Steph in the City

The Return of Scripted Shows?

2011-08-22T04:00:00.001-07:00

For me, when it comes to reality shows, a little goes a long way.

Sure, I admittedly become addicted to Big Brother every summer. And I'm not immune to the lure of the occasional episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares or Cake Boss. But the slew of dating shows and cheesy-fake game shows where actors posing as "real people" are thrown down a chute if they get questions wrong blend together...and there are only so many singing competitions a person who's not all that interested in watching people sing can take.

Yet scripted shows have bored me, too, lately. Even my old standby, The Office, has become dependably disappointing since Steve Carrell's exit last season. I miss sitcoms, yet when I try to watch shows like Hot in Cleveland, stocked with actresses I LOVE, I find the premises recycled. It's all WAY too familiar. There's not a single original sitcom premise left.

That's why it surprised me that the previews for the new fall shows piqued my interest. A show about parents dealing with a newborn baby? AND it stars Christina Applegate? I'm there. And Whitney looks hilarious. Plus there's a new show from the creators of Lost and a show called Suburgatory that has the most interesting title I've heard in a while. Plus the previews for both shows look very intriguing.

A real puzzler for me is a new drama about PanAm flight attendants back in the 70s. I'm not sure what the intended audience for that one is, but it definitely looks interesting. However, a remake of Charlie's Angels in the style of the movie? No thanks. I loved it when it was simple and cheesy, back in the 70s. It's way too female Ninja for my taste.

Could original, imaginative, SCRIPTED programming be returning to TV lineups? Or is the reality-show mill simply taking a break between bouts of churning out yet another version of the dating/singing shows that we've been bombarded with for so long?

My Favorite Places

2011-08-08T04:00:00.001-07:00

Plus Size Shopaholic wrote last week about her 5 favorite places. I thought it was such a great idea, I had to give it a try. My trip to Los Angeles is still a couple of weeks away...so I can't count it yet, as I haven't been there, but I have a feeling it will immediately be added toward the top (if not AT the top) by the time I get back! Although, you never know...Paris disappointed me greatly and reinforced that America is still my favorite place to be in the world. In this wonderful country, my favorite places are:

Charleston, South Carolina

I was 23 when my boss told me, on my first day on the job at the Arts Commission, that I was going to Charleston for a business conference. It was too late to get me into the conference hotel, so they put me in a bed and breakfast near Battery Park. I had to walk about a half a mile to the conference hotel every day, but when I wasn't cooped up in meetings, I was hanging out along the water and admiring the homes on "Rainbow Row." I've been back once, since, and if I could, I'd vacation there every year.

Gatlinburg, Tennessee

With all this beauty less than four hours from home, how could I NOT take advantage of a weekend getaway every now and then? After discovering the cabin experience, I refuse to stay in hotels and always search for a cabin with a beautiful view. Can anything beat lounging in a hot tub while taking in the breathtaking beauty of the Smokies?

Destin, Florida

If you live in the Southeast, most of the closest beaches are on Florida's Emerald Coast. Of these choices, Destin is still my favorite, thanks to its class, charm, and plethora of dining and entertainment options. It's been years since I've been, but to this day, if anyone mentions a beach vacation, Destin is the ONLY option in my mind.

New York City

A New York vacation satisfies my go-go-go personality. (Yes, even on vacation I can't sit still!) Still...L.A. may bump this one off the list. I love the excitement of New York but I still feel a certain negative energy in the air. Cab drivers honking, frowning faces all around. And every time I've been to N.Y., I've returned to Tennessee realizing just how GREEN our city is. Still, one of my big dreams is to go to New York and stay in a fancy hotel near Times Square. Whatever I do, I'll never take a cab ride in New Jersey again! Fifty bucks to travel five miles? Insane.

My own back yard

I've visited London, Paris, Germany, Canada, New England, Rhode Island, Michigan, Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Georgia, Kentucky, Illinois, Florida, South Carolina, and Missouri, but still, one of my five favorite places is my own back yard. When you have THIS view, how can you beat staying home?

Where Have I Been?

2011-08-05T04:00:00.000-07:00

You may (or may not) have noticed I haven't been blogging much lately. I feel bad about that! Since 2006, I've blogged steadily, starting 7 days a week and dwindling to 5 days, then 3. This week I only posted once.

This is my personal blog and I love writing on it! I have had tons of ideas for blog postings, but the problem is, I haven't had time to read YOUR blogs. And if I can't read the blogs of others, I don't feel right posting. I'm trying to do better, though.

The truth is, I've been writing for $$$. I've been going out in search of freelance writing gigs and actually getting them. I'm building up a clientele and getting pretty good at it. With all I've been doing for money (although admittedly, no one would ever get rich off of this extra income!), any free time I have is devoted to working on my novel. Most days I work all day at my day job, come home, eat dinner, and spend all evening either posting my resume and samples for freelance work or working on writing jobs for clients. That extra money I'm making can go toward taking trips or buying things we need for the house...so it's hard to justify writing for free these days, but I'm going to try to post at least once a week.

Meanwhile, I'm going around visiting your blogs as much as I can! I will never post if I can't read other blogs. That's my rule to myself! Don't take unless you can give in return.

Hope everyone else is doing well!

The Best Advice I Ever Got

2011-08-01T04:00:00.000-07:00

I recently read this book:

The book features words of wisdom from various celebrities and public figures, including Bill Cosby, Matthew McConaughey, Condoleezza Rice, and, of course, Katie herself. Each person details the best advice he or she ever received.

Throughout the book, I kept thinking to myself, 'How would I answer that question?' As I listened to the book, I came up with several pieces of advice I'd gotten over the years. Advice about not giving up. Advice about dealing with difficult people in the workplace. Advice about marriage, family, friends, traveling... You name it. Each day, I seemed to come up with a different piece of good advice.

But the other day I was thinking about a piece of advice I received in my 20s. It came from an older woman I worked with. I didn't particularly care for this woman -- she was cold and, well, kind of MEAN at times. But one day when I was all upset about something, she shook her head and said something to this effect:

"As you get older, you'll care less and less what people think of you."

That was it. Simple advice...but it turned out to be SO true. In fact, writing and reading about pre-teens and teens now, it constantly comes up that young people want to fit in. They get their entire sense of self-worth from what other people think of them. You take that into your 20s, to a certain degree, but then, as you get older, you start to change. Your self-worth comes from what YOU know about yourself. Sure, someone else can hurt you with insults, but you're much more cemented in who you are so you recover much more quickly. At least, most of us do.

That's just one of many pieces of advice I've gotten over the years. I may share some others, too, as I think of them!

What's the best advice you ever got?

Remember Daily Planners?

2011-07-29T04:00:00.000-07:00

When I was 20, I worked a summer internship at our ABC affiliate. My job was assisting the producer of a segment called 2 On Your Side. Viewers would write in complaints about various companies and we'd investigate. The producer was an ultra-organized hard-working woman named Kathleen. As always happens when you're young and impressionable, I found myself idolizing her.

Kathleen had a daily planner. Everyone at the station probably had one, since it WAS 1991 and PDAs hadn't even been invented yet, let alone iPhones and Blackberries. She marked all of her appointments in it and wrote out her daily tasks, checking them off when she was done.

At some point during the summer, I decided to incorporate a daily planner into my life as well. It quickly became an addiction.

By the end of the summer, I'd tossed my purse in favor of a Franklin planner with a purse strap. I had the credit card organizer and the change pocket insert.

The Franklin planner purse also had a pocket for your sunglasses and you could hang your car keys with a little clip. No cell phone pocket, of course -- didn't need one -- and I guess it was assumed you didn't need a place for your lipstick and compact mirror. In the end, that's why the Franklin planner purse didn't stay in my life very long.

But my addiction to daily planners continued past college graduation, and well into my career as a public relations consultant. I rejected my employer's offer to pay for my daily planner refills because they would only pay for the basic.

I wanted the pretty designer refills, with pictures of trees and flowers in the background.

I'd go to the office supply store and stand in front of the planners for long periods of time, searching for new, fun inserts to make my planner more usable. No telling how much money I spent pimping my planner, but it made me happy.

Then came Personal Digital Assistants. I never even came close to succumbing to this new technology trend. When cell phones began becoming more and more complex, I was well aware I could go electronic. And at work we were encouraged to use the calendar built into our e-mail system. But I just couldn't get into it.

Now I have an iPhone and I know I should use its calendar functionality...but as easy as these online calendars are (NO paper!), they just aren't as fun as the old Franklin calendars.

Do You Need Cable TV?

2011-07-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

I was a member of Netflix when I first started hearing about instant streaming. It would soon be taking over the world, experts said. Even as early as four or five years ago, TV networks were beginning to stream their TV shows on the web. Miss the latest episode of Survivor? That's okay, just go to CBS.com and watch it. And, in fact, for a while that was the only time I watched TV on my laptop -- when I'd missed an episode of something.

Even with a laptop, though, I could never imagine watching TV exclusively that way. TV-watching is a room-filling experience. If you live alone, you want that noise to fill the house. It makes you feel less lonely. If you live with others, you want to sit on the sofa and watch TV together, not crowd around a computer monitor to watch it.

But with the advent of big-screen computer monitors...

...that's all changing. You could easily hook a desktop up to one of these huge monitors and watch TV as a family. Or you can buy one of the many devices that now allow you to stream directly to your TV.

I don't know about you, but we're paying more than $130 for a cable TV and Internet access...$130 is way too much. Granted, a great portion of that is for the fastest Internet, which you have to have to stream movies and TV shows over the Internet. But imagine if you could live without paying that huge cable TV bill every month... Even if you cut down to the most basic cable you can get, you could save quite a bit of money.

Netflix's Instant Streaming plan is $7.99 a month. You'll have access to a ridiculous number of movies and TV shows, but be forewarned. If you're looking for brand new movies, you probably won't find them here. Netflix's Instant Streaming plan is more for people who like older movies. Even movies made as recently the 80s and 90s...Netflix has those in droves. TV series from those decades fill the Instant Streaming site as well. As for the newer movies, they appear to come from Starz, so whatever's showing on that network is on Netflix. (Currently: The Last Airbender and Secretariat appear to be the newest movies.)

If you want to stream the latest TV shows to your TV or computer, Hulu will probably be your place. You can already watch the last few episodes of TV shows for free...as well as numerous other TV shows, including classics. But to get full seasons of shows you really like, you probably will have to upgrade to Hulu Plus. Also, you can't stream free Hulu but you can stream Hulu Plus to your TV set. (Or even your smartphone, if you want to watch TV that way.) Hulu Plus is $7.99 a month.

I'm paying $79.99 a month for Comcast cable. If I cut it down to basic, it would be less than $20 (or so my co-worker says -- I can't figure out their website enough to find out how much it would actually be). That would give me local news which, as far as I can tell is NOT currently available for streaming. (Guys, there's a good business idea...) Add Hulu Plus and Netflix Instant Streaming to that and it's a total of $35.98 a month. I think we used to pay that for cable back in college.

The only problem I can see is that if you're living with a "flipper," someone who constantly switches channels and seems to get joy out of that, you might have a problem. The overabundance of choices on Netflix and Hulu Plus can sometimes be VERRRRY overwhelming. You're looking at all these movies and TV shows and the more you look, the less sure you are of what you want to watch. It shows you how TV has always narrowed our choices.

It's the same with cable TV. Watching TV was a lot easier when we had only a handful of channels to choose from!

Have You Backed Up Your Files Lately?

2011-07-25T04:00:00.000-07:00

Last week, Renee blogged about losing her thumb drive (some call it "thumb drive," but I've always called it a jump drive). It can also be called a flash drive, to further complicate and confuse everyone!

Anyway, as I told her in comments, I've never lost a jump drive (yet), but I did break one once. It shattered into three or four pieces. I managed to get it into my computer and back up the data on it, but it was a close enough call to remind me that I hadn't been backing up that drive as often as I should.

We're all busy. We speed through our days without taking a breath. When we finally do get time to sit down and create, we're usually so glad to get a second at the keyboard, the last thing we think about is file maintenance. But anyone who has ever lost precious hours, days...even MONTHS of work will tell you that a few seconds of backup can save you countless hours of work down the line if you have to recreate your manuscript. And what if you SELL that book and a publisher wants it now? You had it two weeks ago but your computer crashed or your jump drive failed...and now it's gone.

Having worked in information systems for a full decade now, I can tell you with full confidence, hard drives fail. Jump drives fail, too. And we won't even talk about how unreliable floppy drives and CD-Rs are. If you don't have every single word you've ever written backed up in at least two places, you can rest assured you'll probably lose it. I'd recommend more than two places, just to be safe.

Microsoft's Office Live will hold all your files and make them accessible from any computer. I stopped using it once they went to Skydrive, though, because it seemed to only work with Office 2010 at that point? Hopefully they've fixed that problem by now. Google Documents makes a handy little file-holder as well, although I've not yet tried it. Then there's the old-fashioned solution of e-mailing your manuscript to yourself...

If you have wireless and more than one computer in your life, copy your files to your "Public" folder in Windows 7. Microsoft explains how to do this here. (Click on "Sharing Files.")

If you have an iPhone, Dropbox is a great app. You can set your PC to sync with your phone and grab any new automatically. It turns your cell phone into a Bluetooth version of a jump drive. Best of all, it's FREE!

CDs and jump drives are still great ways to back things up, as long as you have a backup in case something fails. Just be aware that it IS possible for two things to fail at once. But you'll probably find that you're more likely to forget to back up every now and then...and THAT is when your primary save source fails. That's when it helps to have a backup system that works. Every Friday evening, say, as you finish up your work week. Or every Monday morning, before beginning a new week. Make it a routine and you're less likely to lose something.

Remember Rubik's Cubes?

2011-07-22T04:00:00.000-07:00

Her name was Lori Rawle. She was, at the time, the smartest 12-year-old I'd ever known. Heck, she's probably STILL the smartest 12-year-old I've ever known. You don't see too many 12-year-old geniuses in public school.

Lori was in my Language Arts class when Rubik's Cubes came out. While the rest of us were celebrating our accomplishment at just figuring out how to get one side the same color, Lori was staring it down, analyzing data and formulating theories. As I watched from across the room in that class we shared, she twisted and turned until finally that Rubik's Cube looked like this:

The rest of us finally figured out all we had to do was remove the stickers and reattach them. Of course, the stickers never went back on quite as cleanly as they'd been before. Some genius figured out you could take the cube completely apart and piece it back together, tricking everyone into thinking you'd solved the puzzle. Really, those people were just preparing themselves for futures as handymen.

That's my take on it anyway.

I finally gave up on Rubik's Cube and bought the pyramid:

It was no easier to solve, but it was easier to take apart, I figured out. I bought a book to tell me how to solve the pyramid puzzle but all I learned from that was that the word "orient" doesn't just apply to an area of the world. ("Orient the bottom right cube with the center right cube...")

I'm not sure what kind of brainpower it takes to solve one of those things, but I'm pretty sure NOT being able to solve it doesn't doom you to a life of failure. In fact, some of those fellow classmates that couldn't solve it went on to advanced degrees and had huge successes in their chosen fields. Still, I will forever be in awe of people like Lori Rawle who can take something as complex as a Rubik's Cube and work and analyze until they figure it out.

Music That Gets You Through Hard Times

2011-07-20T04:00:00.000-07:00

Last week I listened to Amy Grant's greatest hits CD for the first time. I noticed, as I was listening to it, that it had been marked "Inspirational." Inspirational = Christian but as I listened, I realized many of these songs have inspired me in ways that have nothing to do with religion.

Even the songs that didn't get me through rough times at some point in my life were uplifting. How could you listen to Baby Baby without smiling?

There was the nostalgia factor of hearing songs I haven't heard in years. Like Stay for Awhile, a song I had on 45 that I listened to from the time I got it well into my high school days.

Then there were the songs that got me through hard times. Like House of Love, which says "...when something this strong gets a hold on you, the odds are 99 to 1, it's got a hold on him too." Those lyrics never turned out to be true for me. Anytime it looked like "he" was gone for good, he pretty much was. But I appreciate Amy's optimism.

Tears came to my eyes when I heard I Will Remember You. I wasn't remembering anyone in particular. Maybe it was a combination of all the people who had come in and out of my life over the years. Or maybe it was just a trigger from times past, when I'd hear the song and cry for someone in particular.

But have you ever heard a song that feels like a huge lyrical HUG? That's how I see this song. And this is why I'll always love Amy Grant's music.

HOLLYWOOD!!!

2011-07-18T04:00:00.000-07:00

I'm planning my trip here:

We're staying in a beachfront condo here:

And visiting all the sites like this one:

This one:

And this one:

I'm looking for HELP! Any tips for things to do and see while we're there? Best ways to get around? Is traffic horrendous between Hermosa Beach and L.A.? (Yes, I realize it's a little bit of a hike but I fell in love with the condo where we're staying!) Should we do the Los Angeles Go Pass or not? Where are the must-eat restaurants??? Must-see places?

This is my dream trip -- something I've been wanting to do since I was 8 (no exaggeration!). Any tips would be VERY appreciated!

Remember Pantyhose?

2011-07-15T04:00:00.000-07:00

I knew things had changed when I told a friend I was buying pantyhose and she laughed at me.

"Nobody wears pantyhose anymore," she said.

This was several years ago...and she was right. NOBODY wears pantyhose. Young people coming out of college in business suits don't even seem to wear them. They just find a way to make their legs tan enough so nobody notices.

Or maybe it's just that nobody wears skirt suits anymore?

Pantyhose were part of the "uniform" my first year out of college. My first real job was at a PR firm, where I was told I had to wear a skirt suit every day (NO pantsuits), pantyhose, and high-heeled shoes. The woman who ran the firm felt this represented the firm best. I had to keep a spare pair of hose on hand, just in case I got a run halfway through the day.

If you've never worn pantyhose, let me tell ya, they are all kinds of uncomfortable. You can go for thigh highs and hope the elastic doesn't snap (talk about embarrassing!). Or you can wear the kind with built-in panties and hope it doesn't start that downward drift halfway through the day, leaving an awkward gap between your thighs. Either way, in 100-degree heat those things are NOT pleasant.

Then there are knee-highs, meant to be worn with pants. Some women tried to wear them with long skirts, especially older women, but that kind of cheating can get you in trouble if you, say, fall down an escalator at a department store. (Yes, that happened to someone I worked with.) Once the paramedics are involved, EVERYONE sees what's under your skirt.

Still, pantyhose had their place. When I was in drama in high school, we were urged to wear pantyhose on stage, even if we had shorts on. Under the lights you couldn't tell a difference. And Hooter's waitresses are known for their thick, shiny pantyhose. It is said each Hooter's server goes through a pair of those pantyhose every 2-3 shifts.

Another thing pantyhose are good for? Keeping your legs warm in winter. But today's young working woman has switched to tights for this purpose.

But all of this makes me wonder...is it that pantyhose have gone out of style...or is it that the younger generations simply choose not to embrace this method of female self-torture? Will pantyhose once again come back in style (as bras did after a brief period of women not wearing them in the 70s)...or are they officially forever a thing of the past?

Literary Anorexia

2011-07-13T04:00:00.000-07:00

For most of his career, Stephen King has been accused of overwriting. It probably started around the time his editors made him trim The Stand and it STILL ended up being 700 pages or whatever. (The version I read was 1,000 pages!) Even though I'm a fan of his work, I've tended to agree. Is there ever an excuse for a novel to be 1,000 pages?

But in re-reading Nightmares and Dreamscapes recently, I was struck by something King himself said about the issue. He addressed the criticisms that he's too wordy with the question: Would it be better if he'd succumbed to the "literary anorexia" of today?

He makes a good point. Read any literary masterpiece and you'll find it very wordy. Sentences aren't brief. The author doesn't jump into the action. Most of us, if truly pressed, would admit when we were forced to read these books in school, we found them way too slow to be enjoyable. So when we read "for fun," we read books like Superfudge (192 pages).

From a young age, we were taught the "rules" of writing. ALWAYS write in complete sentences. Never begin a sentence with a conjunction. Never end a sentence with a preposition. All the while we're reading commercial fiction, wondering why these authors don't follow the rules. I certainly noticed it. I also noticed commercial fiction was much more enjoyable to read than books that "followed the rules."

Our books have changed to match today's readership, but is that right? Further, if someone like Stephen King comes along and follows the path our literary legends trailblazed, is it fair for critics to trash him for it? Or, as he put it, should he give in to what other contemporary authors are doing?

Men SAY They Like the Natural Look

2011-07-11T04:00:00.000-07:00

For some reason, when I hit my 30s, the men my age suddenly had this thing about makeup-less women. "Women look best without makeup." They even went further to say the whole, 'sports jersey with baseball cap and sweats' look was the best.

Natural. You know, WITHOUT makeup.

I was reading a young adult novel once where a boy told a girl he preferred the natural look. She held up a fashion magazine with a CLEARLY made-up woman on the cover. She was casually dressed and her makeup was subtle, but it was there. "Like this?" she asked. The boy said yes.

There's a difference between a woman looking natural:

And a woman who is completely bare-faced:

See the difference?

While I'm sure there are men out there who think the bare-faced look is okay, I'd say most would prefer that "natural" look over it. Smooth, clear skin, a little color in the lips and cheeks, something to make the eyelashes stand out. You know, foundation, powder, blush, mascara, and lipstick. Did I leave anything out?

When I hear a man say he prefers a woman without makeup, I now know he means THIS:

Instead of this:

Because THIS is almost never sexy:

Remember The Outsiders?

2011-07-08T04:00:00.001-07:00

I don't normally write about specific novels or movies on Nostalgia Fridays but reading Rob Lowe's autobiography made me realize just how much came out of one little movie. Most of the stars I grew up watching got their start here...making it pretty amazing, when you think about it, that one day in 1982 a group of fairly unknown actors gathered in Tulsa, Oklahoma to shoot a film that would change their lives forever.

The novel The Outsiders was based on was written by a 15-year-old girl. It soon became required reading in middle schools, at which point a group of sixth graders were so excited about the book that a librarian at their school contacted Francis Ford Coppola and suggested he make a movie about the book. Surprisingly, Coppola took her up on the suggestion.

And so, the book became a movie.

Among the actors who were gathered in Tulsa were Rob Lowe and his friend Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise (who was at the time living with the Sheens while pursuing an acting career), C. Thomas Howell, Diane Lane, Patrick Swayze, and Ralph Macchio.

Interestingly, just a few years earlier Estevez's father, Martin Sheen, had spent 13 months with Coppola filming Apocalypse Now. He had a heart attack while filming in the jungle (he was 37 at the time) and had to crawl to a road to get help. When he returned from the ordeal, as Rob Lowe put it, he was "not the same."

Yet these young actors signed on anyway. How could you not, with one of the best filmmakers of our time in charge? They arrived at the hotel to find the actors playing "greasers" in the film were on one floor while those playing the "socs" (pronounced "soashes") were on another. The socs were given leather-bound scripts and luxury accommodations, while the greasers were left to slum it. This was to create a feeling of jealousy that he hoped would translate to the screen.

Not only did The Outsiders launch all those careers, it grossed $25.6 million and several of its actors won Young Artist Awards. A version that was truer to the novel was released in 2005, with 22 minutes of never-before-seen scenes left out of the original.

As for the novel, the outrageous popularity of the novel gave S.E. Hinton a bad case of writer's block for three years. She finally snapped out of it to write such hits as Rumble Fish, Tex, That Was Then, This Is Now, and Taming the Star Runner. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma with her husband. Her son was a sound effects recordist on Ice Age: The Meltdown. She can be seen in several films, including a role as the nurse in Dally's room in The Outsiders:

Too Young to be Home Alone?

2011-07-06T04:00:00.000-07:00

Recently at work a co-worker and I were discussing how young is too young to have a cell phone. She said some of her son's classmates had phones that would only dial their parents -- her son is EIGHT! When I expressed my astonishment that eight-year-olds would have their own cell phones, she said these kids were latchkey kids. They get off the bus every day and lock themselves in their houses until Mom and/or Dad get home.

EIGHT!

Of course, it's only for a couple of hours. And sometimes there are extenuating circumstances. For instance, a neighbor might be close by to keep an eye on the child. Besides, how much trouble can a child get into in two hours? (Snort.)

In Tennessee, there is no legal age for a child to be left home alone. Some states DO have such laws -- Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, and Oregon, to be specific. Thirteen is commonly believed to be the "magic age" where a child can be left home alone without raising eyebrows. Many parents believe twelve is a good age. Of course, it all depends on the maturity level of the child.

As for the classmates of my co-worker's child, while there is no law against it, the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts states on its website: "Obviously, young children under age 10 should not be left without supervision at any time." Maybe they saw what happened to eight-year-old Kevin in Home Alone?

What age do you think children are old enough to be home alone?

Another Retirement Party

2011-06-30T04:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I attended a retirement party at work...

(Wal-Mart did that cake. Cool, huh?)

As I sat there, watching everyone hug this woman goodbye, I thought back on all the people I've seen come and go in my 18 years working in state government. At my advanced age of 40 I now have a wisdom that I didn't have when I was 23 and starting out. In that era most people left for new jobs -- now with all these baby boomers hitting retirement age, it seems almost EVERYONE is leaving the workforce for good.

When I was 23, it never occurred to me while we were eating that goodbye cake that this was someone I'd never see again. Ever. It was only after 18 years of goodbyes that I came to realize that these people leave...and they're gone. Occasionally you'll think of them and maybe even miss them. But there's no running into them at the supermarket or passing them on the street. They just vanish into the night.

We spend a great deal of our lives at work. 37.5 hours a week in my case. Even if your workplace is extremely strict, you'll still occasionally bond with your co-workers at, say, the company Christmas party or when your boss goes out of town. But most of us don't walk into work every day and plop down and work all day without speaking to the person in the cubicle next to us. We tell stories over coffee or by the water cooler. We stop by someone's cubicle on the way to the restroom. We might even go to lunch with some of these people.

The first group I worked with were artsy, creative types. I was there six years and felt VERY close to my co-workers (for better or worse!). Leaving was difficult but I had a couple of friends I knew I'd stay in touch with. And I did...for a while. I had another, short-lived job where I met some...interesting people that I really didn't speak to at all after I left. Then came the department I'm with now. I've been here ten years (longest job of my life!) and this time I'm the one watching everyone come and go. SO many people...and I remember their goodbye parties. It never really occurred to me until yesterday that as I'm saying goodbye to each one of these people, that's it. I'll never see that person again. That makes me a little sad.

Oh, you can try to stay in touch but is it ever really the same? When you work with someone, you're spending eight hours a day in the same space. (More or less!) You have a common bond. When one of you leaves, it can feel a little like you're breaking that bond...but all too quickly, it seems the hole your absence left is filled with other people, new memories. You're missed, sure, but all too soon, you're forgotten.

Too introspective? Probably. But I work in a building where I'm one of the FEW people under 50. I'm surrounded by baby boomers, all of whom are planning vigorously for retirement, many within the next 2-4 years. As I look around, I feel a little sad about that. Unless I leave, I'll be watching each of them go -- saying goodbye, one at a time. And knowing, as I hug them goodbye, I'll likely never see them again.

RWA vs. SCBWI

2011-06-29T04:00:00.001-07:00

Within two hours of arriving at my first ever Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators event, I was pretty sure someone wanted to punch me. Maybe the girl seated next to me, maybe the regional coordinator who overheard me saying I found it weird that there weren't more events in Nashville. The problem was I kept using the words "RWA," as in, RWA does this and RWA does that. I'm sure people were wondering, "If you like RWA so much, why don't you go back to them?"

Um...because I don't write romance.

For a little perspective, back in 1995, after attending one of the FEW writing groups in Nashville and finding none of them wrote romance, I decided we needed our own group. Romance writers can't just blend in with mainstream fiction writers. I'm sure it's the same with children's writers. We need to bond with people who get what we're going through, who know the intricacies of our particular markets.

So, being a PR rep at the time, I sent news releases to all the local papers to gather Nashville's romance novelists together. I was amazed at the response. In the meantime, a woman was trying to start Nashville's first RWA chapter (Memphis had one, but not Nashville) and someone told her about me. Since I had the people and she had the politics (which I most CERTAINLY did not want to deal with!) we joined forces. And I quickly learned what an altogether amazing network Romance Writers of America has.

