My iPod is Ruining My Life

I know. I've been complaining for six months (exactly) about my old iPod (Remington) being stolen, and how awful it is to have to listen to the radio. My long-suffering husband is now reunited with the iPod Classic he let me use for months, and I have a fantastic new iPod Touch.

It's too fantastic.

I can't put the damned thing down! The first night, I just kept checking Twitter. Then Facebook. Then mail. Then playing Angry Birds. When I forced myself away from Angry Birds, I had to do one more check of e-mail. Then Twitter. Then Facebook. Then Twitter again. Okay, maybe I'd play more Angry Birds.

The novelty has not worn off a bit, but it's dulled enough that I'm not turning off the light at 2:00 a.m. Of course, I'm now working until 1:00 a.m. because any time I have a few seconds for a break, I start playing a game (or checking Twitter, etc.). The trek to bed, always slow because I'm a night owl and hate to go to bed, is longer and slower now.

I get an NFL newsletter and check for news on the Patriots app. I add items to my reminders, check the weather, and surf the Internet, which is a challenge, let me tell you, with those tiny links. (I know I can zoom in, it's just more fun to be challenged!)

I work on a computer most of the day, so eyestrain is already a problem. It's reached epic proportions, and our electric bill is going to be huge this month, between my constant recharging of the iPod and my husband's of his own new toy. My only complaint is that it's more complicated to use it for its primary purpose. When I'm doing dishes or laundry or cooking or cleaning and the kids need me, I can't just hit pause. I have to hit home, swipe it unlocked, wait several seconds because for some reason there's a delay when I'm listening to something, then hit pause. Small complaint, though.

My Kindle and the stack of paperbacks on my shelf have been a bit neglected. I've actually been trying to carve through the print books, but a lot of them are ones that were given to me that I wasn't sure I'd like. I've added nearly half a dozen to my "did not finish" list. Not because they were bad, they just weren't my thing. I'm trying really hard to keep going with the one I'm reading now, because it's well written and interesting, if some of the details are off and the characters aren't the type I'd naturally gravitate toward.

Anyway, I have to break this new addiction toute suite, because the "lull" of the holidays is almost over and I won't be able to justify so much leisure time anymore. (My brain is whispering that TV will still be on hellatus and I'll have time to play, but I can't extend the habit. I'm standing firm!)

Speaking of TV, I'm kind of excited. We're getting a new DVR unit. The one we have has been eating chunks of shows. Last season it ate stuff that had been on it for a while, so I was unable to rewatch Supernatural and had to buy some episodes of Doctor Who that I had let collect for a reason I don't remember. The current unit was refurbished in 2007. It's so old they don't want it back. I'm looking forward to seeing if it has any new features.

So tell me. Am I alone in my new addiction? Anyone else stuck on the pretty and the cool and finding it difficult to get back to routine?

A Smaller, Better World

Log on to the Internet on any given day, and you're likely to find an article or blog post about how bad the Internet is. We (and our kids) are spending too much time on our computers, too little time outdoors or interacting with other people, absorbing damaging material, blah blah blah. I sometimes feel bombarded by it, and it sinks into me, leaving a greasy, sick feeling that I'm a bad person.

And then the U.S. women's soccer team loses the World Cup.

"Congrats Japan" trended on Twitter to #2 that I saw, and well over 100 new tweets were loading every minute. Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people were not only bonding over the experience of watching a tremendous competition, they were being good sports. Obviously, winning a soccer game isn't going to magically fix the challenges Japan has faced and is still facing, or the repercussions worldwide, but the whole thing raises morale, and the positivity seeps into everything else. And without Twitter (and all the other social media and Internet-based tools that make instantaneous communication worthwhile), the ripples wouldn't go nearly as far.

Anyone reading this post knows the power of the Internet. It allows millions of dollars to be raised in a matter of hours, for aid to victims of natural disasters everywhere. Via the Internet, regular people can team up with their favorite celebrities to go to Haiti to build schools. When a woman tragically loses a husband and finds herself a single mother of four kids, her friends thousands of miles away can mobilize to organize an auction, drawing donations and bidders on a scale unheard of when all we could do was put cans on convenience store counters for loose change.

All of that isn't even touching the smaller ways it connects us, like when I got an e-mail from my Hawaiian cousin I'd never met.

Any technology has the power to be used for good or bad, but I would far rather dwell on the ways it changes the world for the better. This weekend, I watched it happen, and it made my day brighter.

In Over My Head

Yesterday was a pretty productive day, culminating in a meeting to revise and finalize the Policy and Procedure manual for my local writer's group, something that's been in the works since 2003.

Unfortunately, none of my productivity was the stuff on my list. And the same thing happened today! I spent hours darting (figuratively) here and there, getting ready for The Month of the Hero. And I'm still doing it! I stopped writing this post to go set up that page at my website, then created a few more bit.ly links, then posted on Twitter, then took a deep breath and came back here.

I still have to set up my posts for the week and schedule them to go. They're written, but need some additions and tweaking. I also have mail to prep to send, some revisions on three chapters to enter and print so I can mail them tomorrow, a contract to finish reading so I can mail that tomorrow, too, a checkbook to update, an insurance policy to review and file, and the aforementioned P&P manual to proof, since our overachieving committee chair already made the 26 pages of changes we discussed over 3 hours last night. OY!

I have a synopsis to finish by the end of the week, some phone calls to make, and my annual mammogram tomorrow. Oh, and the Carina marketing plan to complete for my March 28th release!

I'm a little worried about my ability to get that all done. I mean, it's already 5:22 p.m.!

What's your go-to defense for drowning in "must get done NOW"s?

Various and Sundry

Breaking Daylight is out now. Buy it. While you're there, check out What She Deserves, which is still at number 10! Woo hoo!

Also get Kismet, The Keepers of Sulbreth, and hey, toss a Switch in there, too (just came out last week). Gotta mix it up, keep the brain fresh and stimulated. Among other things. :)

I'm sick to my stomach at the loss of Wes Welker. (For the majority of you, who have no idea what I'm talking about: Football. :) ) Reports are likely ACL and MCL tears (for some of you who don't get sports medical lingo: that's knee injury, surgery required usually, 9-month recovery period). So the Patriots made the playoffs, but without Wes, the most exciting player on the field. *sob* That's not just bittersweet, it's sour.

Good service:

I don't remember if I mentioned this before. Number Two's Kindle didn't work. Couldn't connect to power source, wouldn't turn on. Called Amazon on Christmas Day. She had a replacement three days later. Excellent service.

Okay service:

I had a bank problem. I sent a check for $10.00 to someone, but it came through my account as $16.06. They told me they deposited it as $10.00, so I contacted the bank. They looked at the crappy scanned image of the check, and luckily didn't give me a hard time about the zeroes. The last one got cut off, or was light and didn't image well, but the rest were obviously zeroes, not to mention the "Ten and no/100" written out. The CSR on the line was very helpful and it didn't take long to "fix." Except that it will take 10 days for them to correct the error and give me my money back, and it took me for-freakin'-ever to get a live person on the line. I couldn't get anywhere without entering my "User ID." I NEVER call the bank. I do everything online. So my user ID is one I changed. After hanging up and starting over three times because I kept getting stuck in a corner, and entering anything I could think of, it FINALLY told me the "User ID" is your Social Security number. Well just SAY that, then! Gawd.

2010 is shaping up to be no different, so far, from 2009. I'm working my butt off, but I'm still behind. Last night I found two corrupted files—massive manuscripts I was editing for a client. I managed to repair them and only lost 66 pages of proofing, which I had to input again, but I still had the hard copy. And I had to fix a few comments that went wonky, but that wasn't a problem. Still, redoing the work meant I didn't finish the job I was going to finish, nor did I get back to my own book (did do some work on it, though!).

I got a lot done this morning, but now I have to shower and finish laundry and take Number One's computer in for repair (FINALLY, I'm such a bad mom) and pick up stuff for Number Two and The Dad, and when I get back Number Two will be home and we'll have to Wii Fit for a while, and then I have to input the 47 pages of line edits I did this morning that are very intense and will likely take a couple of hours, which means I may not get back to my book at all today.

*pout*

Where's the extra two and a half hours per day I ordered for Christmas? Huh? Who got it?

I need to go take this up with Santa.

Weekend Adventures

I’m trying out Windows Live Writer to post this (at least to my Blogger blog—you might be reading this elsewhere).  WLW is on my new laptop.

What? My new laptop?! How on earth did that happen? I mean, over at GabWagon last Monday, I was saying how I wanted but didn’t need a new laptop.

It all boils down to insanity and frugality. I wanted to get the Best Buy Sony Vaio deal, so I went over at 10:00 p.m. on Thursday and got in line. Five hours later, in the rain, after chatting with some nice people, watching Patriots.com video and the “Serenity” episode of Firefly, and listening to podcasts, we all stood and gathered our stuff and consolidated the line.  At 3:41 a.m., they started handing out tickets. I got the last ticket for the Sony Vaio without the Geek Squad stuff (you know, they charge $40 to install the antivirus software that you can install yourself in 10 minutes).  By the time I got my ticket, it was after 4:00.  They said they’d open the doors early to stage the lines to pick up the merchandise, so I decided to hang around.  At 4:41 they opened up.  I went to the restroom (I eschewed the Port-a-Potty all night) and got in line.

Finally, just around 8:00, I reached the head of the line, after verbally assaulting a couple of forons (check out my GabWagon post on Monday for details).  I was home a little after 8:00 a.m., with my new baby, upon which I am now typing!

I got home a little dehydrated and with a horrible headache that didn’t go away with liquid and breakfast, so after doing some setup work on this lightning-fast puppy, I let my wonderful husband talk me into sleeping for two hours.  Then I got up and we started to paint!

Yes, after my all-nighter, I spent Black Friday painting half my living room.  Today we finished the living room and hallway painting, and we’re really pleased with the result (as long as no one looks too closely).  Tomorrow we have to get the new switchplates installed, sweep and mop the floor, rub away all the paint drips and footprints (Number One earned the new moniker Paint-on-Foot), reinstall the vertical blinds, and move all the furniture back in—all before the inlaws come over for football.

To top it off, Monday we need to rake the last of the leaves.  Which will probably ice me physically for a week.  I mean, five hours standing in line (the five before that were spent sitting), then uncounted hours crouching, bending, reaching, and climbing over two days, followed by an hour of raking…that’s an oy.

So, how did you spend your [holiday] weekend?

Ups and Downs

First, I got a nice ego stroke when I got a comment that The Daily Reviewer selected this blog as one of the top 100 romance blogs. Sure, I gotta take it with a grain of salt. I mean, how likely is it that they really got nominations about me? They feed my content to their ad-supported site. But on the other hand, their links to my blog also feed my Google rankings, so that's a benefit to me. And I have a nice pretty badge to paste here.

Then, I got word that a book I edited is now available at Amazon. And Amazon lists me as editor! That was pretty cool. Most of the stuff I work on, I don't get public credit for, which is fine. But it's nice when I do, and I am happy to say I'm proud of our work on this book. It's got a pretty decent approach to dieting, too, IMO.

But then...

Then I got an e-mail that Kate Duffy had died. I never had the pleasure of meeting her personally. I have been rejected by her, dating all the way back to my second book. She was one of the powerhouses of romance publishing, someone known to be blunt and challenging, who really knew her stuff. If she liked your work, you could bask in the glow of that for a week. We will suffer for this loss.

Hitting a little less close to home, a little more in an "end of an era" kind of way, was news of William Safire's death. It's been a long time since I heard anything about him, or read anything by him, but when I was in high school and college and first starting out in my career, he was The Word on everything to do with words. If he said put the period inside the quotation marks always (and he did say that), by gum, I put the period inside the quotation marks. Always. So even though he has no current impact on my life...he'll be missed.

We Now Welcome You to the Survival Portion of Our Summer

My former boss called me on Friday in a panic. She needed me to fill in while a former colleague was on leave. I worked all day yesterday, and...yeah. After three years, I don't remember anything. Especially stuff I never did. It was quite a challenge. Looking forward to Friday. Right.

I currently have five animated teenagers playing Wii while they wait to leave for the midnight showing of Harry Potter. We found out that the theater had sold out theaters 1 through 9 by 6 this evening. That line will be fun. Right.

Tomorrow I have to get 5 kids to different locations, four of them after they were up past 3:00 a.m. Then I have to try to finish a formatting job before I drive to DC, mainly because I'll be in DC all day Thursday, too, and much of the night. Which will be awesome while I'm there, I'm not complaining, but oy.

I'm just hangin' on, taking everything one minute at a time. I don't know how the heck other people manage even busier schedules. I guess they just do it.

Right.

Enough of That

Let's talk about some happy stuff.

This makes me happy, even though it's still 17 days away:



So much to squee over. Something good? My favorite reaper? Evil Dean? Superhero Sammy? EEEEEEEEEEEEEE! March 12 can't come soon enough.

Let's see, what else?

My mammogram today was negative. My mother died of breast cancer, and first contracted it at age 37, so I've been getting them for the last five years. This year, they also provided a probability profile for me. I'm 0.9% likely to get breast cancer in the next five years. That's three times more likely than the general population, but as risks go, it's pretty low.

Despite the FB debacle and the mammogram and the other errands I ran while I was out (bagels from the place that makes them by hand, yum; library; gas), I had a pretty productive day. I got through one and a half chapters, and plan to finish the second one before tonight. I also sorted the receipts for the taxes. It's a much less overwhelming job if I break it into pieces. I'll be done by the end of the week.

Tomorrow Number Two has after-school club, and Wednesday she has after-school orchestra, giving me an extra half hour of work time both days.

I'm excited about seeing Race to Witch Mountain. I don't remember if I posted about this before. I read the first book again recently (Escape to Witch Mountain, and am about halfway through the second (Return from Witch Mountain) now.

Of course, when reading books this old, you have to allow for the decades that have passed. The first book was fine, but the majority of it had little happening, and the ending was sooo disappointing because suddenly we're not in the kids' POV anymore, so we don't actually see Witch Mountain or what it's like for them to be reunited with their family/people. The second book starts with an absolutely ridiculous scene, even for 1978. The uncle is rewarding the kids with a little vacation, so he drops them off at the Rose Bowl and leaves them for a week. WTF? Who does that with kids? There's absolutely no reason for him not to stay with them. They have to take a taxi to their hotel, but of course it all goes awry. Once again, despite the inherent action in the premise, it's a pretty passive story.

But I've been "matching" the bits from the trailer with the book, and I'm eager to see what they've changed. It looks like they've reversed Tia and Tony in terms of age/leadership, and given the cab driver a bigger role than the two pages he has in the book (maybe he shows up again in the book, I don't know yet).

Anyway, looking forward to that. Unfortunately, I'll be in New Jersey not seeing Jared Padalecki when it comes out, so we'll have to wait a week (assuming the family doesn't go see it without me!).

Okay, your turn! Tell me something positive.

You're Gonna Vote, Right?

Yeah, I know. Everyone hates celebrity PSAs, especially regarding politics, because they're out of touch with the real world, who the hell are they to tell me blah blah blah.

But!

1. This isn't about politics. It's about voting.

2. It's really, really funny.

Warning: Profanity Inside



For the record, I'm registered, have been since I was old enough, though I confess I haven't voted in every election (every presidential one, though!). I take my kids with me to the polls, and we talk about the candidates on our way over. And someday, I'm going to exert myself to try to do something about the fact that my state disenfranchises me in the primaries. Honest.