Book news…

So I went buck wild and re-edited the proof. I called it quits last night and uploaded my files. This morning I ordered what I hope is the final proof. Really. I am done. Stick a fork in me!

How is it that each time I printed the dang thing out, I kept finding errors and issues and things that needed fixing. I am sure if I printed it out one last time, I would have found additional things to change. I have no idea how real authors do it. How were books written prior to Word? Did it all just flow out of Emily Bronte perfectly the first time?

Oh, and my mother said the sweetest thing to me today. “Donna, did you hear about Japan? They are saying that the radiation may hit us over here! Your father has decided to buy liquid iodine just in case. You should head over to the pharmacy and buy some, too. All you need is a couple drops in a glass of water. You look thyroid-y anyway, it might do you good.”

I had a bit of an epiphany the other day: I am doing pretty darn good. I am running my own business. I am speaking in front of groups. I wrote a book. It’s like my dream came true and I wasn’t paying any attention to it. Instead I was concentrating on my messy house and other not so perfect things in my life. It’s strange how that happens. I feel like a loser yet I am doing what I always wanted to do. Maybe it’s time to try some gratitude on for size?

Proof of Idiocy

The proof of my book didn’t arrive this afternoon as I had hoped it might. Clearly when they say, ETA 3/11, they mean it. I can’t wait to see how it looks in book format! And I am curious to see how well I nailed it… or not.

I received an interesting message today. And I am kinda torn whether to go into it here or not. At one time I had complete anonymity blogging… not anymore. Most of you are my Facebook friends and the rest have totally surmised everything else. Even though I don’t have an employer, is it right for me to vent here? Especially since it could get out? Who is reading these posts? I have no clue! Why don’t more of you comment!?!

Throwing caution to the wind, here’s the interesting message I received today: “Wanted to know if you had about an hour next week to sit with me – I have a client who I will be [insert everything I do for a living] and I wanted to pick your brain before getting started…can we do an hour consultation? What do you charge?”

Is it just me or is this out and out wrong? And INSULTING? Does she honestly think an hour consultation will provide her with all the information she needs to do what I do for a living? And why should I give her one hour of my time to arm her with the info to do my specialty? I can’t believe she didn’t read the email through and think, maybe this is inappropriate and tactless?

And now I am left wondering how to respond. Am I overacting? How would you respond?

Movies I want to see

Found this sitting in my drafts folder, figured I’d update it and post it. Perhaps it will give Pookie some ideas next time he’s near a Redbox.

and some I wouldn’t mind sitting through…
Black Swan
Burlesque
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
You Again?
Salt
Eat Pray Love
Sex and the City 2
MacGruber
Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky
Ondine
The Ghost Writer
Hot Tub Time Machine
Chloe
A Single Man (still haven’t seen it!)
The Last Station
She’s Out of My League
Dinner for Schmucks
A-Team
Get Him to the Greek

Whine Whine Whine

So many pet peeves. I am sick of email. It seems all people want to do is send email. Why can’t you just pick up the phone and call me? Trust me, it’s easier. And I am also ticked off because I got stood up today. The guy emailed me, “We still on? You never confirmed.” Confirmed? How about I never cancelled! Why do I need to confirm when you WATCHED ME ENTER IT INTO MY CALENDAR?

And a client left me a VM yesterday morning (Monday), “I called you Friday evening and I STILL haven’t heard back from you! This is why I fired my last Web designer!”

I am also angry at WordPress because I can’t find any good Business Directory plugins. I have spent a crapload of money on some pretty crappy plugins and themes that look perfect until I install them. There must be a way to get an online directory installed — whether inside of WordPress or outside of it.

Oh, and a client says, “Can you install a countdown on my Website, I want there to be a countdown to election day.” EASY PEASY, right? Wrong! I think it’s going to take me 5 minutes to find a countdown plugin, install it and set it up as a widget on the sidebar. NOPE! I went through 5 different countdown plugins. The first one forced me to accept their text and all they provided was “# days until my BIRTHDAY!” Deleted that. The next three didn’t work. Finally I find one that works… 45 minutes later!

I am tired. I am sun-deprived. I am not as productive as I should be.