There are chapters in almost every major city that meet once a month. There are also annual conferences in almost every major city, bringing big-time editors and agents from New York to meet with authors. Author-agent pitch session are FREE as part of the conference (at least they were back when I was a member?). Almost all chapters have annual contests, which any unpublished member of RWA is allowed to enter. Those aren't free but usually editors and agents agree to read the finalists and manuscripts HAVE been bought from this process. In fact, it seems to be a very common way into the business.

SCBWI...at least in the Nashville area...just doesn't offer these things. There are workshops, sure, but they are regional so they seem to be in a different state each time. Even those aren't monthly and I haven't seen one yet that offered a compelling reason to pay hundreds of dollars for fees, transportation costs, and lodging. In other words, they don't seem to be offering a five-minute pitch session with an editor or agent, as RWA's conferences do. There's a national conference, but I haven't had the funds to fly that far. RWA has a national conference, too, as we all know...and I had the same problem when I was a member of that organization. It's probably well worth it, if you have the money.

There's a big SCBWI conference in Nashville in September. I signed up. Agents and editors will be there and if you pay an extra $35, you can have an individual manuscript critique from an undisclosed agent or editor. Could be an e-publisher. Could be from a small press. Or it could be one from a major publishing house. In my case, being agented, I'm taking a big chance that I'll be getting a manuscript critique from an agent. Not that a manuscript critique from a professional is ever unwelcome but, let's face it. We go to these things in the hopes we'll be discovered. We'll make a connection. If you already have an agent, what a deflating thing to find out your $35 critique won't land you that "dream come true" moment you've hoped for.

Then there's the contest. I've marked my calendar because only TWENTY paid conference attendees can participate. The contest opens at 8 pm on July 18th and will likely last about thirty seconds because how many other attendees will be sitting there, e-mail completely formatted, ready to hit "Send" the second the clock reads "8:00?" And what if my clock is different from their clock? What if I send it at a time they think is 7:58? What if everyone else's clock is faster than mine and I miss out because I was ten seconds behind everyone?

I don't get it. Wouldn't you want to find the best work, regardless of whom is quickest with the "Send" key?

RWA is, of course, an option for those writing Young Adult, as long as they stick to YA romance. And for an unpublished author I'd tend to recommend that. I think I have to get all of my RWA predispositions out of my head and walk into SCBWI's conference with a fully open mind. No, it's not the same but maybe if I put those comparisons aside, I'll find ways that it's much better, even in Nashville.

Either that, or I just need to start sending news releases again!

Annoying Self-Promotion

2011-06-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

Recently a high school friend contacted me to speak to her local writer's group about using social media to promote your writing. I was floored. One, this was the first time someone has asked me to speak to a writer's group I wasn't a part of. I felt like a REAL author!

But the second reason I was surprised was that I don't think of myself as an expert on using social media to do anything. I'm still trying to figure out Twitter, and Facebook is something I use mostly to communication with friends and family.

However, I have noticed a few things about self-promotion using blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. Primarily, it's a TRICKY business. If you post "Buy my book," you aren't going to draw people in.

In my experience, the best way to promote your work is NOT to promote it all that much. You create a blog, you socialize on Twitter and Facebook, you make friends. You have information about your book in your "about me" and maybe mention if you're having a booksigning or something, but if every Tweet/status update is about that book, people are going to tune out. Click away. Decide all you're about is advertising yourself and find someone else to follow.

Giveaways and contests are a great way to get readers...and I can see it working when used sparingly. But once I know about your book ONCE and make a choice to buy it or not, you shoving it in my face every fifteen seconds isn't going to change that choice. And if all your blog/Twitter is about is your book, you're losing me anyway.

I have a feeling I'm not alone in this...

Once you're published, your blog/Facebook/Twitter becomes an entirely different thing. You have a decision to make. Abandon your current group of social networking pals and try to please your new fan base...or try to please both groups. The truth is, those people who read your blog are likely not going to be the same people who'll buy your book, at least not all of them. You'll need to head out in search of new fans.

I'm going to be honest here, I'm not sure the Tweets every fifteen seconds reminding us your book is for sale are that effective. It's like any other form of marketing -- most of us have learned to tune it out, even be annoyed by it. Don't you unsubscribe when this starts to become annoying? I know I do...unless I'm a fan.

Which is where it starts to change. Still, I love Meg Cabot and subscribe to her feeds, but I love snippets of her life. ONE announcement about her book. Pictures of her at booksignings and takes on her characters. But if her Twitter account were nothing but ads every 20 seconds for her latest book, I'd unsubscribe.

See the difference?

I'm interested in reading other takes on this. As a to-be-published author, this is something I'm watching closely. I'm asking myself what do I, as a reader, want from my Twitter subscriptions. What kind of blogs do I like to read from my favorite authors? And, it stands to reason, what I like is probably what many other social networkers like as well.

Remember Workout Videos?

2011-06-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

Jane Fonda is credited with starting it. "It" being the aerobics craze that swept the nation in the late 70s/early 80s. But Fonda learned her moves from an instructor named Leni Cazden, whom she hired away from a workout studio owned by a woman named Gilda Marx for her own studio. And then someone suggested Fonda do a workout video...

...and the rest is history.

Fonda says when someone came to her with the idea of doing a workout video, she thought the idea was crazy. She didn't know anyone who owned any videotapes and couldn't see why anyone would buy them. At that time, most people didn't even own VCRs. But to this day, Fonda is credited with not only creating the home video workout craze -- but also for popularizing home video in the first place.

With Jane Fonda's Workout, people bought VCRs. People woke up every morning and followed along with the acclaimed actress. The videotape went on to sell 17 million copies and, of course, brought on a slew of similar tapes from people trying to capitalize on the fact that people now had VCRs and wanted to work out at home.

Everyone from soap stars to supermodels to singers to talk show hosts made a video. People bought them, too. If you HAD to work out, what better way than to work out with your favorite celeb. Then came specialized workouts by non-celebs, like Tae Bo and strip aerobics. Still, the craze had crashed.

Not that workout videos are completely gone. In fact, there is a select section of the population that still loves to work out this way. And there are still a few celebrity workout videos out there...although, I'd have to say that the ones I'm seeing definitely reflect how much our definition of "celebrity" has changed since 1982.

Do you like to work out to a video?

No, My Name Isn't Jennifer

2011-06-22T04:00:00.001-07:00

"Hi, Jennifer," he'd say every time he passed me in the hall.

"Hi," I'd reply.

The problem, as you're probably noticing, is that my name isn't Jennifer. The other problem is, I never corrected him.

I barely knew the guy. He was someone who worked in another department. I might have to work on his computer occasionally but we never really spoke. On top of that, I wasn't sure if he'd be really embarrassed when I finally informed him my name isn't Jennifer.

But what REALLY creeped me out about the whole thing was that my sister's name is Jennifer. My sister, who lives nearly 500 miles away, in Chicago. Who has never visited my workplace, nor have I discussed her with this person. The co-workers who do know I have a sister likely wouldn't remember that her name is Jennifer. It's just not something they'd bother themselves with remembering.

"Stephanie and Jennifer were both really popular names around the same time," someone said as I mentioned this perplexing case of mistaken identity. Even more perplexing was the fact that it happens fairly often. People who have never met my sister before seem to remember my name as Jennifer.

Finally, the truth came out. One day this co-worker came looking for someone to fix his computer. (Apparently the fact that he was supposed to call in a help desk ticket is also something that slipped his mind.) "I'm looking for Jennifer," he announced loudly as he roamed the halls. I had my headphones on, so I only caught the tail end of this conversation.

"Jennifer?" co-worker after co-worker said. "We don't have a Jennifer."

"Sure you do. Short lady, blond, fixes computers."

Since I'm the only blond who fixes computers -- the only blond in the whole area, actually -- they quickly figured it out. "Oh! You mean Stephanie?"

He laughed as I came out of my office. "Yes, Stephanie."

I guess that was the end of that. But then yesterday, a full six months after he found out my real name, he passed me in the hall and said hi again. Only this time he didn't call me Stephanie OR Jennifer. I'm not sure what name it was but I'll be listening closely the next time he says hello...

No More Roller Coasters

2011-06-20T04:00:00.000-07:00

All my life I've hated roller coasters. Yes, even when I was a kid and was "supposed to" love them. I lived near an amusement park. We went on vacations to amusement parks. Every time, it was the same. "Oh, come on. Have some fun."

So I'd force myself to get on rides like this:

And this:

Because what else are you going to do? You can't just sit on a bench and wait for everyone else. Then you're "no fun." So you risk nausea and sheer misery and force yourself to get on these rides. The whole time you think, "Just let this be over, please!" with your eyes squeezed shut. Everyone you're with is happy because you're on the ride with them. You, meanwhile, are miserable.

As you get older, it becomes easier. All those years of being jerked around on roller coasters (among other things) finally takes its toll on you and you can no longer ride them...for medical reasons. I've begun considering asking my doctor for a written excuse that I can carry around with me anytime anyone starts the whole, "PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE ride the Demon's Death ride with me. Please please please please please please please please please please please" process. "No" just isn't good enough.

Really, though, it's just not an option for me. As I stand there, looking up at something that usually looks not all that different from a medieval torture chamber, I freeze up. I can't even force myself to do it. I can't.

I remember all the times I've suffered through these hellacious three minutes over the course of my life and say no. Adamantly. Over and over. I'm just not going to put myself through it anymore...for anyone.

And if all that fails, I have a shoulder injury. Really, I do.

Remember Mad Libs?

2011-06-17T04:00:00.001-07:00

Travel Nurse Extraordinaire suggested this topic. If you have any ideas for Nostalgia Friday, post them in the comments and I'll give it a try!

Mad Libs started in 1953. Invented by filmmaker Leonard Stern and writer Roger Price, the series of books were loosely based on two word games, Consequences and Exquisite Corpse.

Great for long car rides, Mad Libs asked players to name nouns, adverbs, adjectives, proper names, etc. -- words someone would use to fill in blanks. In the end, players would listen as the person who had filled in the blanks read the bizarre story that had been created.

Mad Libs is still around, after all these years. These days Penguin Group publishes the books, under the imprint Price Stern Sloan, and the world of Mad Libs has grown exponentially. There's Mad Libs Junior, Club Penguin Mad Libs, WWE Mad Libs, Rock N Roll Mad Libs... The list goes on. The books can be purchased in stores or on the Mad Libs website.

And, of course, there's an app for that. The Mad Libs app for iPhone is $3.99 for each book. Each book contains 21 Mad Libs. Pricey for an app, but it appears the print version of Mad Libs cost $5.99 per book. Screen shots of the Mad Libs iPhone app:

The E-Book Price Question

2011-06-16T04:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, blogging agent extraordinaire Nathan Bransford posed that question that always gets me riled up: What Should An E-book Cost?. My immediate reaction to the post made me realize, I answer this question not as a writer who will have my books on Amazon someday, but as a READER. And I think maybe I should capture my feelings on this before I slip over to the other side.

I don't own a Kindle, but I have Kindle app for iPhone. When I first got it, I of course downloaded a bunch of free samples to see if I'd like it. I also paid some ridiculous price for a bestselling novel only to find myself falling out of love with the book a third of the way through. At which point I tried to force myself to keep reading to justify the (I think?) $13.99 I paid for the book. At which point I decided life was too short to torture myself every day and deleted the book and moved on.

Consider it $13.99 wasted.

I'm cheap. I make no bones about it. I'm also a State employee who hasn't gotten a raise since 2006 and likely will only get poorer, not richer, the longer I work here. (State raises never even come close to keeping up with the cost of living.) I would love to spend $100 a month on books but I just don't have it. I use the library not by choice, but by necessity.

I have to read. The library provides every book I could ever want in paperback for free. Audiobooks too. This feeds my desperate need to read all the time. Right now there's no easy way to get e-books from the library to my phone, but I'm told that's about to change. Free beats $13.99 any day.

But I'm not the voice of the world at large. I'm finding, when I talk to people about this in my everyday life, that everyone is different. Some people prefer books they can hold in their hands and display on bookshelves in their homes. Some buy Kindles and load them down with 3,000 books the first month because they either have plenty of money to spare or just don't really care. I do care. If I have extra money someday, I would very much prefer to support authors by buying their books, but I'm still going to go with the cheapest option. Hardback, paperback, e-book...I'm not picky. I just like to read.

Nathan's question came with the comparison to hardcover. If a hardcover version of a book is $25, how much should the e-book cost? I'm finding a lot of people feel that way. If the hardcover is $25, $13.99 is a deal. Sure it is. But hardcover isn't even a part of my book-buying vocabulary. I don't remember the last time I bought a hardcover. Maybe college? I think I was in a book club once where they sent four hardcovers when you joined... I still have those books and have been trying to unload them in garage sales for 20 years! It's just not that important to me to have stuff hanging around my house to show off when people visit.

Again, thinking like a buyer, if I'm buying a 150-page middle grade novel, $10 is WAY too much. So I answered $0-$4.99. A regular book would still fall around the $5 or $7 range to me. Speaking MERELY as a member of the general reading public, I would question why an e-book should cost more then a paperback novel. It shouldn't even be equal. There are no printing costs, no distribution costs...in fact, the big cost comes in giving Amazon.com its share, right? Which begs the question, why is Amazon charging so darn much?

Probably because it can.

I don't think the publishing houses and authors are getting more from e-books than print books...so if Hunger Games costs only $.30 less in e-book than paperback (which it does), the only real reason I can think of is Amazon. In that case, sure I'd download the e-version. I can have it instantly and there are no shipping costs. Good deal. HOWEVER, if I'm your average consumer looking at plunking down $114 for a Kindle, I'd probably just rather stick to paperback. These are things buyers like me consider BEFORE buying a Kindle, not after.

IF, however, I saw that I could get the bestseller The Help for $4.99 in e-book where it costs $9.31 in paperback...? Now THAT would be a compelling reason to buy a Kindle. But, get this...The Help is actually MORE expensive in e-format. Yep. $9.99.

I think I'll just get it from the library.

GREAT blog from Nathan on why some e-books cost so much.

The Lighter Side of YA

2011-06-15T04:00:00.000-07:00

After reading Elle Strauss's blog on dark, edgy Young Adult novels Monday, I was curious about this Wall Street Journal article that has everyone in an uproar. In the article, which can be read here, a book reviewer asks why young adult novels have gotten so dark and edgy. And what is the impact on today's teen readers?

Strauss is faced with the same dilemma as many of us. What if we don't write "dark and edgy?" What then? For me, the choice was to head over to middle grade, but not everyone wants to write for the younger audiences. I would venture a guess, though, that this is an issue that faces writers of commercial fiction in many genres. Romance, for instance, has headed to the dark side as well. Vampires, death, darkness...never have we been so interested in entertaining ourselves with things so bleak.

However, young adult is different. These are our kids that are being targeted with this. And it isn't limited to the paranormal. Publishers believe teens want to read about suicide, incest, abuse, rape... And the truth is, publishers may be right. They keep a close watch on what is selling, and I'm sure they do market research to determine what teens want to read.

The WSJ didn't question what teens wanted to read. In fact, the article's writer took us back through the history of dark teen books -- all the way back to The Outsiders. However, I think many of us agree that YA had some much lighter times as well. Perhaps teens were entertaining ourselves with Lois Duncan's story about students who accidentally kill their teacher, but we were also enjoying the sweet teen romances of the time.

There's no denying darker, edgier books dominate the YA market these days. But, to quote Elle's overall question...is there room for something not-so-edgy? Can someone who writes books for teens that aren't doom and gloom make it in this market?

Lighthearted teen books ARE being published. The proof, below, in pictures:

But we all know Elle's question is an important one. Is there room for new YA authors who write the lighter stuff? Should an author give into the trend and risk losing her voice...or buck the trend and hope to somehow squeeze into the market writing the books she wants?

Getting Paid to Look Pretty

2011-06-13T04:00:00.000-07:00

There's an entire career field that popped up when you weren't looking. You don't have to be 6'2 and fashion model thin. They want you to actually LOOK HOT...the kind of hot that makes men drool. Not the kind of hot that walks runways every spring.

(Apologies to all the models out there but, come on!)

This job isn't as easy as people might think. It involves standing around in blazing heat all day while men ogle you. It involves hanging out until all hours of the night at bars avoiding the advances of drunk men. Yeah, I know, some of you spent most of your 20s doing that stuff for free...but in this case, you're being paid to act like a professional so you can't shove the more disgusting of the perverts into a pool. You can't sling profanities at them or slap them. You have to behave.

What is this career, you might ask. This career is the highly underrated career of a promotional model.

I had a friend who did this and the friend was (still is) drop-dead gorgeous. She made more money working promotions than she did working a full-time job. Plus, she could do it after hours, which allowed her time to go back to school and work on her master's degree. Or maybe it was her Ph.D. Either way, you get the point. This was not some ditsy Barbie-doll type, sliding through life on her looks. She knew her looks could help make her money and she hauled butt to work as many promotions as her schedule would allow.

You know those beautiful cheerleaders you see on your state's professional football team? This is how they make their money. I've always heard the pay for professional cheerleading is crap and it isn't like the exposure shoots you to superstardom (unless you were a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader in 1978!). But being a Titans or Steelers or Ravens cheerleader gives you a certain amount of clout... It allows you to show up at, say, an auto auction and stand beside cars all day...and get PAID to do it.

Easy work, you say? Try it. Try standing there all day, smiling as brightly as you can and looking excited to be there. Try not to die of boredom while you're doing it.

The friend I had that did all of this got many of her jobs on Craigslist. She'd go downtown and hand out Jack Daniels samples to drunk partiers until three in the morning. She'd go to grocery stores on Saturdays and stand near the freezer aisle, handing out coupons. (Not to be confused with the slightly older women and men who do the same thing in grocery stores every weekend.) She'd flirt when necessary, smile ALWAYS, and always, always look her hottest.

These girls are Monster Energy Drink promotional models:

In her Hubpages post on the subject, Pgage35 recommends Googling the words "promotions jobs" with the name of your city, although the words "promotional jobs" seemed to work better when I tried it. She also recommends Craigslist. Both Google and Craigslist will also connect you with companies providing models for events. Be careful with that if you or someone you care about wants to give promotional work a try. It seems there are always companies wanting to capitalize on young, beautiful girls' desire to get into modeling...

I am in no way qualified to tell anyone how to get work doing this...my goal with this blog was merely to discuss this new career field that seems to have popped up in the past 10 years or so. But if you're looking for work, you might also try looking under the terms "events model," "trade show model," "convention model," or "fit model." (Fit models try on clothes for fashion designers and retail locations -- I actually found jobs for fit models in New Jersey, Florida, and Pennsylvania on Monster.com.) I personally worked as a mystery shopper for a while, in the 90s, and enjoyed it...although it seems over the years most companies have turned more toward bribing customers with $1,000 giveaways than paying mystery shopping companies. Now all the mystery shopping jobs that come in my e-mail inbox don't pay enough for the hoops they make you jump through. That's just my take on it, anyway.

A conventions model working for Motivated Models at a convention:

Remember Automatic Seatbelts?

2011-06-10T04:00:00.000-07:00

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Seatbelts, after all, save more than 11,000 lives per year, by current National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates. Yet still, there are people who insist on not wearing a seatbelt. "It's too binding," some say. Or they simply don't like the government telling them what to do. Statistics be darned.

So in 1975, Volkswagen came up with a brilliant idea. FORCE people to wear a seatbelt. Its 1975 Rabbit was the first car to introduce the automatic seatbelt.

Here's how they worked. When you got into your car, the seatbelt was in this position:

When you closed the door, that chest belt advanced toward you along a motorized track, locking into place in (if you were lucky) a comfortable position. The lap belt was still manual and, unfortunately, many people chose to leave it off. Without the lap belt, the seatbelt wasn't nearly as useful.

What killed the automatic seatbelt? For one thing, it caused a great deal of in-fighting in government. In 1977, the US Secretary of Transportation passed down a mandate that all cars must be equipped with either airbags or automatic seatbelts by the year 1983. The automotive industry fought back, but meanwhile automakers were getting to work. GM jumped on board, equipping its Chevette model with automatic seatbelts, but by the late 70s GM was reporting disappointing sales.

As the Reagan administration and the Supreme Court fought back and forth over what the mandate should be, manufacturers began equipping their vehicles with automatic seatbelts. It was cheaper than the airbag option and it was assumed it would soon be required. But in 1994, driver's-side airbags became mandatory in all passenger vehicles, effectively killing those automatic seatbelts.

Nobody really mourned the loss. Automatic seatbelts were nothing but a nuisance anyway. They tended to land in the wrong place most of the time, plus they knocked off eyeglasses and jewelry. Besides, those who would have worn a seatbelt anyway would probably have rather just clipped on the whole thing, if we were going to have to manually fasten the lap belt on anyway. Those who were anti-seatbelt found an easy solution. Unclasp the seatbelt from its track and keep going:

Family Game Night

2011-06-08T04:00:00.001-07:00

Earlier this week, Karen wrote about her favorite games. For parents, games are a GREAT, cheap way to bring the family together. I know today's family tends to do a little more electronic gaming...

...than the old-fashioned kind. But Hasbro did a brilliant marketing campaign in convincing parents to have "Family Game Night" once a week.

I love games. Uno, Clue, even Life. It's a fun way to pass the time. But there's one game my stepdaughter loves and, every now and then, we'll pull the board out, forgetting that when you commit to this game, you're committing about 4 hours of your life. Maybe more. That game?

Monopoly has changed since you were a kid. You can now buy the electronic payment version of the game, where players are issued credit cards. The railroads have become airports and you buy places like Times Square instead of Boardwalk. Oh, and when you pass go, instead of $200, you collect $2 million. With credit cards, you have the luxury of inflation.

But one thing hasn't changed. Monopoly can go on all night. Especially if you have people who don't particularly know to put hotels and houses on their properties. I guess because I'm not very competitive by nature, especially when it comes to sports and games, I have about two hours before I start to get restless. As my husband always jokes, most of us don't want to do something we ENJOY for more than two hours. I just have a short attention span.

But two hours into Monopoly, I start to feel trapped. How am I going to get myself out of this game. I roll, I move, I hand over my credit card and let people take money off it. I pray I'll run out of money. I start trying to run out of money. If I get out, I can go make myself a snack, maybe watch some TV or read a book. Do SOMETHING besides roll the dice and move my tiny LCD screen or tin of Altoids around the board. (Yes, these are the modern playing pieces.)

There's a quickie version of Monopoly that has everyone starting out already holding the cards for the various properties. We haven't tried that, but that could help. I just find it interesting that even Parker Brothers knows its game takes too long.

Have a Margarita...Without Blowing Your Diet!

2011-06-06T04:00:00.000-07:00

I rarely drink. Mostly because it's SO high-calorie. Not that I'd drink much if it weren't so high-calorie, but on those rare occasions we're hanging out with friends, I often find myself wanting a drink, if only to have the same fun everyone else is having.

Still, if I'm going to blow 150 calories, I'd rather have a cookie. Or a small brownie. I have to face it, CHOCOLATE is my alcohol!

But then I discovered this stuff at Wal-Mart:

Where your average Margarita mix has 70 calories for 4 oz., Lime Margarita drink mix has 5 calories for an eighth of a packet. A packet makes two quarts, of which I get about five or six glasses.

Add a little Tequila (around 70 calories per shot) and you have a great-tasting drink for around 80 or so calories. I also like it with my all-time favorite liquor, Amaretto:

Believe it or not, this stuff makes a great Amaretto Sour!

Whatever you do, though, don't take "Hungry Girl's" advice and use Jordan's Skinny Mixes. I tried them and...yuck.

Remember Bookstores?

2011-06-03T04:00:00.001-07:00

Bookstores are still around, in short supply, but the landscape of book-buying has unarguably changed in the past few years. Kindle and Nook have taken over, providing small electronic readers which book lovers can take anywhere. With the help of a Wi-Fi connection, widely available now, readers can instantly download the books they want. Still, those of us who love books can't help but mourn that warm and cozy feeling that comes from hanging out in one of these places:

The history of bookselling can be traced all the way back to Biblical times, when scribes supplied copies of translated works upon request. Modern bookselling can be traced back to the creation of the printing press. In those days, printers were also editors and booksellers, but bookselling was inhibited because the current monarchy would not allow free press. Even in 1529, when the first patent for a printing press was granted by Henry VIII, strict regulations were in place to prevent the distribution of books the monarchy felt were offensive.

Queen Elizabeth saved the day. She interfered very little with the distribution of books and, as a result, by the mid-1600s books were flourishing.

The divide between the publishing and bookselling processes began in the 19th century. In America, however, printing was slow to get started, with many of the books in the first half of the 1800s coming from England. By the late 1800s, however, the publishing industry began to grow, with Boston, New York, and Philadelphia leading the way.

As the 20th century progressed, bookstores, like everything else, went from small, privately owned businesses to chains. By the turn of the century bookstores had become like record stores, clothing stores, and...well...any other kind of store one can think of. They were packed into malls, where retailers hoped shoppers would stop in and grab an impulse item to go with the clothing and music they'd bought that day.

But the first decade of the 21st century saw bookstores become something else. With the immense sudden popularity of coffee shops (thanks, Starbucks!), bookstores became a place to hang out, drink coffee, maybe even meet a blind date. Bookstores went from this:

To this:

This is where the "warm and cozies" came in. People began associating going to the bookstore as an event...one that could last all day on a rainy Sunday. You'd meet friends, get a cup of coffee, and sit in the bookstore cafe talking...or reading. Or you could go solo and read that book alone while sipping coffee. Most bookstores incorporated comfy sitting areas within their stores, where a bookworm or even a bored husband could have a seat and catch up on his or her reading.

Then came the e-reader. E-readers go everywhere. You can take one to the beach, meet a friend at Starbucks and do the same thing you would have done at the bookstore, or just curl up on the sofa. Still...for true book lovers, it doesn't feel the same. It feels as though something is missing.

That's okay, people say. It's not for our generation. It's for future generations, who will have one device (like my beloved iPhone) on which they can do EVERYTHING. Read, watch a movie, listen to music, surf the 'net. Older generations don't get that.

Yet older generations appear to be the ones embracing the technology the most. The data speaks for itself:

Anyone with a child under 17 will tell you, kids don't get their books online. They get them from the library, which they are encouraged to use constantly. (For some reason, once kids hit adulthood they forget that books are available for free...) They get them at the grocery store, when they're stuck waiting for Mom to finish loading up her cart. They stack them up and read them over summer vacation. Maybe they would get an e-reader if Mom would let them, but most of the kids I've met would prefer to play games if they're handed an electronic device.

Someday, it is said, even textbooks will be provided via e-reader. Kids will no longer have an option of paper. Everything will be electronic and books will be a long-forgotten memory. This likely won't happen overnight. It will be a gradual shift. It will also be a gradual shift in our way of thinking...just as everything else has been. But I, like so many others I know, resist e-readers for one reason and one reason only...the books are just too darn expensive. Until that changes, it's likely paperbacks will still be produced and I'll still be visiting my local library once a week. Unless I suddenly strike it rich...at which point, guess what will be added to my stash of gadgets?

You Mean You're a REAL Writer?

2011-06-01T04:00:00.000-07:00

Over the years, I've grown accustomed to people belittling the fact that I write. If I tell people at work I plan to take my 30-year retirement at the age of 53 (getting half my salary for the rest of my life), they laugh at me. "You won't be able to afford the pay cut and nobody will hire you at that age," they say, as if 53 is an age to check into a retirement home.

"I plan to write," I announce. At which point their eyes glaze over and I realize I may as well have said I plan to join the circus.

Last week, someone asked my husband if I'd be interested in ghost-writing someone else's book. "She can't," he told them. "She is under contract with an agent."

This comment was apparently met with surprise. You mean she actually has an agent? She's a REAL writer?

Even that doesn't impress most people. They don't get what having an agent even means. And, while I'm not there yet, I have a feeling even being published won't impress the majority of people I know.

"You're a writer? You write kids' books? Whatever."

I think unless a blockbuster movie is made out of your book, nobody really thinks what you do is all that impressive. Not that it matters. It just wears on you after a while, having people give you that, "Oh, you're a writer -- what a cute little hobby" look every time it comes up. Eventually you start to think of it as a 'cute little hobby.'

