Some days, I find that I wake up in a good mood and I’m feeling fiery. I don’t know why but days like this I find that the smallest things inspire me to a passionate reaction whether they’re good or bad. Today is one of those days. So I’ve decided that this blog will be about the small things that both drive me a little crazy and make me strangely happy.
The annoying little things
1) Passive-aggressive female bathroom users. These are women who go in a stall, find it’s not flushed and immediately leave to use another one. Yes, it’s vile and disgusting but just flush the damn toilet. You don’t have to use it afterwards but flush it anyway. Be a doer, not a dodger.
2) Annoying cutesy shortened words. I hate things like ‘FroYo’- sure it’s clever but just say frozen yogurt. Please. Say ‘vacation’, not “Vacay”. Also, I hate when people say, “I’m on the ‘puter”. It’s a COMputer. It’s one syllable. Seriously.
3) Paul McCartney. I don’t know why but he inspires rage. I think it’s time to quit, Paul. You are NOT the Beatles. You were only one of them. Go do a nice kids show like Ringo and then I might rethink it. Also, I think you disrespected Linda when you got married to that weirdo very shortly after she died. I can’t help it. I think that way. Also, I know people want to see you sing because you were a Beatle but you should stop touring anyway. Let it go. Also, I know you’ve had plastic surgery. I think it’s pretty obvious.
4) Mosquitoes. I am covered with bites. I’d still like to figure out their purpose on this earth because, really, I think we can do without them. Also, they’re evolving. We have a stripey kind now in Ohio that apparently is an Asian Tiger mosquito. It appears to be immune to the power of my Off-Mosquito Fan.
5) True Blood. I used to love that show. I used to get excited on Sunday evenings because it was on. Now it’s just a giant mess of storylines that leave the main character almost as a peripheral and focuses on far too many stories and really annoying characters who really should just go away (Tommy and Tara). Alan Ball, I know you’re trying to create a world that borrows from the books but creates a separate reality but there’s no need to take stories from four or five of the books and cram them into a TWELVE EPISODE SEASON. There’s nothing wrong with loosely just following the books. The first season was great. Yes, I’ll still watch it for now but, as with Glee, my patience is wearing thing.
6) Tarragon. I really want to like it. I like licorice after all. I just can’t like tarragon. I’ve tried.
7) Those African tribal type of ear rings that make a giant hole in the lobe and just keep getting bigger. They’re weird. I should have the urge to throw wads of paper THROUGH YOUR EAR HOLE. I know, I know…it’s a form of self-expression but, well, don’t you think it’s a little odd that people can see you neck THROUGH YOUR EAR? Sorry. I can’t help it.
The good little things
1) I published a book and having friends who are so supportive that they’ve bought it already either on the Kindle or the paperback makes me happy. Thank you!
2) I published two book. This was my dream as a young ‘un. Granted, it’s not the same level as if a huge New York publishing firm bought it and marketed it for me but that doesn’t happy very much anymore and I tend to think that if we want something to happen badly enough, we just have to do it. I did it. Even if no one but my friends (see #1) buy it…hey, it’s out there…right?
3) Bacon. Yes, I’m on the bandwagon but bacon is good. I’m not on the bandwagon where it should go in everything (I’m not into the bacon ice-cream thing) but I do think it makes a mighty fine addition to many soups, vegetables and entrees. Mmm….bacon.
4) Fresh veggies in the summer. Last night, I made cabbage with juniper, sautéed zucchini and yellow squash and potatoes with sage. All were from the farmer’s market or my garden. There’s nothing better than pickin’ it, cookin’ it and then eatin’ it.
5) My job. Even on bad days, I’m incredibly grateful to have a job that I actually like with a boss who STILL says “thank you” when I do something well and coworkers who make me laugh and not want to run away. Also, in this economy, I’m incredibly grateful to have a job.
6) My dogs. There’s nothing better than getting home from work, sitting on the couch and having two dachshunds fight over who gets to slam dance with love into my lap first.
7) George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series of books. Seriously. I’ve been reading them for two months and I’m getting worried about what to do when I finish this last one, they’re that good. WRITE FASTER, GEORGE!
8) Long weekends. I took tomorrow off just because I wanted to and because I wanted a long weekend. The freedom to do that is a luxury.
9) Peaches. Fresh peaches from the farmer’s market that are so juicy, no matter how hard you try, there’s no way to eat them with dignity.
10) That today, my list of good things is longer than the bad which is a good thing unto itself.
Happy Friday!
Showing posts with label Game of Thrones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Game of Thrones. Show all posts
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
London, eBooks and Other Monday Musings
For a Monday, today wasn’t so bad at work. The day flew by. I think this was probably because I was still playing catch-up from last week. We’re a small office of seven people in the office. When five of the seven go on vacation in the same week, it generally means that I’m going to be a little busy.
Now everyone’s back and I’m still working from the fallout of having to cover so many areas in a week. I’m not complaining. There’s nothing I like better than a Monday that flies by. Given that last Monday, we found out someone who worked for us had died, this was a much better day.
