I may no longer have a royal blog, but I still keep tabs on royal events as they happen around the world. And my favorite kinds of events are of course, royal weddings!

Yesterday, Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria wed Daniel Westling, who will now be known as Prince Daniel, Duke of Vaestergoetland. It was a lovely lovely event. The princess looked radiant and joyful on her big day. Consistent with her own style, the bride’s gown had simple lines (but with a train that looked a mile long!).

Congratulations to the royal bride and groom!

I just updated my book shelf, which is my little tally of the books that I read. I am now at 14 books since the start of the year. OK, so I cheated a little, because 4 of those books are considered picture books. I read them for research, but since I still read them through, I figure they have a place in my list.

Last year, out of the 26 books I finished, two really stood out. One is Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and the other is Kate DiCamillo’s The Magician’s Elephant. Not that the others weren’t any good (they were), but these two books have stayed with me. Austen’s language and characterization were inspiring. And The Magician’s Elephant! Wow, there was so much beauty there, for a book so short.

So far this year, there are 2 books that I will also not forget anytime soon: Shannon Hale’s Princess Academy, for her ease in weaving a highly believable magical story; and Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why. I almost have no words to describe this last book. I thought the topic was going to be depressing, but it was in fact, enlightening. This is a profound book, that was written with much skill. There’s a reason it’s spent weeks on the NYT Bestsellers Lists. A must read for teens, parents and educators.

And, on to what I’m reading now. I have Rick Riordan’s The Titan’s Curse and am going through it quickly. I also have L’Engle’s A Swiftly Tilting Planet, which I’m afraid is taking me a long time to to read. It just somehow has not really drawn me in.

I’m looking forward to reading Mistwood, and Spells. So have you read any good books lately?

So, I’ve been called out of my hiding (hello, Christine! LOL). I’ve taken a hiatus from blogging, to my family’s general benefit. We now live in a cleaner and more organized home, I think. Well, it hasn’t been all cleaning and cooking and laundry that have taken up my time.

I’ve been neck-deep in revisions. See, I finished my first novel back in January. Now I’m revising heavily. I’ve rewritten whole chunks and chapters of it. I now realize how true it is that first drafts are always sucky. Here’s an example of something in my first draft, that happily has now been hacked out of my manuscript:

She crouched down and, with her hands, felt the object she had stumbled into.

“With her hands”!?!?! Oh, because she’s also been known to use her nose and her big toe to feel things. NOT!

And also, “her eyes followed…” LOL. So now I have an image of a pair of eyeballs rolling and jumping after somebody. Permission to chop away, granted.

Yeah, my first draft was bad that way.

And that is why I need to do revisions and blogging had to take a back seat. Don’t worry, I’m still around.

A couple of major changes have happened to my problogging in the past few weeks. One of them was my choice, the other was dropped into my lap from thin air.

The first, I resigned my post on PlanetEye Traveler, writing about Philippine Culture and Travel. It was just time for me to let it go.

The other one is harder to adjust to. Early this week, the entire entertainment channel of b5media was shut down. About 50 bloggers were given the boot and locked out of the blogs without even the chance to say goodbye to the communities around those blogs.

And so, I say goodbye to Merry Royals. Though it was never truly mine, I built that site from scratch, from the domain name (which I love!) and up. Save for a couple of guest posts, it was written solely by me. And while I understand economics and dwindling ad revenues, the firings came out of the blue and caught all of us unaware. It was hard to believe that five years of SEO, talent and contacts have been thrown out the door. I shed a few tears over what happened, but I’m glad to say I’m now steadily working out the shock of it. In the end, maybe it’s all for the better. There are some top-rate writers in that group, with loyal followers who will (and have!) followed the writers to their own new sites. As one of the writers put it, b5 just might have empowered these bloggers to branch out on their own and finally be their own bosses. And that is always a good thing.

I take many positive things from my b5 experience. I remember the early days of the company, when we were all passionate and excited and were a real community of bloggers. I have good memories of tetris tournaments.

I learned my blogging chops from the best. And, most of all, I made great friends. You’ll learn more about them in the coming days and weeks. We’re all just rather busy at the moment, reorganizing and restructuring our own endeavors. This is one tough (and wonderful and talented!) group of bloggers who are far from crushable. You haven’t seen the last of us, I promise.

And this is why I didn’t sign up for Project 365. The past days have been swallowed up with this thing or other, that weekly (much less daily!) blogging has been impossible. I have a few topics that I wanted to write about, but just never got around to it. I’m hoping that those posts will see the light one of these days.

For today, I want to share with you a very rare event in these parts of the world at this time of year. Background: In January, we’re usually under several inches deep of snow and several weeks’ worth of cloudy days. The sun shines only occasionally. Even more unusual is rain. To have these two come together at the same time is an extremely rare thing indeed.

And so, we were blessed and very excited to see this in our backyard last Sunday:

Twin rainbows. And these were not just tiny half-hearted things either. They were full-arc ginormous rainbows. I couldn’t get the entire span in one photo; I had to take three!

I have never been so excited to see a rainbow as I was on that day. I’m always thrilled to see these gorgeous colors in the sky, and it’s been a while since the last time I saw something like this. I piled coats on the kids and practically shoved them out the back door. I wasn’t going to let them miss this!

The camera really didn’t capture all its beauty, but I’m very glad I have these pictures to remind me of this day. It had been raining/drizzling the whole day (rather depressing, actually). I remember looking out my kitchen window at the field of wild grass behind our house. It was all orange from the setting sun. And that’s when I saw it. There was just a small window before the sun disappeared and the rainbow with it.

Rainbows are reminders of God’s promise to Noah that He will never send a flood to cover the whole earth again. To me, a rainbow brings to mind God’s promises in general. And that He still sends silent testaments of His faithfulness. I just have to take the time to listen.