at following through.

This year, I’m making a simple resolution, to remember to treat myself as a valued employee of my writing business rather than a slave. This means rewarding myself for making progress, allowing myself sick time if necessary, and making the time to lunch with writer buddies more often.

Of course, plans sometimes go awry. I’d planned to host my writer buddies at my home today for a post-holiday detox/New Year’s recharging party (complete with Mimosas, egg and cheesy things and of course, plenty of chocolate). However, we’ve had a minor blizzard which puts me to Plan B, hanging with the kids. I’m also snatching an hour to write while they’re out playing in the snow.

I expect the plans for this evening should work out. My husband and I used to go out for New Year’s in the years BK (Before Kids) but after that, sleep deprivation and the difficulty of getting sitters took over. Although in spirit I like the idea of family-friendly First Night celebrations, it’s usually so bitterly cold in our area that we’ve gone over to “cocooning”. We have a nice dinner at home, including at least one new recipe for the New Year. This year it’s cannoli cheesecake. Afterwards we all get into our PJs and go into the finished basement (aka the Man Cave) to watch movies until midnight. We watch the ball drop, we hug and kiss and then we’re all in bed by about 12:05.

So what is everyone else doing today or this evening? And I wish you all a happy and prosperous 2009!

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

Some snippets from an 1829 cookbook:

Coffee, like tea, promotes watchfulness; indeed some persons cannot sleep after drinking it in an evening.

So, coffee lovers: does this curl your toes? Are you picky about your coffee? Or do you drink whatever comes your way, as long as it has caffeine?

And don’t forget: next Tuesday, we’re discussing the first Ioan Gruffudd “Horatio Hornblower” here at Risky Regencies!

Cara
Cara King, who prefers tea

I wasn’t sure what to blog about today. I’m still in a post-Christmas stupor of wine, candy, piles of new books (yay!), whipping the WIP into shape to be sent in, playing with the dogs with their new toys, etc. I’ve also been wasting lots of time reading other blogs–beauty product blogs, opera blogs, movie blogs, whatever looks interesting. On some of my favorite movie blogs, they have had a meme going around listing 20 favorite actresses, which I have really enjoyed following. On these blogs, “favorite” can mean anything–most beautiful, most interesting, actresses you will watch in any movie no matter how bad. So I decided to do something like that.

These are 20 favorites. 10 actresses and 10 actors, which I find to be especially useful when needing some inspiration for characters. They’re not necessarily the best actors (though some definitely are), but they are interesting in many ways. (And, btw, if you need a pick-me-up kind of movie this dismal time of year, run out and see Happy-Go-Lucky. It’s fabulous, definitely my favorite of the movies I’ve seen this year, and I hope to see Sally Hawkins in the Oscar line-up next month. I didn’t much like her as Anne Elliott, but she is perfect in this movie).

Ten Actresses:

Charlotte Gainsbourg

Audrey Tautou (I do like French movies…)

Penelope Cruz

Cate Blanchett

Keira Knightley

Emily Mortimer

Nicole Kidman

Natalie Portman

Rachel Weisz

Kate Winslet

And Ten Actors:

Orlando (of course!)

Matthew McFadyen

James McAvoy

James Franco (I love how he can be both intense and hilarious!)

Hugh Jackman

Rufus Sewell (btw, does anyone know what this movie is???)

David Tennant

Christian Bale

Gerard Butler (Happy Holidays, Diane!)

Clive Owen (And Happy Holidays to Megan, too!)

Who are some of your favorite “inspirations”? Seen any good movies this holiday season, or found any good bargains in the post-Christmas sales?

See you in 2009! (And be sure and join me next weekend as I “launch” my January book, High Seas Stowaway. There will be giveaways and fun pirate stuff, though sadly no warm sandy beaches…)

And apologies that this image is the only Regency-related item in this post. Right now, I’m snatching time to compose this post between school winter parties and packing for a trip to my parents and I have nothing relevant to say, except that maybe some of you can relate to my state last Saturday afternoon…

After coming home after running errands in blistering cold, I stared at my To Do List and felt so overwhelmed that I decided to make a fresh pot of coffee. So I rinsed the pot, ditched the old filter and discovered that the garbage can in the kitchen was full. I went out to the garage to throw it out.

As I returned to the kitchen, I saw the tray of cookies we were going to use as part of our Christmas tree decoration and remembered that I needed to put yarn through them for hanging. So I went upstairs to look for the white yarn, which I thought was in the sewing basket in the linen closet. Well, the yarn wasn’t in the sewing basket, but I ran across some crochet hooks, which reminded me that I planned to make a scarf for a friend and was going to shop for materials the next day. So I went through the crochet hooks and made a list of the sizes I own, to avoid buying more duplicates.

