Book report

Fate has given my “Wheel of Hobbies” a spin again, and this time the arrow points to reading. As a result, the apartment is again littered with piles of books everywhere I can sit.

In my purse: Laurell K Hamilton’s “Guilty Pleasures.” This is first in her “Anita Blake vampire hunter” series. Finishing the Twilight series and getting hooked on True Blood has sucked (bwah!) me back into the vampire genre.

On my desk: Hamilton’s “The Laughing Corpse” - book 2 for when I finish book 1. Also, Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird” which I hope will give me some insight on writing. I love to write. Always have.

By my bed: “The Long Tail” which is quite interesting, especially the parts on how bloggers are the mainstream media’s biggest competition.

In the bathroom: “My Day, Vol 1″ which is a compilation of Eleanor Roosevelt’s daily newspaper columns. By the way, Eleanor Roosevelt is my hero. And “No Plot? No Problem!” by Chris Baty. NaNoWriMo’s next month, you know. And I might give it a shot. That is, if I can fit it onto the already-crowded “Wheel of Hobbies.”

What are you reading this month?

Posted at: 10:27 pm in General, Play | Permanent Link | 3 Comments - add yours! »
Tags: reading, true blood, vampires

Sleepless thoughts: denouement

I slept better last night, but there was still a lot of tossing and turning. I’m usually a champion sleeper and can quickly conk out in a bed, chair, on a sofa or floor, in a car, bus, train or plane. Could it be latent worries about the financial crisis? (Dear gov’t: since you are bailing out your big business buddies, can you forgive me about $17K in credit card debt? kthxbye) And I just don’t know enough about what’s going on to know if the bailout failing was good or bad - neither party seemed wholly on board with it. If anyone can point me to a primer of sorts on what’s going wrong, drop me a link in the comments. Hopping into the story now is like trying to hop into “Lost.”*

I really wanted Pelosi to be a great Speaker of the House, but she’s not too skilled with consensus building and failed to get her own (D) team to pass this bill on their own - they had the numbers.

I just want to know when I need to scope out my apple-selling corner or if I should have gone to the Starbucks job fair at lunch yesterday for a part time gig.

Anyway, the resolutions of yesterday’s “issues” that plagued me:

I took the Ben Franklin bridge and the happy travelers are home safe.

Diet. Bleah. But ignore me for now and congratulate Dave in California (not to be confused with Dr. Dave or BvP) on making his weight loss goal. He did it the way it’s supposed to be done. Huzzah!! (tosses confetti)

The C-P is moving its staff blogs to a new server, so my WoW blog’s undergoing a bit of maintenance at the moment. So no real updating until I copy over my old posts. I’ll promote the new link here when it’s ready. I’d love to have the most successful non-sports blog there. Why? Because I’m one of only two staff bloggers who doesn’t have the name recognition of writing for the paper.

The bangs are really a long layer, and they’re cute. They do start bugging mid-day, so I end up pulling them back anyway.

Samantha Who starts in 2 weeks, and this year’s “Dancing” cast is pretty meh. With the exception of Warren Sapp, that is. He can move!

Meet & Greet pushed back ’til Thursday which gives me time to track down the 4 ads that we have no artwork/copy for.

Still missing a house. But that’ll come.

The car’s pretty well aired out and the Febreze seemed to work. I’m going to take it to a car wash at lunch and vacuum out the interior because a summer of festivals and fun has left me with a sandy, junky car.

*By the way, have you seen the little one-sheet pieces at Starbucks? Each week up to the election they (partnered with Good magazine) put out a free info sheet on an important issue. It looks to be one broadsheet folded in half then quarters. This week’s is on Immigration. It’s very graphical and downright genius because it explains the issue, the controversies, and where each of the candidates stand. Genius, genius, genius.

Posted at: 7:49 am in Family/Friends, General, Play, Work | Permanent Link | 2 Comments - add yours! »
Tags: economy, sleep

Sleepless thoughts

I’ve been awake since around 2:30. About 20 minutes ago I crept out to the living room. I’m on the sofa and surfing the web with my iPhone under a quilt so I wake up neither the man nor the beasts. I guess this is the 21st century equivalent of reading a book under the covers with a flashlight.

Here is a smattering of the thoughts keeping me awake. Nine None of them are serious at all but maybe getting them out will help me get the last 90 minutes of sleep before my day starts.