Why do people treat writers this way? It's very simple. A lot of people want to write a book. A. Lot. You'd think in an age where people are supposedly watching TV and movies more than reading, less people would want to write and more would want to make movies. But anyone with access to a computer can write a book. It takes time and effort to attend writing workshops, read books on the craft, and eventually start submitting one's work. I would argue that it takes as much effort as it does to go to school and get advanced degrees...but going to school is concrete. "I'm a writer" could mean anything from "I write poems when I'm feeling sad" to "I spend sixty hours a week writing and revising my manuscript." The general public doesn't know the difference.

Most likely, though, it's because most people are pretty centered in their own lives. If someone told me he or she planned to spend retirement painting landscapes or crafting lamps, I'd be interested for about thirty seconds, then go back to plotting my next manuscript.

Why Are You Still Getting Viruses?

2011-05-30T04:00:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, I spent a couple of months battling with a series of viruses and spyware that kept rendering my laptop unusable. I blew the computer out, completely reimaging it, three times and still, the problems persisted. I finally came to the conclusion that MySpace was causing the trouble.

I posted my woes on that site and someone asked me a pretty life-changing question. (Okay, LIFE-changing might be extreme, but follow along anyway.) He said, "Why are you, a tech support person, still using Internet Explorer? Don't you know about Firefox?"

I did and actually had used it a few times. My reason for not switching wasn't all that deep. I was just too lazy to take the time to learn something new. But since MySpace kept insisting on attacking my browser, I decided to switch to the browser that is pretty much known to not have as many problems:

For a while, it was great. Then my husband and I started sharing a laptop and he's an Internet Explorer guy. We only had a couple of problems with it, mostly because he doesn't tend to frequent places known for spyware and viruses. Now we have separate computers and IE on my laptop never sees the light of day. I don't even consider using it anymore. At work, I'm also a Firefox junkie. No virus problems there, either.

Two things to know if you own a computer: if you don't want junk mail, don't give your e-mail address out ANYWHERE online. Have a separate account just for the crap. And if you don't want viruses, stick with Mozilla Firefox. Or, if you have the funds, buy a Mac. Eventually malware creators will start making viruses and spyware for Firefox and Safari (Apple browser) but as long as IE stays America's preferred browser, you're pretty safe as long as you stick with something else.

Remember Saturday Morning Cartoons?

2011-05-27T04:00:00.001-07:00

On the Saturday mornings she's with us, my 11-year-old stepdaughter stumbles to the sofa, picks up the remote, and chooses something on The Disney Channel or Nickelodeon. ABC, NBC, and CBS aren't even considered.

But for anyone from mine and my husband's generation, Saturday mornings were prime TV-watching. Saturday mornings were when we caught up with all our friends:

In the middle of episodes of Scooby Doo and G.I. Joe, networks squeezed in some educational programming, including CBS News for Kids and, perhaps the most long-lasting of all, Schoolhouse Rock:

Although Saturday morning had always been heavily programmed for children, it was the success of a Beatles cartoon in 1965 that had networks scrambling for more animated programming. Soon, network schedules were filled with animated superheroes. The generation just before mine grew up on Pink Panther and Land of the Lost. My generation had Fantastic Four and Scooby Doo. After my time came Smurfs and Care Bears.

Then, as if to prepare us for our Disney Channel future, Saved by the Bell came along and changed everything. The teen show was a sitcom geared directly to children. Keep in mind, kids didn't have Miley Cyrus back then. Programming for their age group was not available every hour of the day, as it is now. Saturday mornings were a rare, treasured thing.

Cable changed all that.

Gradually, over time, cable television has spread out to encompass more channels than any of us could ever imagine. At any given hour you can find cartoons, teen sitcoms, educational shows, and programming for anyone between the ages of two to a hundred and two. Still, there are those of us who feel a little nostalgia that our children can't share in one of our childhood traditions. We want to be able to sit down with our kids on Saturday morning and tune in to some cartoons.

Personally, I think that would be a GREAT programming idea for TV Land. Saturday morning cartoons, complete with some Schoolhouse Rock episodes, all straight from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. What do you think?

A trip down memory lane:

Coupon Nuttiness

2011-05-25T04:00:00.000-07:00

I love coupons. I've clipped them since I was old enough to grocery shop. Every year, I buy the Nashville City Saver (our town's version of the Entertainment Book) and vow to use it to get discounts. But with both store coupons and restaurant coupons, I've found I'm unable to get any real savings, mostly because I refuse to buy something just to save money.

So when someone recently told me about couponing, I was curious but skeptical. There was no way I could ever do it because, well, if I could have used more coupons, I would have years ago. I look through my coupon booklets and see only a few items we actually use. If I bought Ken's Salad Dressing, for instance, just because I had a coupon for it, how would I be saving money if I just threw it away when it went bad eight months later?

But I was still interested as this woman explained "stacking" to me. Stacking is where you hand the store more than one coupon for the same item. One is a store coupon, one a manufacturer's coupon, and my local store (Kroger) would let me do that...at that time. I'm told Kroger is changing this policy. In fact, a LOT of stores are changing their policies regarding coupons, as are manufacturers. I have a feeling THIS popular TV show is why:

One night my husband and I happened upon this show. We watched, amazed, as women wheeled five carts through grocery lines and held up the line for what must have been at least a half an hour. They'd hand over a stack of coupons thicker than a book and, in two of the three instances I saw, eventually cause the cash register to start acting crazy. At that point the manager would have to come over. Of course, on the show, there's never anyone in line behind them, nor do the employees or manager get frustrated or look at these customers like they are the bane of grocery stores everywhere.

I posted on Facebook about it and two of my friends, avid couponers, stated I shouldn't knock it until I've tried it. They save 30% on their grocery bills. That didn't compute with what I was seeing on the show. On the show, the women were paying $10 for $1,200 worth of groceries -- slightly more than 30%, wouldn't you say?

Another thing the women on the show were doing was stockpiling enough groceries to last my family three or four years. Shelves of peanut butter, gallons of vitamin water, and cereal box after cereal box. Most of that would go to waste at my house -- but it wouldn't even fit at my tiny two-bedroom house. I'd have to rent a storage facility to store all my groceries.

So I started researching a little. Is THIS was couponing is about? I found a blog that confirmed my suspicions -- many coupons have limits on how many you can buy and most stores won't allow someone to use that many coupons and do that many transactions. In other words -- these stores are making concessions for the publicity the TV show is bringing.

On the show I saw, two women bragged about spending 60 hours a week couponing to save $500 on each grocery trip. I'm no mathematician but aren't there full-time jobs that pay more than that? Assuming these women buy $500 worth of groceries per week (they probably don't), that comes out to $24,000 a year they are being paid for this 60-hour-per week job.

Still, I'm interested in couponing...IF it would work for me. I have access to one store, Kroger, which neither doubles coupons nor allows "stacking" (or so I'm gathering). One coupon per item. And many of my coupons require that I buy two of something to get $.50 off. I could rearrange my shopping trips and meal plans according to what is on special that week, I suppose, and save some money...but I also save money many times by buying generic and making creative use of what I buy to stretch it to more than one meal.

Have you ever tried "couponing?" What did you find?

Link to a blog on how to coupon.

Without Losers, There Can Be No Winners

2011-05-23T04:00:00.000-07:00

Someone recently -- on a blog or Facebook comment, I can't remember -- was commenting that she went to an event at her child's school. I, of course, can't even remember what the event was. All I remember was it was something competitive...only at the end of it, they gave ribbons to everyone who participated.

"There's no winner?" the mom asked someone, probably the teacher.

"We prefer not to single anyone out," this person told the mom. "That way we build everyone's self-esteem."

Um...no, that's not how it works.

You see, school is supposed to prepare kids for life. You know, LIFE, when you get out of college and hit the workforce and find that there actually are people smarter than you, more talented than you, and, many times, just lucky enough to know someone you don't know. But you learn this before college graduation. You learn this when you go out for cheerleading the first time and don't make it. You learn it when you don't get to sit with the popular crowd at lunch or that boy you like laughs that you'd thought he'd ever be interested.

Life is full of disappointments, we've all heard that dozens of times. It starts from the time we're old enough to want something we can't have. Being denied these things makes us learn that we can't always get what we want. Never being denied makes you grow up to be a spoiled, self-centered, self-entitled adult.

The reason this "everyone wins, nobody loses" philosophy doesn't work is pretty basic. Without losers, there can be no winners. If forty girls try out for the middle school cheerleading squad and, to avoid hurt feelings, all 40 get it, what sense of accomplishment would those 40 girls have? Yes, it hurts the thirty girls who don't make it, but the ten who DO make it feel pretty good. Plus, you have a much better cheerleading squad when girls put in the hard work and daily practice it takes to make it onto your typical school cheerleading squad.

Those ten girls will know they have something special. They'll give their all on the team and it will mean more than if it had been handed to them out of "niceness." Over time, here's what will become of the other 30. A few really determined ones will keep working at it. Not all of those few will make it on the squad the next year or the next. Chances are, they'll eventually figure out cheerleading isn't for them and find something else. Some WILL eventually make it and will feel an even greater sense of satisfaction because it wasn't handed to them the first time.

Many of those 30 will never try again. They'll apply their talents to drama club, band, chorus, newspaper staff, sports... They'll keep trying and trying and through not being handed what they want every time, they'll learn the value of hard work, discipline, and determination.

That, my friends, is life.

I'm a writer. I've been trying to get published a long time. I've watched fellow aspiring writers try and succeed...I've watched some give up. If this had been that cheerleading squad and I'd been one of the 30, I'd be one of those few that kept trying while most of the others eventually gave up. Why? Because I know I'm talented and I can guarantee you it will mean much more to me when it finally does happen than if it had happened with the first book I wrote.

Having a dream, having a goal is what gives life meaning. It gives us our passion, it makes us really LIVE. When everyone wins, nobody really wins. It's really that simple. And taking that away from our kids out of fear for their future well-being actually robs them of some important lessons in life.

So hand out that first place ribbon. Give the winner a trophy, too. Crown a homecoming queen without worrying about the 400 girls who don't get to wear that crown. Those girls will be fine. They'll learn the very things we need to learn in life, things they need to know to survive in the harsh reality of today's workforce.

Remember New Coke?

2011-05-20T04:00:00.000-07:00

The year was 1985. The Coca-Cola Company decided it was time to revamp the Coca-Cola formula. Its market share had dropped from 60% during World War II to just under 24% in 1983, mostly because of Pepsi-Cola. Younger people were choosing Pepsi because it was sweeter. Coke felt it had to do something.

Enter New Coke.

"New Coke" was a nickname the public gave it. Coca-Cola simply introduced it as "the new taste of Coca-Cola." They gave it a new look...

Brought in Bill Cosby to say it tasted better...

And flooded the marketplace with ads.

Everyone who was around at the time can tell you what happened next. Absolutely nothing. The public wasn't buying it. Thanks, in part, to a marketing push by Pepsi to discredit the taste of "New Coke," the general consensus of the public was "FAIL." Three months later, a return to "Classic Coke" was announced.

Enter "Classic Coke."

Coke called itself Classic Coke for 24 years. Finally, in 2009, it announced a return to simply calling itself "Coca-Cola." They probably could have done that in the early 90s. That was about as long as the memory of "New Coke" lasted.

The mid-80s, after all, was when we all WILLINGLY wore clothing branded with the Coca-Cola logo. Not Classic Coke, not New Coke. Just Coca-Cola:

I tried to research if the introduction of this merchandise had anything to do with "New Coke," but couldn't find anything. Does anyone know?

My Guilt-Free Ice Cream Sundae

2011-05-18T04:00:00.001-07:00

The biggest obstacle in keeping my weight down is my sweet tooth. Every night, after dinner but before bed, I feel like I HAVE to have something sweet. I go through phases. There was the Weight Watchers snack cakes phase:

The imitation of a Shoney's hot fudge cake phase. (My sister created this, I think -- Weight Watchers ice cream sandwich, light Hershey's syrup, and whipped cream.)

Then there was the 'only enough ice cream to fit into a tiny bowl' phase.

My current phase was a creation of my own. It combines my love of pineapple ice cream topping with around 110 calories of ice cream. Here's how you build a guilt-free (or at least LOW-guilt) ice cream sundae.

First, take a Weight Watchers Giant chocolate ice cream bar:

Drop it into a regular-sized bowl and remove the stick. Add a tiny bit of your favorite ice cream topping -- strawberry, pineapple, caramel, etc. Maybe a little light Hershey's chocolate syrup. Then top it all off with a dab of 5-calorie whipped cream:

Voila. Low-cal sundae. Those giant ice cream bars are only 110 calories and they provide quite a bit of ice cream. By the way, a little Smucker's pineapple topping doesn't taste so bad with those 10-calorie Jello packs either. Maybe that's just me, though.

Give it a try. It's not the real thing...

But it's as close as you can get and still step on the scale tomorrow morning.

Fat is Good for Wrinkles!

2011-05-16T04:00:00.000-07:00

When we're young, we're taught thin is good. The thinner the better. Hollywood promotes this by celebrating actresses and models who are, in essence, "hangers with heads."

But as I've gotten older (and watched Hollywood age), I've noticed something. Thin is not necessarily so attractive on middle-aged women.

I noticed this on Michelle Pfeiffer. She's beautiful -- always has been -- but in recent movies her fair skin and bony frame seem to only accentuate her wrinkles. But even more recently I saw a Helen Hunt movie from 2007. I was stunned at how much she'd aged since last I'd seen her in something.

Then I saw a preview for her upcoming movie Soul Surfer. In previews she looked much younger. Yes, most people would start crying "plastic surgery," but I couldn't help but notice she was looking a little less skeletal...more womanly and soft.

I don't have scientific proof of any of this. It's just something I noticed over the years. Granted, too much weight is unhealthy, but it seems like a few womanly curves actually make a woman look more youthful, longer.

What do you think?

Remember Boy Bands?

2011-05-13T04:00:00.000-07:00

Nobody knows exactly when it started.

Could've been New Kids on the Block. But long before New Kids on the Block, there was Bobby Brown's New Edition:

And anyone remember Menudo?