Then I remembered that I was there for yarn and concluded it must be in the larger craft box in the garage. As I headed to the garage, I passed the downstairs closet, saw my purse and remembered I was out of tissues. I made a mental note to get a small packet from the upstairs closet (where I’d just been, of course). Then I wandered into the kitchen and saw that I hadn’t put a new liner into the garbage can. I did that and then noticed the coffee pot still in the sink.

So I made some coffee, which made me want a cookie, which reminded me that I still needed that white yarn. So I headed back out to the garage and got the yarn. I drank some coffee, prepared the cookies for hanging, and felt a glowing sense of closure as I got ready to tackle the rest of my list.

But I didn’t get a packet of tissues into my purse until Monday.

Anyone else have days like these?

By the time this is posted, I will be on my way to my parents’ house, looking forward to a traditional Lithuanian Christmas Eve dinner, complete with smoked eel (ugh) and honey spice cookies (yum)! I hope you are all planning something fun and warmest wishes for a happy holiday!

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

Last year, I posted a copy of my annual faux-holiday letter (or, more correctly, my holiday faux-letter) here…and it got very few comments. Which may mean that no one’s interested.

So here, unrequested, is a copy of my 2008 holiday-card-letter-insert-thingy:

CARA’S POLITICALLY GROUNDBREAKING, OVEN-BAKED, ADJUSTABLE-RATE, TRANS-FAT-FREE, RECESSION-PROOF, MORE-BELOVED-THAN-ROBERT PATTINSON, SO-GOOD-YOU’D-THINK-TINA-FEY-WROTE IT 2008 HOLIDAY LETTER

Greetings from the House of Books! My, a lot happened in 2008…

First: you may have heard of the Large Hadron Collider, a joint project by 100 countries and 10,000 scientists to discover sub-sub-atomic particles, further our knowledge of the universe, and win grant money, all while not creating a giant black hole that would eat the planet. The Large Hadron Collider succeeded in its last aim, but ran into a temporary snag on everything else.

What you may not have heard of was the Large Feline Collider, a joint project by two humans to discover super-super-evil kittens, further our knowledge of caring for lacerations and broken vases, and waste vast amounts of time saying intelligent things like “oh, what a cute tummy!” and “no, you can’t sleep in the fruit bowl,” all while creating two giant cats that would eat us out of house and home if only they could open their jaws wide enough. The Large Feline Collider succeeds in colliding with great destructive force several times a minute, with such energy that it turns any nearby object into several smaller objects.

I found sudden fame online this year, after my scholarly essay JANE AUSTEN’S “BATMAN” gained unexpected popularity with the surprisingly large intersection of the following three sets: (1) people who read Jane Austen, (2) people who saw THE DARK KNIGHT, and (3) people who think I’m funny. (I had until recently thought that the only member of all three sets was Todd, but apparently he has been joined by John Scalzi, several Australians, one of my long-lost friends from junior high, and a penguin.)

In other news, my novel MY LADY GAMESTER was translated and published in Germany. The part I don’t understand: in the book, the heroine’s little brother is a very bad student, struggling even with basic Latin. So how can he suddenly speak fluent German? Surely no lazy schoolboy could guess that the German word for “Elephant” is “Elefant”!

This summer, Todd and I and our stuffed cat attended the World Science Fiction Convention in Denver, where Todd chaired a seminar that explained how to build a time machine in your basement. So, you ask, why don’t I have more time to write, now that I have a time machine? Well, I answer, I don’t have a time machine, because our condo doesn’t have a basement. (So why, you ask, doesn’t my future basement-owning self send a time machine back in time to me? Hmm… I’m asking myself the same question. And when I meet my future self, I’ll ask me in person.)

In still other news, it seems my cat has been running a Ponzi scheme, and has singlepawedly ruined the world economy. When asked to explain himself, he gave a muddled answer which included the words “mew” and “it wasn’t me, it was the evil aliens from Pluto.” (Sources close to the feline tell us that he once drove to Pluto in a Hyundai and unintentionally taunted the inhabitants about their deplanetation, giving the Plutonians a cold grudge against the hapless Earth cat. However, sources even closer to the feline say “he’s dirty as a three-dollar bill, and could really use a bath.”)

In national news, 2008 was a momentous year. Senator Barack Obama built himself an iron man suit and defeated the terrorists, the pessimists, the paparazzi, and the Volturi, to win the American presidency and become box-office champ. (Sources close to Obama once overheard him mutter “Yeah, I can fly.”) Mr. Obama’s next goals are rumored to be saving the TV show “Pushing Daisies” and improving his high score at “Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock.”

And remember — join us on the first Tuesday in January when we discuss the first Ioan Gruffudd Horatio Hornblower movie! And then come back the first Tuesday of February to discuss the Leslie Howard version of The Scarlet Pimpernel…

So, does anyone else out there have a Large Feline Collider? An Iron Man Suit? A time machine?

Cara
Cara King, who occasionally defeats her cat at Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock…