Whirlwind Weekends....

This was one of those weekends that just flew by. I don't even know where the time went. I don't even feel like I did that much but somehow I manage to eat up two days of time without really knowing where they went.

Now it's back to work tomorrow to begin another week. Things at work haven't been too terribly lately. I can't say I'm dancing through the daisies as though I were in the Sound of Music but, for the most part, I haven't visualized using my yoga strap for anything other than relaxing.

And I did have a good weekend even if it flew by too quickly. I managed to get my book formatted and uploaded and a cover designed- front, back and spine- so that it can start being sold on Amazon.com. It's funny, a few books ago, I was very against self-publishing. It always has such a stigma attached to it- an idea that "You can't get published and the only choice you have is to do it yourself."

That's how I felt up until a couple of months ago. Then I wrote The Reluctant Demon. It's the first mainstream book I've really written. It's humourous. It has a female protagonist. I hate to sound arrogant but I'm pretty sure it's written well. And to top it all off, it's a timely subject: A woman falls in love with a supernatural creature. Ok, so, right now, the craze is still vampires but demons aren't that far off....just watch a few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I still couldn't get an agent to give me the time of day.

I think in my mind, the power has shifted. A few years ago, writers were reliant on agents and publishing companies. Now, the publishing industry is faltering- the small companies have been swallowed by the bigger companies and there's really not many places for new, unpublished writers to go.

So, now, instead of feeling like I'm selling out by publishing myself, I can't help but feel this rush of power. It's in my hands. Granted, I won't have the media campaigns that the popular novels get but it means I can get people to read my stuff. And, in truth, that's all I want. I don't want the money...I just want to be read. I think, at heart, that's what most of us writers want.

I suppose that means I had a good, productive weekend, even if it did fly by. I also got to go to Jungle Jim's which, as you probably know if you read this regularly, always makes a day better. This time, I absolutely, positively have to laud Jungle Jim's. They made my insane obsessive Foodie dreams come true: They had fresh quail eggs.

I know, I know, this may not seem like a huge deal but as I mentioned a few blogs ago, quail eggs had become a quest. I see them on the Food Network all the time and all I wanted to do was try them. Jungle Jim's carries them in a canned form but not in the fresh, bespeckled beauty I always see on TV. In all my trips to Jungle Jim's, I've never found them fresh. And then, when I least expected it, as I was leaving the produce section to move on to the international aisles, there they were, right next to the balut eggs.

As a side note, they usually don't have balut, either. It's one of those, uh, delicacies that has always fascinated me, rather like seeing the sheeps, cow and pigs heads they often carry at Jungle Jim's. For those of you that don't know, balut is a fertilized duck (or chicken) egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell. It's very popular in the Phillippines. I've never been able to bring myself to try one though I have watched my Filipino friends eat them. I think if I'd been brought up to eat them, it wouldn't bother me but, well, I wasn't and my British palate isn't quite brave enough to try them. If you can't quite comprehend why this might be a little, um, un-palatable, just Google it to look for pictures. You might get it then.

Even if I wasn't about to buy any, I was impressed that Jungle Jim's had some in stock.

Not as impressed as the quail eggs though. I snatched a package up- gently, of course. I confess, I, um, sort of hugged them a little in my excited. Then, as I walked around the rest of the store, I kept my hand on them to a) keep them safe so they didn't get broken in transit and b) to make sure no one stole them. Since they had a plethora of them, I'm quite sure that no one would have stole them but in my haze of excitement at actually finding them, I wasn't about to take any chances.

Also, they had my cipollini onions that I haven't been able to find. Fresh, small, cipollini onions....I think it's safe to say, Jungle Jim's is the best grocery store...ever. As of this moment, there's no longer anything I've seen on the Food Network that I haven't been able to find at Jungle Jim's.

It's odd the things that make a weekend good....quail eggs, self-publishing and a long, leisurely walk around a grocery store. I suppose it's good when the small things in life can make me happy.

Or they make me weird....or, at least, odd....Nevertheless, I cooked my first quail eggs today....

Delicious.

Happy Monday!