In better news, the proof of my book has been shipped and is in transit to me. I can’t wait to see it looking like a book and not like a stack of 8x11s. My hope is that it will be perfect and not require any changes. I want this part of the process over!

I think I am hungry and that’s why I feel so crabby.

Just you shut your mouth

I entered church on Sunday and a large bolt of lightning did not strike me dead. I held baby Fiona over the baptismal font and father Chris doused her with holy water. My favorite part of the ceremony was when we were instructed to recite, “Lord Hear Our Prayer” and each time we repeated it, little Fiona’s butt tooted.

I was just talking to a friend who told me how his family celebrates Passover… I was pretty shocked how uninformed I am regarding Jewish holidays. I thought it was just a meal but it’s quite an undertaking that resembles a massive Spring Cleaning. I need to do Spring Cleaning and I think making it official with a holiday is just the right kind of push.

This morning I read an article about echolocation. The article profiled this blind guy who is able to practically see using echolocation. I’ve spent a good part of the day clucking my tongue trying to echolocate the monitor in front of me to no avail. Clucking my tongue has made me think of that crazy movie, “The God’s Must Be Crazy.” Do you remember that movie? It was awesome, I recall.

I have so much work to get done today… STILL. The reason is instead of catching up on unfinished work on Saturday, I finished my book and sent it to the printing company instead. Soon I will be ordering a proof and then I will be selling copies on Amazon! I can barely wait!

Bob’s Vulgar Burgers

I think it was on Sunday that I caught the rebroadcast of Bob’s Burgers pilot episode. It was so vulgar! I couldn’t stop laughing.

It reminded me of something that happened to me once when I was in college. Audra’s roommate was a Japanese Exchange Student. Yasuyo was quite a bit different than most of the other Japanese Exchange Students. She didn’t spend all her time hiding under her bed like the others.

Yasuyo didn’t like me. I never really understood why. It couldn’t have been because I memorized a ton of filthy Japanese phrases and often threw them into conversation just to see her face contort up.

Koko wa kankoku? Datte inu no aji ga surunda mon.

And I am sure it had nothing to do with how I would often play Yoko Ono songs for her.

I remember the one time she said, “Doe-na! Turn that off!”

“Why, Yasuyo?”

“Because what Yoko says makes me uncomfortable!”

“What is Yoko saying?”

“Yoko says, ‘I want to lie with you in a sexual way’!!!!!”

At any rate, one day I finally asked Yasuyo why she didn’t like me.

“I don’t like you because you are….. how you say?…” She went to her Japanese-English Dictionary and looked up a word. She pointed at it, “See? VUL-GAR!”

Watching Bob’s Burgers and laughing at the itchy crotch jokes, I realized that Yasuyo was absolutely correct. I am vulgar. But not as vulgar as that show. Holy cow! How do they get away with that on broadcast television?

Little Elvis in Bruno Mars

My mom told me about Bruno Mars a few months ago– just that she enjoyed some of his songs. And then last week she told me he was the little boy Elvis stylist in Honeymoon in Vegas. I found this clip and think it’s awesome that this little boy went on to so much more… of course, I think his current music sucks and he should have stuck to Elvis songs… but that’s just me. I’ve been listening to pretty much nothing but Elvis since Elvis Week 2008 and I have yet to grow tired of it.

Just so you don’t think I am totally against all contemporary music, I do love Eli “Paperboy” Reed:

Social Network Shadows

Last night, Pookie and I went out to dinner with some friends. We ate at a Vietnamese restaurant, Saigon Main Vietnamese Cuisine. I ordered the grilled chicken vermicelli. It was good, I enjoyed it. Afterward we went back to Pookie’s house and watched the movie, The Social Network. I’ve been wanting to see it for quite some time. It was entertaining and I enjoyed it but didn’t love it love it love it. It saddened me that the only influence women apparently had in the creation of Facebook was as sexual objects. Whatever. I was surprised to find out that the twins in the movie were portrayed by 1 man! Blew Patty Duke out of the water! Amazing what’s possible nowadays.

The other surprise came when I recognized the actor portraying one of the lawyers as David Selby… YES! DAVID SELBY!!! He portrayed QUENTIN COLLINS in the original Dark Shadows soap opera. I loved loved loved Quentin Collins and I suspect he is the singular cause of my near obsession with hirsute men… specifically those sporting mutton-chop sideburns.

