My mom and several dear friends all have their birthdays on the last three days of November. Anyone out there have a birthday at the end of November? I’m betting we could become fast friends Yes, with only 365 (366 in leap year) days for the picking to be born… we’re bound to know people with birthdays around the same time. I have a few friends that share the same birthday as me. However, having that many special people with birthdays so close together isn’t playing the odds.

Mom and me, August 2010

I could write about how awesome my mom is, but I’ll forgo that. One, she’ll cry. Two, how many ways can a gal say her mom rocks and how many times have you heard it? I won’t bore you, but know that I’m lucky have her for a mother and can see why many people speak highly of her. Great, I probably broke #1. (Yes, she reads my blog. Now she’s probably gonna email me and ask why I posted this in public.)

December. Wow. And Hanukkah is early this year. It started on the evening of December 1. Happy Hanukkah to all who celebrate.

Brain food…

• How I Kept My Freelance Business Intact During Relocation: My family won’t be moving for a long, long time. We’re happy with our school system and the program it has for one of my kids. Freelancing certainly gives us the freedom to live wherever we want unless you have many local clients.
• Fake Writing Jobs: RealWritingJobs.com: I’ve been getting these tweets, too. Thank you, Victoria Strauss, for telling the story so you won’t have to translate the terms and conditions. Twitter has suspended some of these accounts. Yeah!
• What Your Clients Want and Deserve: Another winner from Lori Widmer.
• Yes, Virginia, there is a way to give title comps: Why and how you should compare your book to competitors in your book proposal. I did this when I wrote my book proposal, and it provides great insight to do this part. It will help you make your book better.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 12 Ugliest Book Covers: Not just the obscure books…
• 12 of the World’s Ugliest Building: Yes, another “12″ — must be in honor of December, the 12th month. Yes, another from Oddee. But it’s in honor of my mom who loves building designs, especially Frank Lloyd Wright. My sister gave her a Lego set of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water that Mom put together herself. First time since my brother was a kid.
• You Went to the University of … What? I’m from Texas where we’re known for being football fanatics. I joke that American University (my alum) isn’t a real school because it doesn’t have a football program [Link: Liz Kline]
• 15 of the Lamest Google Ads Ever: Sometimes logarithms get it wrong…

Since Hanukkah involves lots of candles and I love candles, I’ll ask you: What’s your favorite candle?

Me? Ooh, toughie. For summer, I liked Party Lite’s Spiced Plum that’s not made anymore. I tend to like variations of cinnamons. In my office with me is Home Interiors’ Baked Apple Pie. Delightful cinnamony fruity scent.

Want to win a book? We have a few authors stopping by here. Caryn visited yesterday and more will be here in upcoming weeks.

Still need more nominations for favorite books on writing before we take a vote.

• How to Write a Novel Using the Web: How does Mashable come up with the most brilliant topics? Meryl’s brain, get to work!
• MFA Confidential: Applying for an MFA: Like to get an MFA someday, or at least take writing courses. Schedule is full.
• 13 Writing Tips from Fight Club: A Novel author: Over a year old, but still relevant. He’s not big on web writing. If he were, he’d use the tip topic instead of numbers as the bolded headers. Instead of “Number One,” I’d write, “Use the egg timer method.”
• 80+ Social Media Policies from Social Media Governance: We’ll be seeing many of these showing up in organizations as social media because an important factor in building brands and customer service. These will give you a starting point to create your own.
• 100 Tips, Tools and Resources for Twitter: I glanced at it quickly. Didn’t want to tempt myself to take on more addicting twitter apps. But maybe you can use it.
• Building Your Tribe: 6 LinkedIn Case Studies: Explore using LinkedIn for freelancers, selling products and strategies for everyone.
• How to Make Knowledge Work Fun: Simple graph, powerful message.
• Nine Scientifically Proven Ways to Get Retweeted on Twitter: Good content is #1 in my book.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Hello, Kitty gone wild: Scroll down… the gun is only the start of it. Ahem… who knew that kitty had such a sexy following. In honor of my friend Frances… lover of all things (maybe not after this) Hello, Kitty.
• Museum of Kitsch is open for bidness!
• Good Night and Tough Luck by Chirstoph Niemann: Explores the world of sleep…
• Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries: Incredible libraries. The only one I’ve been to on the list is the Library of Congress.
• Giant Tetris: Whoooaaa….
• Spongebob does Queen’s We Will Rock You.

I promise this is not another “Texas rules!” post. But before I move on, I have to say: What a game!

When I was seven-years-old, my brother entered Texas A&M. I was gonna be an Aggie, determined to go to college there. I even went to basketball camp at Texas A&M and was in awe of the Lady Aggies basketball team. My brother was and still is a big Aggie. He was torn about the Rose Bowl. He wanted Texas to win as a rep for our state, but not THAT Texas. A friend sent me this photo. (click photo for a larger picture – it opens in a new window)

When I was a senior in high school, I knew it wasn’t meant to be. A&M was way too big for my needs. I needed a smaller school to reduce the chances of having classes with 100 students. In spite of my going to TCU (go, Horned Frogs!) for one year and completing my education at American University, I continued to root for the Aggies.

My mother went to UT in her sophomore year. My sister got her masters there. Now my daughter wants to go there. Gig’em Horns!