John and Kristen were in California for a long weekend. I’m picking them up at the airport after work. So I’m debating which bridge to take. The Ben Franklin is closer to work, but the Walt Whitman is closer to the airport.

My size-down pants are snug again. I’ve been in a diet freefall since the layoffs in August. I need to suck it up and restart.

Tomorrow I need to update my World of Warcraft blog. I haven’t been playing much lately but I have Brewfest and Bejeweled screenshots. I need to remember to upload them to the server before I go to work. Can’t now — will wake up the dogs.

I did cut some long bangs into my hair yesterday and they don’t look bad. Well see how they do tomorrow.

I have too many TV shows on my plate: True Blood, Dancing with the Stars (2 nights a week), House and The Office. I have The Closer too, but thankfully that’s a summer show. Wait - forgot about Samantha Who. Did I miss that premiere?

The Meet and Greet section cones out Wednesday. Each ad in the section gets an online banner. As of Thursday only one ad rep has come to me with artwork/info. Deadline for materials is 12 noon tomorrow. Wondering if anything came to us Friday.

I miss having a house at Halloween time.

I spilled a venti Chai latte in my car on Friday afternoon. It has been such a rainy and humid weekend that even with the windows cracked it didn’t dry out. Now the car reeks. I had to toss my car mats and tackle the car with Febreze. I hope tomorrow’s less humid so I can open the windows more and let it air out. Else John and Kristen will have a stinky ride home. Which brings me back to…

Which bridge should I take I the airport…?

Edited to correct sleepless misspellings

Posted at: 4:42 am in Family/Friends, General, Play, Work | Permanent Link | 1 Comment - add yours! »
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Friday Five: Hacked!

Happy Friday! I’m off today so you get a special mid-morning blog post!

Here’s this week’s Friday Five: HACKED!

1. When did someone last break something of yours?
On Labor Day, in the Peddler’s village parking lot, someone backed into my car. He scratched the heck out of my driver’s side rear panel, but left a note with his name/phone number. I was a bonehead and decided to do the “right” thing and go through GEICO. They were happy to pursue, and since I pay them heaps of cash each year, I was happy to let them. So I sat back and waited for them to tell me what to do next.

Unfortunately, the guy won’t deal with them at all, preferring to pay me out of pocket. So now I have to call this guy and go through heaps of extra inconvenience. If I go outside of GEICO, I don’t get the rental car coverage or anything that I, you know, pay for. If I deal with him out of pocket and go through GEICO, he’s going to have to pony up at least my $500 deductible and my rates will go up anyway, right?

Not to mention, he probably hates my guts for going to my insurance company in the first place. And I hate confrontation. So bleah.

2. When did you last play hackysack, if ever?
Never!

3. What was your most dramatic haircut like?
Back in college I had it really short, to the point where it was wedgy-looking in the back, and the stylist actually had to take clippers to the back of my neck for strays. I wore a baseball cap for months.

4. Hacking is basically breaking through the security that protects a computer or a website. What’s the closest you’ve come to doing something similar in real life?
Somebody here in my building never changed their default wireless router settings. So the network name is linksys and the password is admin. So I use their wireless connection from time to time.

5. In the world of stand-up comedy, a hack is a comic who steals jokes from other comics. Have you ever known a hack in your own field?
I’m a web designer! We’re all hacks! We always go online for snippets of code to solve problems, or for free javascript to do neat things.

~~~
Did you know that next week is October? Even after my planned days off — 2 for Boston/Blogher*, 3 for trip to see WM’s family in Michigan, 1 for Black Friday — I still have 5 days left. Our vacation days don’t roll over (and really, who knows if we’ll all be employed by December anyway?) so I decided to take today off. As usual, it’s crappy out. But I’m headed out to lunch with a friend, and will swing by Target afterward. So I’ll get my puttering in.

~~~
This Sunday, weather permitting, we’ll be at the Pennsauken Fall Festival (PDF). It promises the three “Cs” of a successful outdoor event, crafts, classic cars, and carny food. Okay, that’s four.

Have a wonderful weekend!

*I’m terrified about this. I won’t know anybody there, and I get very shy around people I don’t know. I feel like I need to be there though.

Posted at: 10:25 am in Family/Friends, General, Play, Work | Permanent Link | 1 Comment - add yours! »
Tags: blogher, blogher boston, friday five, fun, Work