I was just about to complain that the fantastic movie, Night of Dark Shadows was never released on DVD and it’s a terrible shame, blah blah but I just noticed that it is available for download on Amazon’s Video on Demand service. I will have to queue it up. It’s been years since I’ve seen it and remember it being awesome.

Thinking about it, I can’t give Quentin full credit. Mike Nesmith and Elvis Presley also played a big part.

And apparently Mr. Spock:

The vacation that past by way too quickly

We arrived at the Borgata in Atlantic City probably around 5ish on Thursday. Right after check in, we ran to the pool and stayed there for quite some time. The pool area is really nice. Very clean and relaxing. Yes, clean. Having spent a large part of my working life traveling across the US and staying at Holiday Inns, I can tell you that about 95% of the pools out there have a floating top layer consisting of oil, sweat, hairspray and piss. I was actually totally okay with submerging my body not just in the pool but the hot tub too! This is quite unusual for me.

After the pool, we went to eat at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant, The American Grille. Honestly, the only reason we ate there is that I happened to notice they were cooking pizzas in a brick oven… and I am so hungry for a DeLorenzo’s Tomato pie that I couldn’t resist. We ordered the Spicy Lamb Chorizo Pizza with Tomatoes, Shaved White Onion and Cilantro for an appetizer and it was interesting in a good way. The dough was really cooked through and I liked the combination of cooked (cheese, chorizo) and raw (tomatoes, onions, cilantro) ingredients on the pizza.

I decided to get the Braised Kurobuta Pork Ossobuco with Sweet Pepper Romesco and Green Olive Tapenade with goat cheese potato puree in natural juice as my entrée. My decision was based purely on the amount of vowels and how the words rolled off my tongue: Kurobuta Ossobuco Romesco Tapenade.

Harrah's poolAfter the amazing dinner we took a taxi cab to Harrah’s to see their new pool. Unfortunately it was closed so we couldn’t get up close but we were able to peek in and gawk. It really blew away The Borgatta’s pool. Amazing. Regardless, Harrah’s smells funny and otherwise looks rather run down. I was happy to stay at The Borgata despite my pool envy.

The next day I putzed until Pookie got out of his meetings. I spent a bit of time sitting at the counter of the Gelato Parlor, eating Gelato and writing in my mini-notebook. An older man saddled up next to me and asked if I was filling out a job application.

“Nope”

“Oh, do you work here?”

I pointed to my cup of Gelato and said,”Nope, I am just sitting here eating Gelato and writing out my to do list for the next week.”

“I see, what do you do for a living?”

“I own my own business.”

I got a kick out of saying that. I know he was just being friendly and we did have a much longer conversation but I couldn’t help but feel awesome saying I owned my own business after he asked if I was a waitress or applying for a job as a waitress. Looking back, I really can’t figure why he thought those things. I was dressed well and was clearly a paying customer. Maybe it was because I was writing in a little notebook. I don’t know.

Once Pookie’s meetings let out, we went to the White House for hoagies. We ordered the Whole Italian hoagie and afterward realized we should have ordered the White House Special hoagie. They are basically the same, there’s just more meat on the Special. Live and learn.

The ride back to Philly was uneventful until we got to Philly and then we found ourselves in the most tremendous traffic jam I have ever experienced. We crawled along at a snail’s pace for about 3 hours!?! We got home around 6:30ish… we left AC at 2:30. Gotta love Philly traffic… not.

Even though I had a really lovely time, I still feel like I need a vacation. One day.

Coffee and the mornings

I met with a consultant yesterday. He woke me up to a bunch of things. I have been operating from a point of fear. Bring in money otherwise FAILURE! And I was actually hurting myself. I brought in too much business; more business than I could support and at a low rate. Right now I have to get back onto a healthy course. I need to set my sights on my initial goal which was to make money but not kill myself along the way. I haven’t been to the gym, I haven’t been writing on this blog, I haven’t been keeping my house up, I haven’t spent time with friends…. all because I am too busy working insane hours. So this post is my manifesto… I am going to take the work that makes sense to me and I am not going to under sell myself or my services. I am going to have a schedule and I will stick to it. I COME FIRST. It will take me a few months to dig out of this hole but I will and I will be happy again.