Ricky Martin came out of that band, for those among us who are children of the 90s instead of the 80s.

Whatever the roots, boy bands EXPLODED in the 90s, along with young girl acts (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, etc.). In fact, it seems music in the 90s in general went to the youth. For a while, it seemed there was a battle for most successful band in music.

It was between these two groups:

Just like Britney seemed to spawn a thousand imitators (Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson, Hilary Duff, etc.) N Sync and Back Street boys brought on a boy band flood. There were 98 Degrees, O-Town,

Unlike traditional all-male bands, "boy bands" were different in that they were very visual performers. They danced almost as well (if not better than) they sang...and young girls went CRAZY. Each fan seemed to have a favorite, even engaging in battles similar to the Edward vs. Jacob fights Twilight fans have today. Boy bands rarely survived beyond their initial fame...at least not at that particular level.

In this case, there is one very notable exception:

Justin Timberlake not only survived the boy band era, he evolved into a well-respected musician and actor. His talent has landed him four hosting gigs (soon to be five) on Saturday Night Live, roles in some of Hollywood's hottest movies, including last year's The Social Network, and a string of big-name girlfriends, including Cameron Diaz and Jessica Biel. His post-boy-band music has earned him Grammys and, yes, even an Emmy (for his SNL short about putting a certain body part in a box and giving it as a gift...).

Yet most boy band efforts to grow up never quite take off as Mr. Timberlake's has. Still, some of these former boy bands (including Backstreet Boys and New Kids on the Block) continue to put out music...and some of it isn't so bad. They even tour...their audiences just seem to be filled with the same people who loved them back when they were stars.

Babies, Brides, and Cowboys

2011-05-11T04:00:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I read a blog from Jennifer Shirk about romance novels. She said in a writer's forum recently, she was surprised to hear that most of those attending said they didn't like seeing children in romance novels.

I was surprised, too. Mostly because you can't walk up to the romance section of a bookstore without seeing this:

In fact, Harlequin Romance has five featured miniseries on its website right now -- the first two of those five are "Babies and Brides" and "Babies in the Boardroom."

When I was writing romance in the 90s, RWA members shortened this trend to the term: "baby/bride/cowboy books." It was pretty well-known that, if you wanted to write romance, especially for Harlequin and Silhouette, you'd better write about one of those three subjects. Your heroine should either be pregnant or have young children or enter into a marriage of convenience at some point. Your hero was either a CEO or cowboy, preferably cowboy. Women LOVED cowboys, we were told.

I didn't want to write about cowboys. Nothing against cowboys -- they're great, when portrayed by Robert Redford or Matthew McConaughey, neither of whom are cowboys. My aversion to cowboys has more to do with my aversion to writing about ranches and farms than cowboys themselves. Put a cowboy in the board room and maybe I could write about it...but I'd still rather write about the guy in a business suit. Because, to me, guys in business suits are HOT.

(Especially my husband.)

So that leaves pregnant women and kids. Do they have a place in a book? Sure. Honestly, for me, it doesn't really matter if kids are around or not. It's all background to the real story...which in a romance is man + woman = love. I can't imagine picking a book because any of the above elements are there -- babies, cowboys, pregnant women, or women in bridal attire.

But obviously readers do. Especially readers of category/series (Harlequin) romance. I guess I prefer to read and write about the kids themselves...with the parents as the background!

If you read romance, do you have a preference as to whether kids are a part of the story?

Attack of the Cicadas

2011-05-09T04:00:00.001-07:00

We arrived at my parents' house Saturday night to find my stepdad standing outside with a large stick. "What's he doing?" I asked.

"Killing cicadas," my mom answered.

I shuddered. Just the word 'cicadas' threatens to bring on a panic attack. But what followed was a desperate need to spot these cicadas, which my mom informed me were starting to crawl out of the ground. I think I felt that if I could keep an eye on them, I'd know where they were in their progress toward swarming around Nashville and it wouldn't be so bad.

Doubtful.

Every 13 years, Nashville is covered in these ugly, red-eyed nuisances. When they first started appearing in 1998, I struggled to remember their last visit, when I was 14. They always come in the summertime but for some reason my memories were of waiting outside at junior high for the bus. Since they start in early May, that makes sense.

1998 is all too vivid a memory. I remember we lived outside the city, and our area didn't have them. But every day I had to drive to Nashville for work and every day I lived in fear of getting out of my car.

Twice, those suckers landed on me. Both times I freaked out and had to have someone else pull them off of me. You see, the problem is that cicadas cannot merely be brushed off. You have to pull them off with a little force. They cling to you...and they aren't all that pleasant to touch. Do YOU want to put your fingers on this?

By Sunday morning, they were coming out of my parents' yard in groups. We only scoured a few feet of their back yard and found six or seven of them. They aren't flying yet...first they must crawl out of the ground and shed their skin. When they start flying, watch out. They will be EVERYWHERE.

Do you get these types of cicadas in your area?

(Poster by Anderson Design Group.)

As I Get Older...

2011-05-06T04:00:00.001-07:00

As you get older, you realize how important it is to know where you came from. Family -- and your history -- are a part of who you are and you long to know more about your parents...their parents...THEIR parents.

This is my mom:

She was only 19 in this picture, taken when she married my dad. He was in the service at the time. They both lived in Missouri, where they both were raised.

We moved around quite a bit but we ended up in Tennessee by the time I was five. Hendersonville, to be exact. We only lived there a year or two before going back to Missouri, when my parents divorced...but somehow we ended up back in Hendersonville by the time I was 10. I still feel like Hendersonville's my hometown, even though I live in Nashville (20 miles away).

These are the things that become dear to your heart. Family, hometown...you develop a fondness for things from your past. You long to be closer to your parents and, if you're lucky like me, you get a chance to. I work in the same building as my mom and we go to lunch together every single day. How many people can say that? I know someday I'll cherish these years but most of the time I take it for granted. Until, every now and then, a co-worker looks at me with tears in her eyes and says, "I wish I could have lunch with my mom. Just once." I then find out that co-worker lost her mom months or years earlier.

Today is my mom's birthday. I won't reveal her age...but I'm 40 and she's still mistaken for my sister! I am SO glad I get to see her every day and I'm sad I don't tell her often enough what a great mom she's been. So happy birthday, Mom, and here's to many, many more lunches together!

Every Little Girl's Dream...

2011-05-04T04:00:00.001-07:00

Last Friday morning, people gathered around the world to watch the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton.

It was a little girl's fantasy, right in front of our eyes. A beautiful young woman marrying a prince and instantly becoming a princess. Every little girl dreams of such a thing happening to her, right? She and her prince must share the perfect romance...

Those who have been around long enough remember feeling that way when we were kids, too. It didn't matter that Lady Diana was marrying a man who looked more like frog than prince, she was becoming a princess. We were all watching. She was beautiful, magical...the luckiest woman alive.

We all dreamed of having a fairy tale wedding like hers.

Then came the reality. Years of media speculation, followed by the truth. Prince Charles never really loved his wife. His true love was...someone else. Someone not quite so fairy-tale princess-like. As the stories unfolded, making this fairy tale couple look all too human, we realized...

Fairy tales aren't all they're cracked up to be.

Another case that shattered our fantasy was when a beautiful blond storybook woman married this country's closest thing to royalty, John F. Kennedy, Jr.

Oh, how everyone envied this woman, marrying the man many women believed to be THE most handsome man alive. When the wedding pictures emerged, the public saw it exactly as they saw the wedding last week. The perfect couple, madly in love. Nothing ugly could ever touch something so beautiful...

Then they both died in a tragic plane crash...and the truth emerged.

Had the couple never taken that fated flight, how long until the truth came out? If ever? Even if they'd divorced, how many fancy publicists would be hired to ensure the public never knew the real truth -- which was that the couple's marriage was on very shaky ground due to HER alleged infidelities and drug use. It also came out that she might have had major problems dealing with the fishbowl her life had become.

It's easy, from the outside, to see something as one-dimensional, but behind all those wedding photos and public smiles are real people. People with normal emotions. Couples fight. People aren't perfect, even famous people...even royalty. Just as little girls grow up to find marriage and parenthood aren't one hundred percent perfect one hundred percent of the time, so do princesses and women who marry America's "Sexiest Man Alive."

Still...little girls need their fairy tales. They need to believe in the dream...for just a little while longer.

Audiobooks Keep Me Company...

2011-05-02T04:00:00.001-07:00

Every morning, I head off to work with a mug of coffee. My commute to work would be much drearier without the friends I take along with me.

First, there was Kathy Griffin:

Then Carrie Fisher

And Chelsea Handler:

I even tried Susan Lucci's autobiography...well, as much of it as I could get through. The soap actress is so sweet (with everything being "lovely" and "adorable" and "SO wonderful"), I had to eject it and take it back to the library before I got a cavity.

You know that old saying, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all?" It's the opposite with celebrity bios. If you can't bring yourself to say bad things about people you've worked with, don't bother. People want DIRT. Am I wrong?

Another rule of celebrity bios -- if you're a comedian, like Chelsea Handler, and you've written a book in YOUR voice, PLEASE take the time to record the audio for the release of your audiobook. I'm not sure who the woman was reading Chelsea Handler's book on her dealings with men, but the woman just read what Chelsea had written. It was missing Chelsea's unique delivery.

I'm currently reading Steve Martin's autobiography. Interesting timing, since he was one of the celebs Kathy Griffin trashed in her book. Steve Martin is an author in the true literary sense. He has a definite way with words. But be prepared to hear his ENTIRE LIFE STORY. I think I'm about three hours in and he's just now turning 21 and beginning to do some writing for TV. Yes, three hours to get to the mid-1960s.

What next, after Steve Martin? Any suggestions of good non-fiction books that would be entertaining enough to make my drive to work more pleasant?

Remember AOL?

2011-04-29T04:00:00.000-07:00

It was the mid-90s. The Internet was just coming into everyone's focus. First, Windows 95 made computing accessible to even the techie-challenged:

As we headed out to the store for our first PCs, most came pre-loaded with this software:

None of us will likely ever forget the horrifying sound of our modems dialing in. (Was all that noise NECESSARY?) Then, the obligatory, "YOU'VE GOT MAIL" that blared out at us as soon as we signed onto AOL.

Why did everyone use AOL? There were other choices, to be certain. Mindspring is one that comes to mind. At the time, access was dial-up and getting to the Internet was, we thought, complicated. Finally we realized that we could have Internet access without going through a service like AOL.

Still, there were a few that hung on.

At its prime, AOL had more than 30 million subscribers. For a while, many of those were unhappy subscribers. When it changed from charging an hourly fee to a monthly subscription of $19.95 a month, subscribers would regularly get busy signals. Soon AOL had earned the nickname "Always Offline." AOL quickly worked out the problems and membership boomed.

Around the time Time Warner bought the service, membership began declining. I see no relationship between the two. I think most of us just figured out another way to access the Internet. Why go through a portal when we could just dial in and double-click the IE icon?

Still, America Online is a piece of American history. In 2007, USA Today listed America Online as fourth in the top 25 events that shaped the first 25 years of the Internet. Someday it will be legend, but those of us who were there will never forget "You've got mail." Nor will we forget this sound...

Library Books for Your Kindle?

2011-04-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

I think I must be one of the last Americans to use the library system. Not just for books, but for DVDs...

...and CDs and audiobooks. As a member of the library system, I also get 5 free mp3 downloads a week via Sony's Freegal service:

All kinds of cool. But one thing I've found problematic is downloading e-books to my iPhone.

It's not like I have some obscure phone that nobody in the world supports. The iPhone4 is THE cell phone. I have the Kindle app on it, so I should be able to read library books without going through an obstacle course to get there.

Currently, I have to use an app called Bluefire to get the books. I go to the library's website, sort through the very clunky lists of e-books (most of which are unavailable because they're checked out), download the book to my computer, then go find a particular kind of file and add it to a section in iTunes where I tell my computer what to sync to my iPhone. Seven days later my book has expired.

No, you didn't read that incorrectly. SEVEN DAYS to read a book. Okay, so I can read most books in seven days, but that's still a lot of pressure. What if I have a busy week? What if I'm in the middle of another book I want to finish up first? Why can't I have it for three weeks like normal books?

Needless to say, the recent news that library books will be available for Kindle later this year put me over the moon. If I can send it to my phone's Kindle app the way I send books on Amazon.com to it, I'll never read a paper book again. Of course, according to the news stories I'm reading, checkout will only be for 7-14 days, but maybe they'll let us renew?

THIS is the future of the American library system, folks. Libraries are becoming more and more electronic. If the Kindle deal applies to the Nashville library system, I'll officially have a library membership I actively use, while never setting foot in an actual library.

I'll go for that!

Does This Computer Have Google?

2011-04-25T04:00:00.002-07:00

I work in tech support. I've seen it all. But it never ceases to amaze me that people can work in an office for five, ten, even fifteen years, using computers every day, yet never grasping the basic things.

Like the complexities of sliding a monitor over five inches.

Or changing a printer tray from Tray One to Tray Two without calling for help.

So, for those of us who work in tech support every day, I introduce you to Technologically Impaired Duck. Here are some of the best. Enjoy!

Remember AIDS?

2011-04-22T04:00:00.000-07:00

On the current season of the show Celebrity Apprentice, LaToya Jackson regularly announces her passion for her charity, AIDS Project Los Angeles. Every time she mentions it, I can't help but be reminded at how much the country has changed in its concern over what was once said to be the next big plague.

When AIDS first began making news, in the early 80s, it was thought of as a disease affecting only the homosexual community. In fact, its early name in the press was GRID, which stood for Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. In July 1982, after it became clear the disease was not confined to any one community, the acronym AIDS was introduced.

In the 80s and 90s, AIDS was a HUGE topic. People were dying every day. People we knew and loved. If you didn't know someone affected by the disease, there were celebrities who contracted AIDS/HIV (Rock Hudson, Anthony Perkins, Robert Reed). There were celebrities created by having the disease -- most notably teenager Ryan White and mom Elizabeth Glaser, whose husband was Starsky of Starsky and Hutch. There were parades and rallies and entire TV shows that added storylines to draw attention to the cause.

And then...nothing.

