Back in Time A to Z: Aliens (1986)

Chick Flick

To meet the deadline for the April A to Z Blog Challenge these will be micro-Back in Time Reviews where I will do short write-ups of favorite movies. Some of them may come back for full reviews later.

Aliens is one of my all-time favorite chick flicks. Why do I say that? You can keep your Sex in the City, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is the kind of woman I can relate to. Because while Ripley has her issues, she kicks some serious butt and takes a whole list of names. All while trying to tell people not to be idiots.

Alien Butt Prime for Kicking

In case you're not familiar with the series, the first movie is Alien - a creepy horror flick set in space that had the now-famous slogan "In Space No One Can Hear You Scream." Ripley lived through that harrowing experience only to come back in this sequel with people wanting her to return to the planet where they found the nasty critters in the first place. Although she'd prefer to avoid the whole thing she knows that she can't. So off she goes to face her fears with a whole ship full of Space Marines. That sounds safe, right? I don't want to ruin the movie for you if you haven't already seen it but, um, things happen.

Start Raining on My Parade (Goal Achievement Strategies)

In my Life Away From Keyboard (LAFK) one of my greatest interests is the area of personal leadership, which is a quick way of covering the areas of goals, achievement, personal growth, etc. From my first reading of How to Win Friends and Influence People at the age of 15 I was hooked and looking for more books with advice on how to improve your life. A lot of those books focus on creating positive visualizations in order to achieve peak performance so I was quite startled when the PsyBlog posted an article this week on 11 Goal Hacks: How to Achieve Anything and it advised being more negative.

Negative? I spent years learning NOT to be negative. But I'm willing to try anything at least once, especially in this particular area, so I will be actively looking for ways to rain on my own parade and see how it works for goal achievement and attainment.

I'll start now by admitting to myself that maybe five people will read this post and no one will comment on it. Do I feel more motivated to achieve my blogging goals now? Not really...

Don't Miss the Immortal Blog Tour!

Gene Doucette kicked off his April Blog Tour for his book Immortal today (no foolin!). I loved his book so much that I signed up for three stops on the tour (on three of my blogs) starting this Sunday.

On April 3rd the blog Writing Insight will have a Feature Article on Gene and Immortal. He was a Blooming Author back in July 2010 and we want to report to our readers on his excellent reviews and other publishing news.

On April 13th this blog will have a write up about why Immortal was my favorite book of 2010.

On April 23rd one of my characters will have a chat with Gene's character Adam from Immortal and that will be posted on my blog by Sue London.

Enjoy the blog tour! And don't forget to buy the book - a sequel is coming out soon!

Sue Gets Around

Didn't feel like putting it in the map format, but noticed that I've been to a few new states since I posted the original list back in 2005.

bold blue the states I've been to before, bold red the NEW states I've been to since 2005, underline the states I've lived in and italicize the state I'm in now, and highlight states I definitely want to go to. Tell me if I should add your state to my goals list - and why!

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

5e D&D: What About the Children?

Fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons, released today (http://www.dnd5.com/), proves that if I had been born a few decades later I never would have been a gamer. Honestly, it makes me question whether I want to bring children into this world. Sure, we could play classic D&D at home but when would they begin to be exposed to this travesty? Kindergarten? First grade? Attending gaming conventions would be straight off the list because you never know when a stray comment in an elevator or on the convention floor would trigger curiosity. And what if our son or daughter became a 5e gamer? We wouldn't be able to allow them in the house. It would be terrible for something like that to tear a family apart.