Charlene Newcomb

Family Peace, Christmas, & lasagna

The final countdown has begun. I shipped the files for the novel to Jaye Manus for formatting. In a few days – assuming Jaye can make heads or tails of the .doc file – I’ll be reviewing proofs for Kindle format! You can’t imagine the work that goes into formatting a Word document to make it look good on an e-reader.

Jaye tells me once the proofs are approved, she’ll do some tweaking so the files are available in other formats. I’ll be making the novel available at Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords. I’m not sure what the timeline will be, so keep checking back here for that announcement. EEEEEK!

Now I can start thinking about Christmas. I used to decorate over my Thanksgiving break, but novel revisions kept me busy. I haven’t done a thing yet other than rearrange a couple of chairs in my great room. Found a few dust bunnies in the process. 🙂

I did make 3 pans of lasagna today in between my final files preparation for Jaye. One was delivered to co-worker Laurel – get well soon! The other 2 are in the freezer, ready to be whipped out for holiday meals with the family.

my lasagna assembly line

I’ve carried on my mom’s tradition of lasagna for Christmas dinner. My kids would be upset if we had anything else. I set up my assembly line today but had no helpers. When I was a kid, 3 or 4 of us would sit around the kitchen table and make a dozen pans. Mom had a humongous stock pot that bubbled with her homemade sauce. The house smelled wonderful! I know she’d forgive me for using doctored Prego – she stopped making her own when she was in her 70s.

So – lasagna is one Christmas tradition at my house. My writer friend Jen Fitzgerald has been blogging about her tradtions. What about you? What traditions do you have?

  1. Jaime Avatar
    Jaime

    You can’t imagine the work that goes into formatting a Word document to make it look good on an e-reader
    Oh, I can, actually. I once took apart a mobi or epub file to fix a book that was poorly formatted on an e-reader. It reminded me a lot of coding a webpage, but with very wonky CSS. It took me several hours to just to make the book readable (it’s not perfect, but it works for now.)

    That lasagna looks so tasty! It definitely makes me wish I could tolerate cheese. *sigh* I have discovered how to make spaghetti with ground turkey, though (can’t tolerate beef, either.) I use doctored sauce, too. In my case, it’s generic stuff, but I add garlic, onion and salsa (which sounds kinda gross, but it’s mostly just peppers, tomatoes and spices.) My mom eats it, which must mean it’s pretty decent, as trying to get her to eat is exactly like feeding a very fussy five year old (I am almost to the point of trying to figure out how to hide vegetables in stuff, just to make sure she’s getting them. LOL!)

    Christmas Traditions: hmmm… does stress count? LOL! Cause that’s pretty much what we do every single year. *sigh* Another tradition is my mom wrapping my gift at least five to ten times, covering every single seam with either duck tape or that clear packing tape (I’ve been in the habit of buying my own gifts out of whatever extra money I can spare, since there is usually little to spare at the holidays, so I know what they are; therefore, mom makes up for it by making it nearly impossible for me to get into it.) Opening pressies in our house usually involves a lot of cussing and trying to find scissors or a knife (which is considered cheating, actually!) What else… Oh, the last few years, I’ve gotten into the habit of decorating my tree with candy. My tree is only 2 foot tall, so it’s the perfect size, and having candy for ornaments means very little clean up or storage (you just eat them. ;)) Another thing we’ve gotten in the habit of doing is taking my cousin out to see the Xmas lights (she’s 8 and autistic, so she really doesn’t “get” Xmas.) Our town decorates really well (I’d still love to know how they pay for it all, though!) so it’s always nice just driving around. Dinner at home is usually anything other than turkey! Turkey gets a bit old, I think. 🙂

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    1. Char Avatar
      Char

      It reminded me a lot of coding a webpage

      Exactly. And what’s worse – each of the major ereaders have different requirements. So the formatting can’t be done just once and uploaded to the major players. I’m good with html but it was going to make me crazy. I’m delighted to have Jaye do the work. She loves to figure out how to make things work right!

      So sorry to hear you can’t do cheese. Cheese is my life… well… okay, not quite.

      Salsa in your sauce – that sounds wonderful! I may have to give that a try.

      Stress – I’d say that’s unavoidable. LOL re the duct tape! Your mom has a sense of humor, eh? Definitely an interesting tradition. I love the idea of decorating the tree with candy – I usually manage to add some candy canes to our tree, but that’s the extent of candy. If I’d done that when the kids were little, there would be any left on the tree by Christmas Eve!

      Reply
  2. Mom’s spaghetti sauce | The Many Worlds of Char….

    […] mentioned some family traditions in my post last week. That made me think about Mom’s spaghetti sauce recipe. That’s what I call it. She […]

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