Whenever AIDS is mentioned now, I wonder, "Was there a cure? Maybe people just aren't dying from it anymore." So, of course, I Googled...and found that isn't the case at all. In fact, it is estimated that there are 1.8 million deaths worldwide from AIDS each year, and 33.3 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS. Why aren't we talking about it anymore?

The answer can probably best be stated in this chart from the late 90s:

In areas where antiretroviral (or HAART) therapies are readily available, the death rate is said to have been reduced by 80%, with patients living an average of 20 years after diagnosis. The real problem exists in countries where those therapies are not readily available. America isn't one of those countries, so guess what? We don't hear about it anymore.

Or, as someone in a forum put it, "AIDS is not a health crisis in America the way heart disease is." But does that mean it's over? Or have we just found bigger dangers?

Tired of $2 Sodas in Restaurants?

2011-04-20T04:00:00.001-07:00

A couple of years ago, I started to notice the price of my standard drink order in restaurants -- Diet Coke -- was rising. The first time I noticed it was Logans, where I paid a whopping $2.20 JUST FOR MY DRINK.

I'm not the type of person that haggles over a couple of bucks, but if you eat out a lot, it can get ridiculous. Say you ate lunch out every day at work. If the average soda price is $2, in a year's time, you'd spend more than $500 on sodas. That's money you could put aside for a weekend trip somewhere. Or a garage full of sodas.

I'm a huge fan of this stuff:

It works perfectly in 16.9 oz. bottles of water. As long as you can measure it out, you get the right amount. But if you try putting one of those in a restaurant glass of water, you'll either find your drink watered down or way too sweet. So when I started seeing ads for MiO Liquid Water Enhancer...

...the first thing I thought of was water in restaurants. A couple of squirts and my restaurant water would be fruit punch! I bought a couple (yes, they're $3+ each) and put them in my purse. And started saving money.

The taste is good. REALLY good. So far I've only tried Berry Pomegranate and Fruit Punch, but I'm really looking forward to the Strawberry Watermelon. Everyone who has tasted it has been amazed that just a couple of squirts can provide that much flavor. In fact, it may be enough to have me kick my Great Value drink mix to the curb...

(Again, I was not paid or provided free stuff for this blog. I just hate the taste of water and love fooling myself into drinking it by making it taste like something else!)

Places That Still Only Take Cash

2011-04-18T04:00:00.000-07:00

The day I obtained my first debit card (around the mid-90s), my boycott of cash-only places began. I worked downtown at the time, and at THAT time most downtown restaurants were privately owned and therefore cash only, so I still had to stop by the ATM to eat there. But, outside of the workweek, I'd routinely find myself avoiding places that hadn't yet converted to credit cards.

Those places, at the time, were primarily Waffle House and Steak 'N Shake. Fazoli's took checks and in those last couple of pre-online billpay days, I still actually carried a checkbook around with me, so Fazoli's was on the good list. But there was a period of 4-5 years where we did not eat at Waffle House or Steak 'N Shake for ONE reason.

One by one, places started taking debit/credit cards. Yes, even Waffle House and Steak 'N Shake. In fact, around the time I stopped working downtown I spoke to a restaurant owner who was headed to the bank to discuss his options in regard to accepting credit cards -- and this was a restaurant that had been around (taking cash only) for more than a century. With more and more downtown restaurants taking credit cards, they were starting to lose business.

Yep, that was all it took.

We're in a credit card society, not because of the American debt mentality, but because of debit cards. Why on earth would I go to the ATM and withdraw money when I can have a little magic card that I can use ANYWHERE that will take the money right out of my account? It saves me from stopping at the ATM every few days, plus my credit card earns me points. I get free stuff for spending MY money on things I would have bought anyway.

So what REALLY irks me is when I pull in some place like Sonic and find that they've upgraded to the credit card system but they just don't get it. They've installed these fancy card readers at each menu so you can run your credit card through all on your own. No waitress needed. But you still have to tip because, after all, they picked your bag up and carried it out to you. Only, get this...

YOU CAN'T PUT THE TIP ON THE CARD.

Yes, that's right. You have to bring cash to a place that takes credit cards. I may be wrong, but I believe Sonic is the last place in the world that hasn't figured out this little piece of technology. I was searching around online and found several references to Sonic's standard excuse for this -- they believe if they add that little tip line on the receipt it will promote tampering. When I mentioned it to the car hop the last time we went, he said they had tipping on the cards for a while, but there were some problems with it, which could fit what I'm finding on the web. So some waiter somewhere changed the tip to what he wanted and the entire corporation adjusted? Kind of like when you were in elementary school and the whole class was punished for one student's misdeeds?

We were looking for somewhere to eat a couple of weeks ago and passed a Sonic. We were all in the mood for their food, but I pointed out that they didn't let us tip on the card. We were starting to drive on when I saw the new "Drive-Thru Window." "We won't need to tip for that," I announced proudly. "We'll just pull on through and pick up our food like it's Burger King." (Because even Burger King takes credit cards now, DUH!) So we pulled in and, what do you know? The supposed "Drive-Thru" is nothing more than a menu where you order. A carhop still brings food out to you and you still feel pressured to tip. At a drive-thru. For fast food.

Somehow we dug up enough change from under the seats and everywhere else to tip the poor guy a dollar or whatever, because I really feel the carhop shouldn't be punished. Sonic should be the one who's punished...and I guess they will be. They're punished every time someone's driving by and says, "I'd love Sonic, but I don't have cash for the tip. Let's go somewhere else." Unfortunately, I suspect most people will just pull on in anyway and stiff the poor carhop.

Boo to Sonic. And any other business who can't seem to realize it's 2011. Cash is SO last century.

Remember Scrunchies?

2011-04-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

Come on, you know we all had one. In the 80s, I even had a SILVER one. I remember wearing it on my wrist and being impressed that my ponytail holder could double as a bracelet. (As plain elastic ponytail holders now seem to do for every female under the age of 30 in this country.)

Yes, scrunchies...

...are now a fashion memory. Be caught wearing one these days (as Catherine Zeta-Jones was in 2010) and you will be ridiculed (as Catherine Zeta-Jones was in 2010):

Or, as Carrie Bradshaw put it on Sex and the City: "No self-respecting New York City woman would be caught dead running around Manhattan in a scrunchie." (Although apparently it's okay to wear one as a sash?):

The design wasn't patented until 1994, but I remember wearing scrunchies in the 80s. I just didn't know the name for them. I get that the fashion trend is done. I get that we've moved on to other hair accessories. What I don't get is why, every time someone is seen in one, people act as though they were caught wearing a mullet. Is it really bad enough to warrant an entire fashion industry going after someone to beg her to lose the scrunchie (as happened when Sienna Miller was photographed wearing one)?

It's just a scrunchie, folks. Do we really need to get bent out of shape over it?

When Did You Outgrow Pop Music?

2011-04-13T04:00:00.001-07:00

As part of my library membership, I get five free mp3 downloads a week. It's a service Sony provides called Freegal and, yes, your local library just might offer it too. Whenever I want to build my iPod back up for my daily walks, I head over to Freegal and try to find songs to download.

Last night I found something amazing. A fair number of songs I'd been trying to find in the pop section were under R&B. The songs are neither rhythm nor blues, as far as I can tell, but the artists are black, so there the songs go.

I downloaded Yeah by Usher -- probably considered a "classic" now:

Far cry from B.B. King, don'tcha think?

Yes, I know that these very "popular" songs are supposedly the new R&B, even though many would classify them as top 40. But what REALLY bugs me is when people of my generation refer to such songs as rap.

Here's a newsflash: Usher is NOT a rap artist. Nor are Bruno Mars and Chris Brown. But people seem to think they are. In fact, I was in a discussion recently with some people who were doing the whole "Music today isn't the same as it was in the 80s. It's all rap now" thing and I pulled up the top 40 songs. I had a hard time finding rap artists among them.

For giggles, let's pull it up now. The top ten this week are, in order: Katy Perry, Rihanna, The Black Eyed Peas, Cee Lo Green, Lady Gaga, Chris Brown, Jerimih featuring 50 Cent, Jennifer Lopez, P!nk, and Adele. Only ONE of those songs is primarily rap and that's the one by Jerimih (who is NOT a rap artist, at least judging by that song). The Black Eyed Peas have been known to toss some rap in, and yes, some of these artists have some rappers doing a little backing vocals on occasion in their songs, but these are not rap songs.

That said, explain to me the difference between what Bruno Mars sings:

And what Prince sang back in the "good old days."

And if you think Lady Gaga's new song isn't a direct rip-off of Madonna, you weren't around when Express Yourself was popular. Listen to Born This Way and tell me it doesn't sound familiar (music starts at 2:45):

To the people of my generation who think good music died with the 80s (or even to those of you who believe it died with the 90s), I say you think it died because you stopped listening. If you'd turn on the radio today, you'd see that there's more than just rap. But it's easy to look back now and remember the 80s as the decade of Queen and Asia and Duran Duran...and forget it was also the decade of the Thompson Twins and Hall & Oates and Air Supply. In other words, in 1984 you picked and chose what you listened to just as you would today if you'd turn on pop radio for more than five seconds.

Funny how we forget all that. Yes, remember it or not, you actually changed radio stations in 1984 when a song came on you didn't like. And I'm betting you did it fairly often.

Another current song that isn't rap or supposed "R&B" and is on the radio every fifteen seconds:

When the Book You're Reading SUCKS!

2011-04-11T04:00:00.000-07:00

Someone told me when I started writing that I'd find myself enjoying less and less books.

I've found that not to be true.

What I have found, however, is a total lack of tolerance for books that don't pull me in right away. I will say up front that I'm not afraid to close a book 10 pages in, toss it aside, and pick up the next one in the stack.

But then I get a lot of my books from the library. I'm a way underpaid state employee who hasn't had a raise since 2006, so I can't afford otherwise. Before I re-discovered the public library system, most of the 4-5 books I read a month came from this little charming used bookstore in Madison, Tennessee:

I found that used bookstores are VERY romance-friendly. You won't find that in the chain bookstores -- especially the independent ones, sad to say. At least not where I live.

When you shop in a traditional store, you have the benefit of picking the book up, taking in the cover, and reading the first 10-20 pages to see if you're drawn in. When you shop online or pick your books out via the library's Internet reservation system (as I always do), all you have is a brief synopsis, some reviews, and a photo of the cover. Some books allow you to "look inside" and read the first pages. If you're downloading them to an e-book reader, you have the option of downloading a sample.

If I were paying for books, that's exactly what I'd do. You have those first pages to grab me and, if you don't, I'm moving on. Because as an avid reader my motto is, first and foremost:

"Life is too short to read bad books."

As a library checker-outer, I can tell you that I don't really read samples before I get a book. I'll check out a stack of books. I'll start on the first one and give it an honest chance. But if it's not quite connecting, I am not the slightest bit averse to moving on.

What makes me discard a book in those first few pages?

It's almost always the same. TOO MUCH GOING ON. If I'm confused and not connecting with anyone or anything in those first pages, you're going to lose me. Give me one viewpoint. Make me connect with someone. Make me care.

Most books are good about that, but I've read a few in the last few months that are a mess. You start the book and spend 10 or 20 pages trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Nobody's giving you a plot to grab on to. So you're out there, trying to find your way in this sea of characters and disjointed scenes, wondering how on earth this person ever got published.

Which is why, my friends, reading the first few paragraphs of a book is not enough.

Yes, you heard that right. Some of these books had stellar opening sentences. You THOUGHT the book was really going somewhere. But then the first scene cut to the second scene and you're meeting seven more girls and you can't tell who the protagonist is supposed to be...

So you close the book and set it down.

I think all of us, when we were younger, tried to force our way through an entire book we hated. We did it because we spent our hard-earned money on it and because, well, we just didn't know any better. We naively believed a bad book could somehow miraculously get good halfway through. And maybe that happened a couple of times over the years, but mostly we figured out that a bad book is a bad book.

Of course, one man's trash is another man's treasure. So I should amend my motto to: "Life is too short to read books YOU don't like." Live by it! Read the first 10 pages or so and make sure it's a good book before you invest your money. But, if you someday find yourself making the mistake of buying a book without testing it out first, don't waste valuable reading time reading the whole thing just to justify the money you spent. Your time is worth more than money ever could be...

Just set it aside and move onto the next one.

Remember Brenda and Dylan?

2011-04-08T04:00:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since America REALLY bonded with fictional TV characters. Talk around the water cooler these days revolves around who won The Bachelor's heart or who was voted off American Idol.

But back in the 90s, everyone was following the same show:

The teen soap opera was revolutionary for its time. We'd all grown up on nighttime dramas involving rich "grown ups," but we never had a show of our own. Not a good one, anyway.

In its early episodes, Beverly Hills 90201 was fresh and exciting. It centered on two teens from Minnesota, trying to fit in at a fictional Beverly Hills high school. The show began airing in 1990 but gained popularity in the summer of 1991, when producers chose to air new episodes during the summer, while all other shows were on hiatus. That was the summer everyone began talking.

At the center of all of the talk was one couple -- good girl Brenda and bad boy Dylan.

Thanks to the Romeo and Juliet rip-off storyline, ratings skyrocketed. During those summer episodes, when we all watched because, let's face it, back then NOTHING else was on in the summer, 90210 went from 88th in the ratings to 48th.

The show continued to climb, thanks mostly to Shannen Doherty (Brenda) and her notorious antics off-screen. Rumors of her bitchiness spread like wildfire -- with story after story somehow being leaked to the press and public. She was hateful to her co-workers, according to rumors. She insisted on doing her own makeup for the show (to, in my opinion, horrendous results). She went from looking like this in the first and second seasons:

To looking washed out and sick for the remainder of her time on the show:

Someone started up an I Hate Brenda newsletter. Fans subscribed in the thousands. (In those days just before the Internet, this was how it was done!) Songs were written. A book eventually came out. As Doherty began being known for her partying lifestyle, the sweet, wholesome character of Brenda was gradually revised to be the cranky rebel on the show. The public was expected to shift its loyalty to the character of Kelly, originally presented as a rich, pampered snob.

