Alison O. Bender

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to post more often. Sadly, I’m also failing on the New Year’s resolutions to keep my house clean and to get rid of the baby weight (the baby is now 18 months old). Oh well.

Anyway, lots of good stuff going on! I finished two very fun articles for TQ‘s Best of Tahoe issue and recently got to enjoy a cooking demo by Flare Chef, a Tahoe-area expert in “culinary entertainment,” which includes some pretty cool fire demonstrations and knife tricks (I may have moved farther away when he started juggling knives). I did a small job for a freelance editor, which will hopefully turn into additional work, and I just finished proofreading the Tahoe Forest Health System magazine.

I’ve got some new articles for TQ that should be fun and will be in the office this week and next to proof the Best of Tahoe issue. I recently began re-editing one of my novels that has been a work-in-progress for the past few years, and kind of started another project that I think has potential, but that I just need to find some time for. For as much time as I spend playing Anna and Elsa from Frozen, I should probably be able to find a little more free time to write!

A belated happy holidays and happy 2014 to you all. My own holidays haven’t been particularly successful: I forgot how stressful it is to travel with a one-year-old, then I broke my pinkie toe and it suddenly became impossible to travel at all.

I had a lot of high hopes for getting work done during my Pennsylvania convalescence, but the crutches, pain pills and babies made it hard. Anyway, the silver lining was I got to spend an extra ten days with my parents being an only child (first time in 29 years). Tomorrow, however, I’m heading back home and to reality. Between the one-year-old, the three-year-old and a bad foot, the day of travel has potential to be pretty rough. Wish me luck!

Great day yesterday—I got to spend it in the TQ offices with my red pen! We’re proofing the Winter issue and it looks amazing! It is, obviously, the Olympic issue, and I’m proud to report that I wrote one of the cover stories, about local athletes who hope to compete at Sochi. It was so interesting learning about the athletes’ experiences: So many of them have dealt with injuries (some fairly horrific ones), others do charitable deeds with their competition winnings and others are just so excited about their chances to compete on a world stage.

Some other articles that are really great pre-Olympic reads as well as plenty of interesting Tahoe-centric reads. One more proofing day next week, then this magazine is ready to go!