On the plus side, it seems that as of Thursday of this week, I’m going to officially qualify for our “Top Performer’s Trip” to London. These means that my lovely, generous company rewards those of us who’ve met a certain ‘quota’ by a certain date with an all-expenses trip to London.
The trip happens every year. Usually, it’s somewhere in the U.S. but since this year is the 30th anniversary of the founding of our company, our owner decided to splurge and send the top performers to England.
Naturally, I’m rather excited. While there will be some group activities involved, for the most part, the trip is about letting the ‘winners’ have a relaxed trip to London. We get lots of free time, spending money and travel paid for. Since I have family in England, I plan on extending the trip so I can spend some time with my grandparents. I’m trying hard not to think about leaving the pups for over a week but I’m still a little worried about anyway. They’re my babies and it’s not like I can call them on the phone. I’m hoping that my parents won’t mind doggy-sitting for me. I should probably ask them, shouldn’t’ I?
(Hey, mum…would you mind awfully looking after the girls for a while in late September/early October? I’ll buy you and dad dinner. Thanks!)
So, anyway, I got my last placement today to qualify for the trip which made Monday rather pleasant for once. It doesn’t mean I’m likely to stop working hard but it’s definitely been an incentive to work extra hard. Hey, if you wave a free trip to London in front of Captain Monkeypants, I’m not going to let that slip!
Today was also good because I had an important revelation regarding publishing e-books: People don’t want to pay $1.99 for a book but if you give it away for free, you’ll ‘sell’ twice as many copies in a day as you have in the last four months. True story.
Personally, I didn’t think that $1.99 was that steep of a price for a book. I mean, granted, The Reluctant Demon isn’t up there with, say Pride and Prejudice or War and Peace but I thought that $1.99 was pretty cheap for an e-book. I mean, as an ‘author’, it is nice to charge something for your work. Giving it away for free is very benevolent but there’s something rather satisfying about making a few pennies for each book that sells.
I mean, I own a Kindle now. If I see a book for $1.99 that sounds interesting enough to read, I don’t exactly say, “oooh, that’s almost two dollars! I don’t know about that. It’s a bit expensive.” Now, I do that when it comes to bestsellers because I think it’s a bit of a rip-off. For example, I wanted to buy the newest of the “Game of Thrones” series recently. I’m not quite ready to read it yet but I’m close enough to finish book four that I started to panic that I’d finish it and wouldn’t have book five to start reading immediate.
As a sidenote: Yes, I am aware that this might be slightly obsessive but I’ve made no attempts to hide the fact that I have an obsessive personality. It’s just a fact that if I’m reading something that’s part of a series and I’m enjoying it, I simply cannot relax until I have all of the series at my fingertips to read. I can’t help it. It’s the same problem I have when I fly. I pack WAY too many books in my carry-on because I panic at the thought of finishing a book and not having another one to start. Weird? Maybe…but I know I’m not the only one who feels like this.
Anyway, back to my Game of Thrones anecdote. So, I priced the hardback to see where the price was lowest. I mistakenly thought it was Target because the book was priced at $24.95 and there was a “30%” off sticker on the cover. However, apparently the $24.95 is the price WITH the 30% off already. I find this misleading and rather annoying, Target, in case you’re reading. And yes, now I’m picturing a giant store with arms and a bullseye for a head reading this blog which is a weird image to have in my head.
Eventually, it turned out that Costco had the best price. I still wasn’t sure $19 was worth instant gratification so I decided to hold off on buying it until I’d checked the Kindle price. My theory on books is that it does cost money to print a hard copy and thus the cover price makes sense. However, e-books only take the cost of formatting them for this version and since almost 99% of writers tend to write electronically these days anyway, it’s tedious but not difficult to do. Thus, my rationalization was the e-book version of “Dance with Dragons” should be at pretty inexpensive compared to the print version.
Wrong. It turned out it was still almost $15. For the extra $4, I returned to Costco and now have a physical book which seems much more worth the $19 than the $15 it would have cost to have a file on my Kindle.
So, my point is that for my hard copy of Emmy Goes to Hell, I have no choice but to meet the minimum cost of printing the book which turned out to be $12. I literally will make less than 50 cents a book in my attempts to make it affordable. However, since I’m not actually selling anything physical on the ebook version, I can’t justify charging anything close to that. Thus, my e-book version of Emmy is $2.99. Yes, I raised the price of it from my first book a whole dollar. I apologize. Inflation stinks.
Besides, I’m giving The Reluctant Demon away for free at the moment. It’s my shameless attempt to try to tempt more readers to buy Emmy. I figure they might want to read the sequel and if I give them the first one for free and leave them on a cliffhanger, they might buy the next one for the low, low price of $2.99.
All in all, it’s been a pretty good day. Between qualifying for free trips and publishing revelations, it’s been a better Monday than most. Since they don’t happen very often, I’m choosing to be very thankful and appreciate it for everything it’s worth.
Thank you, Monday for not being a typical Monday.
Happy Tuesday!
Now everyone’s back and I’m still working from the fallout of having to cover so many areas in a week. I’m not complaining. There’s nothing I like better than a Monday that flies by. Given that last Monday, we found out someone who worked for us had died, this was a much better day.
