It’s the beginning of September and I just want to wish you a Happy New Year

Let’s be honest, September is the actual New Year.

Sure, January has its brand new calendars with 12 blank months that invite you to start afresh. That time of year is a big, wrapped box waiting to be opened (at that point, wrapping paper and boxes are still in our brains), and they’re holding whispers of possibilities inside.

You get to say “buh-bye” to the old and take the hand of the new, all of it accompanied by fireworks and champagne and a quick kiss at midnight.

But September is where rubber meets road, as they say, where resolutions morph into to-do lists.

Vacations are over. School starts. After the ambling pace of summer, September brings structure, routine, and office supplies. Sticky notes, notebooks, new pens, more notebooks, more sticky notes.

It’s a checklist time of year, which means things are getting real. Only X number of days until Halloween, until Thanksgiving, until Christmas. No time to waste. Up and at ’em every morning. Hit the ground running.

Which is why this past weekend I celebrated New Year’s Eve. Yes I did. There I was making resolutions, dining on steak and lobster, popping a bottle of champagne, setting off fireworks at midnight.

Haha, just kidding. I didn’t go that far. Supper was the usual fare, and fireworks did not happen. But there were resolutions, and they immediately jumped onto my daily to-do list.

And yes, there was bubbly. Because of course there was.

Best proofreader EVER

I came across @nyttypos from these two articles – here and here – and now I’m wondering where he’s been all my life.

A self-described “appellate lawyer and persnickety dude,” he’s delightfully witty and scathing* in his tweets – a college-level course in grammar.

Follow and learn!

*Normally I wouldn’t use “scathing” to describe something positive. However, in the case of proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation, scathing is appropriate. There are too many means of checking your writing to ever claim ignorance.

Mike and his spaghetti models keep us all even-keeled

Huge shout-out to www.spaghettimodels.com (on Facebook as Mike’s Weather Page and on Twitter as @tropicalupdate). I recommend following him everywhere you find him.

It’s not necessarily something to help with your writing, but it’s definitely a sanity saver if you live on the coast and see a hurricane heading your way. As was the case this week with Hurricane Isaias.

Mike’s web site is a treasure trove of graphs, charts, and models curated from weather sources. Seriously – this screen grab (below) is showing only a tiny piece of all the site offers.

Mike typically gives live updates on Facebook to explain the different models and charts – and he does it with a dash of humor, which, let’s face it, one can use when the weather gets crazy. He often features his two sidekicks (French bulldogs), Hurricane Louis and Hunter.

spaghettimodels
http://www.spaghettimodels.com

 

Whom do you write like?

Check out I Write Like.

This is a fun site. Just paste your text into the box and click the Analyze button to see which famous writer your text most closely resembles.

It’s all in good fun – but it can be a subtle boost too. The couple of times I’ve done it, I’ve gotten Arthur Conan Doyle, Dan Brown, Jack London, and John Le Carre’. Not bad. I’ll take a comparison like that.