On the plus side, it seems that as of Thursday of this week, I’m going to officially qualify for our “Top Performer’s Trip” to London. These means that my lovely, generous company rewards those of us who’ve met a certain ‘quota’ by a certain date with an all-expenses trip to London.
The trip happens every year. Usually, it’s somewhere in the U.S. but since this year is the 30th anniversary of the founding of our company, our owner decided to splurge and send the top performers to England.
Naturally, I’m rather excited. While there will be some group activities involved, for the most part, the trip is about letting the ‘winners’ have a relaxed trip to London. We get lots of free time, spending money and travel paid for. Since I have family in England, I plan on extending the trip so I can spend some time with my grandparents. I’m trying hard not to think about leaving the pups for over a week but I’m still a little worried about anyway. They’re my babies and it’s not like I can call them on the phone. I’m hoping that my parents won’t mind doggy-sitting for me. I should probably ask them, shouldn’t’ I?
(Hey, mum…would you mind awfully looking after the girls for a while in late September/early October? I’ll buy you and dad dinner. Thanks!)
So, anyway, I got my last placement today to qualify for the trip which made Monday rather pleasant for once. It doesn’t mean I’m likely to stop working hard but it’s definitely been an incentive to work extra hard. Hey, if you wave a free trip to London in front of Captain Monkeypants, I’m not going to let that slip!
Today was also good because I had an important revelation regarding publishing e-books: People don’t want to pay $1.99 for a book but if you give it away for free, you’ll ‘sell’ twice as many copies in a day as you have in the last four months. True story.
Personally, I didn’t think that $1.99 was that steep of a price for a book. I mean, granted, The Reluctant Demon isn’t up there with, say Pride and Prejudice or War and Peace but I thought that $1.99 was pretty cheap for an e-book. I mean, as an ‘author’, it is nice to charge something for your work. Giving it away for free is very benevolent but there’s something rather satisfying about making a few pennies for each book that sells.
I mean, I own a Kindle now. If I see a book for $1.99 that sounds interesting enough to read, I don’t exactly say, “oooh, that’s almost two dollars! I don’t know about that. It’s a bit expensive.” Now, I do that when it comes to bestsellers because I think it’s a bit of a rip-off. For example, I wanted to buy the newest of the “Game of Thrones” series recently. I’m not quite ready to read it yet but I’m close enough to finish book four that I started to panic that I’d finish it and wouldn’t have book five to start reading immediate.
As a sidenote: Yes, I am aware that this might be slightly obsessive but I’ve made no attempts to hide the fact that I have an obsessive personality. It’s just a fact that if I’m reading something that’s part of a series and I’m enjoying it, I simply cannot relax until I have all of the series at my fingertips to read. I can’t help it. It’s the same problem I have when I fly. I pack WAY too many books in my carry-on because I panic at the thought of finishing a book and not having another one to start. Weird? Maybe…but I know I’m not the only one who feels like this.
Anyway, back to my Game of Thrones anecdote. So, I priced the hardback to see where the price was lowest. I mistakenly thought it was Target because the book was priced at $24.95 and there was a “30%” off sticker on the cover. However, apparently the $24.95 is the price WITH the 30% off already. I find this misleading and rather annoying, Target, in case you’re reading. And yes, now I’m picturing a giant store with arms and a bullseye for a head reading this blog which is a weird image to have in my head.
Eventually, it turned out that Costco had the best price. I still wasn’t sure $19 was worth instant gratification so I decided to hold off on buying it until I’d checked the Kindle price. My theory on books is that it does cost money to print a hard copy and thus the cover price makes sense. However, e-books only take the cost of formatting them for this version and since almost 99% of writers tend to write electronically these days anyway, it’s tedious but not difficult to do. Thus, my rationalization was the e-book version of “Dance with Dragons” should be at pretty inexpensive compared to the print version.
Wrong. It turned out it was still almost $15. For the extra $4, I returned to Costco and now have a physical book which seems much more worth the $19 than the $15 it would have cost to have a file on my Kindle.
So, my point is that for my hard copy of Emmy Goes to Hell, I have no choice but to meet the minimum cost of printing the book which turned out to be $12. I literally will make less than 50 cents a book in my attempts to make it affordable. However, since I’m not actually selling anything physical on the ebook version, I can’t justify charging anything close to that. Thus, my e-book version of Emmy is $2.99. Yes, I raised the price of it from my first book a whole dollar. I apologize. Inflation stinks.
Besides, I’m giving The Reluctant Demon away for free at the moment. It’s my shameless attempt to try to tempt more readers to buy Emmy. I figure they might want to read the sequel and if I give them the first one for free and leave them on a cliffhanger, they might buy the next one for the low, low price of $2.99.
All in all, it’s been a pretty good day. Between qualifying for free trips and publishing revelations, it’s been a better Monday than most. Since they don’t happen very often, I’m choosing to be very thankful and appreciate it for everything it’s worth.
Thank you, Monday for not being a typical Monday.
Happy Tuesday!
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