All the bad publicity was naturally good for the show. But Doherty's on-set behavior was reportedly becoming less professional. Since the show's creator, Aaron Spelling, had a daughter working on the show, rumors began swirling that he was concerned about Doherty's influence on her. At the end of the fourth season, Doherty left the show and ratings began to drift downward. The show stayed on the air LONG after people stopped watching, finishing up at #82 in the ratings when it ended in 2000. Ironically, it had come full-circle. The show peaked at #88 in its first season and #82 in its last.

Watching those early episodes now can certainly bring nostalgia...but it also makes you aware how much things have changed. Teens have more networks, and more choices, now...making it almost impossible for a phenomenon like 90210 to happen again. Friends was a similar type of phenomenon, in its early days. The public doesn't quite bond with fictional characters in the same way anymore...not in mass numbers, anyway. We're all watching something different because at any given time there are hundreds of shows to watch.

Here's a little flashback for those of you who grew up watching 90210. The season opener from that summer when everyone started watching:

Writing On Vacation?

2011-04-07T04:00:00.000-07:00

I was clicking around on blogs yesterday when I discovered a blog from London author D.U. Okonkwo titled Writing Under the Sun. The blog poses the question, if you were lounging on the beach with the warm sun and fresh air all around you, could you write? WOULD you?

For most of us, the question isn't would we write on vacation but DO we write? If you're a full-time writer, vacation would be a time to rest. But if, like me, you have a full-time job that doesn't allow any writing sneaky-time (come on, SOME of you know what I'm talking about), vacation is the ONLY time you can write.

So do you?

I know exactly what this blogger is saying. I've been there. You close your eyes and imagine your vacation will be days of lounging on the beach with your W.I.P., suntan lotion, and a perfectly sweet margarita. In reality, alcohol isn't allowed on the beach and even if it was, it would just make you sleepy. You can't take your laptop out in the sand and if you try writing the old-fashioned way, sand and water get all over the pages. Besides, it's hard to see with the sun blaring in your eyes and every time you THINK you can concentrate, someone with a beer belly walks by in a thong and takes you out of your fantasy world.

Are you feelin' me yet?

When I was writing romance, I heard MANY things about the writing life in the 40 bajillion workshops I attended a year. One story that stuck with me involved a woman who has written more books than God. (God had one book, the Bible, and it had a lot of books in it...and STILL not this many.) More books than you've read, I'd dare say. You get it -- she's written a lot of books.

Her name is Nora Roberts and she's a corporation. Books, movie rights, fan clubs...the works. How does she publish so many books? From the stories I heard, she works all the time. Yes, even on vacation. There were stories of her attending writer's conferences and, while everyone else was hanging out, there she was by the pool, working.

(Nora working at her computer):

I know people in the corporate world who work like that, so why not in writing? Why is it creative pursuits can be put off for "a better time?" I'd go one further and say that, to me, sitting by the pool, working on a PowerPoint presentation would be FAR more like work than if I were writing by the pool.

Writing is fun. It is enhanced by pretty surroundings. It doesn't feel like work in the sense that a PowerPoint presentation or compiling a corporate budget feels like work. To me, it would be totally acceptable for me to be sitting on the beach, writing with notepad and pen. But sitting on the beach with my laptop, doing things related to my job, would label me a "workaholic." In that sense, there's nothing wrong with writing on vacation...but it's not my full-time job.

When it IS (and someday it will be, darn it!), will I then be ridiculed for working too hard? Is it only okay to write on vacation when it's not your full-time job???

This LITERALLY is Annoying Me

2011-04-06T04:00:00.000-07:00

Last week, I heard someone say something "LITERALLY was a train wreck." It got under my skin because...guess what? The person wasn't describing an ACTUAL train wreck. You know...something that even remotely resembled this:

Does it come from reality TV? "Literally" appears to be the favorite word of the Kardashian sisters. It's become this generation's "like."

Apparently this abuse of the word "literally" is nothing new. Another blog pointed out that Louisa May Alcott wrote in Little Women that "the land literally flowed with milk and honey" and Mark Twain wrote that Tom Sawyer was "literally rolling in wealth." The Kardashians can't be blamed for that.

As is usually the case, the dictionary has modified the meaning of the word to match modern-day language. Read #2:

lit·er·al·ly/ˈlitərəlē/Adverb
1. In a literal manner or sense; exactly: "the driver took it literally when asked to go straight over the traffic circle".
2. Used to acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or to express strong feeling.

Yep. So in that case, this mess I heard described last week was LITERALLY a train wreck. Just not in the literal sense, of course.

It still annoys me, though. Is there something you hear in modern-day language that annoys you?

Mammograms CAN'T Be Good For Your Breasts

2011-04-04T04:00:00.001-07:00

All our lives, women are told to protect our breasts from muscle damage. Wear proper-fitting bras with lots of support. Wear sports bras when you exercise. Minimize impact to those breast tissues so you don't end up looking like one of those saggy National Geographic magazine women when you're older.

Then you hit 40...and they send you for your first mammogram.

Yes, every year, for the rest of your life, YOU get to go to a place where they smash your boobies as low as they can get them to look for tumors. Every year. Is it just me? Am I the only one standing there, thinking, "This CAN'T be good for those tissues?"

Yes, I'm also thinking, "Can they not come up with a better way to do this?" All these medical innovations and we're still smashing and mashing? Of course, it all depends on what the insurance companies will pay for and besides, some government group wants to up the mammogram age to 50, so we're lucky our insurance still pays for it in the first place.

This is sort of tongue-in-cheek, as I definitely realize that mammograms save lives. I just like to put my odd thoughts out there, to see if anyone else thinks these things as well!

Happy April Fool's Day!

2011-04-01T04:00:00.000-07:00

Today, in honor of April Fool's Day, I'm taking a break from Nostalgia Friday to pay tribute to the best April Fool's Day prank of all time.

This comes courtesy of my mom, who told me about it several years ago. I believe I blogged about it back then, but I have an all new audience now, so I thought I'd write about it again.

The year was 1957. TV was relatively new to many average-income households, which means TV watchers were slightly more naive than we are today. In other words, in today's world of shows like UFOs: Are They Out There?, it's hard to relate to a time when all of the news on TV was real.

So when, on April Fool's Day in 1957, the BBC ran a three-minute segment on the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest, people believed it. Calls began pouring in from British viewers, wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti. The BBC's supposed response to this was, "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best." Other callers phoned in to applaud BBC on the joke. One viewer even quipped that spaghetti doesn't grow vertically -- it grows horizontally.

At the end of the evening, the BBC let viewers in on the joke with this statement, "The BBC has received a mixed reaction to a spoof documentary broadcast this evening about spaghetti crops in Switzerland." The commentary finished up with, "This is believed to be one of the first times the medium of television has been used to stage an April Fools Day hoax."

They could have just shouted, "April Fools!"

Here's the news clip in its entirety. Is it me or does this remind anyone else of the dull, sleep-inducing films they used to make us watch in elementary school?

Paying Your Dues

2011-03-31T04:00:00.000-07:00

Angela Ackerman's comment on my blog on self-publishing got me thinking. I started to type a response but my response became so long, it was a blog in itself. So I scrapped the whole thing and wrote this blog instead!

The blog brought an interesting conversation in the comments about self-publishing. Some still feel that an author is "giving up" when she chooses to self-publish. Authors self-publish because getting a traditional deal is too much work. That is a logical assumption...and it is true for SOME authors.

But not all.

To quote Angela Ackerman, "All I ask is that if you [self-publish], do it for the right reasons. Don't do it so you can avoid doing all that 'work' needed to get your writing to a high standard. Respect yourself and understand there IS no short cut to learning craft."

I started writing when I was a teenager. I started SERIOUSLY writing when I was 24. I'm now 40, so you can do the math on that. I was there at the beginning of the e-publishing boom, when it was just a few small e-publishers and if you were lucky, you made $500 per book. (At the time, I was making $150-$250 per short story writing for True Story magazine, so you can imagine why I thought THAT was crazy!) I had zero respect for authors who went with e-publishers at the time. In fact, I'll let you inside my thought process at our monthly RWA chapter meetings as someone stood up to announce she'd just landed a book deal.

She's getting published? She just joined our group. I must suck. Who's the publisher? Oh, some e-publisher I've never heard of. That explains it.

And that definitely explains it. Struggling authors want validation that we don't suck. It's really that simple. If you just started writing three days ago and some no-name e-publisher picks up your book, it makes us feel less like crap because, we seriously think, "I could've gotten published a long time ago if I wanted to go with a no-name publisher." It's all about not feeling like crap. Get it?

When I first started seriously writing, a very successful author had some advice for me. "You're going to have to learn your craft," she said. "Some authors do it before they're published, some after. I personally learned WHILE being published and I regret it now. It's far better to learn before you have a permanent record of your learning process out there to haunt you forever. Trust me."

As a 16-year veteran of sucking at getting published, that's pretty much all I have!

My first book, quite frankly, would have been an embarrassment to everyone I know and love if it had come out. I cringe to think about it. My 24-year-old self was sure I knew what I was doing but I hadn't a clue. I was writing on instinct, without a single workshop or book on the craft. Then I wrote a second book and a third...and, over time, I got better and better.

If the publishers to which I'd submitted those early works had been suffering some temporary insanity that let them publish these horrid books of mine, today they'd be out there for sale. Even if I'd self-published them and could take them off the market, someone, somewhere would have a copy. They've conveniently vanished from all of civilization, never to be seen again (although I do have a paper copy of one somewhere hidden away) and I'm SO glad of that.

So I just want to echo Angela's words and add to them -- if you're being rejected by traditional publishers and you turn to self-publishing, just be sure you know what you're doing. Make sure you've put in the time and paid your dues...and that you're self-publishing something that you'll be proud of, twenty years from now, when you've written a few dozen more books and have more success than you ever imagined. Sometimes we're being rejected for a reason. Sometimes...we're just not ready yet.

Hate Those Annoying Know-It-All Moms?

2011-03-30T04:00:00.000-07:00

This Saturday Night Live commercial parodies not only those annoying know-it-all mom commercials, but know-it-all moms in general.

It features two women at a kids' birthday party. One chides the other, in that passive-aggressive way most TV commercial moms do, for serving punch with high fructose corn syrup in it. The mom comes back in a way that makes you shout, "YES!"

"You guess what?" the mom asks. "That you should have kept your mouth shut? You know, this is a real jam for me. Trust scientists...or stay-at-home mom Sheila from down the street, who's having WINE at ten a.m.?"

Later she points out that she invited this know-it-all mom to her party "even though I didn't want to because you say sh*t like this."

A real keeper! If you can, you have to watch:

We Get It...You're Self-Published. Now Shut Up.

2011-03-28T04:00:00.001-07:00

When it comes to e-publishing and self-publishing, I've always taken the stance that each one of us is in charge of our individual careers. Each one of us has to make a decision whether we're going to go the traditional route and wait an interminable amount of time for a deal with one of the big publishers or go with a smaller press or take matters into our own hands and self-publish.

It's your decision. Nobody can tell you it's right or wrong because this is YOUR career. What has become exhausting to me, though, is the 24-hour-a-day gloating that some self-published authors seem to do. I see it on Twitter. I see it on blogs. It's even, somehow, made its way onto my Facebook page, which I don't really use for writing-related social networking.

You see it every time some mega-successful author chooses to self-publish rather than take a traditional deal. You see it every time an author has success self-publishing. And you DEFINITELY see it every time anyone with any clout writes that traditional publishing is doomed and/or e-book sales are soaring. Every single self-published author in the galaxy tweets and Facebooks and blogs about it. It's PROOF, somehow, that what they're doing is the future and the rest of us are SO last century.

We get it. You self-published. We're proud of you and we respect your decision. What I find DISrespectful is what seems to me to be an unwarranted hatred toward big publishers. In other words, what did HarperCollins ever do to you?

The big mega-publishers are well aware of electronic publishing. In fact, in case you haven't noticed, they're all doing it. I can buy John Grisham's latest novel in hardback AND electronic version. I don't because it's just too darn expensive. If I were going to buy his book, I'd wait 'til it came to paperback, just as I always did. I've said that a million times by now, though, and nobody who sets e-book prices seems to care.

None of us are stupid enough to believe that e-readers aren't going to take over the world. We all know that generations below us will grow up reading books on their iPhones. Heck, there could come a day when they'll just download the books directly to their brains for all we know. What I don't get is why some people seem to think we'd be better off in a market where everyone freely published whatever they wanted and there were no publishers to help guide the market.

I, personally, am speaking up to say I don't want to live in a world like that.

But we won't have to. Just as Sony and Warner dominate the music over on iTunes, Random House and Simon & Schuster will be dominating the NYT bestseller lists once paper goes away. Which means traditionally published authors and self-published authors will be living side by side on Amazon for a long, long time. Can't we all just respect each other's publishing decisions and agree each career is different???

It just seems to me, as a self-published author, your social media efforts would be better spent finding readers and promoting your work rather than linking to every single article on self-publishing out there. Who are you trying to impress? Your fellow self-published authors? Your readers? They're already sold. People like me are only NOT sold on buying e-books because paperback novels are much cheaper. It's a financial decision. Tell me your book is downloadable for $.99 from Amazon and you'll get me MUCH quicker than trying to convince me that someday I won't be able to buy books at Wal-Mart.

And that's MY take on the subject...

Remember Perms?

2011-03-25T04:00:00.000-07:00

Friday is Nostalgia Day on my blog.

If you were a woman in the 80s, there was one basic necessity. Your hair had to have some poof to it, as evidenced by some photos of stars of the time:

Morgan Fairchild:

Sarah Jessica Parker:

Jon Bon Jovi:

In fact, I remember looking through high school yearbooks from the 70s and laughing at how FLAT everyone's hair looked. Yep, at that time, that was what our perspective was. Little did I know, flat would be the style for the next 20+ years...

But I digress. How, you may wonder, did we achieve such heights with our hair? The answer? With a little bit of this:

And, of course, the more long-term assistance of this:

That was the home kit...if you were fortunate enough to live with someone who had a lot of patience, he or she could roll your hair up in those tiny rollers and squirt perm solution all over your head. Otherwise, you were going to the salon.

You couldn't shower after a perm, and that stuff stunk to high heaven, believe me. You could barely stand to be around yourself. Even then, you weren't guaranteed the perm would look good. It NEVER looked like this:

The best you could hope for was this:

Not that there's anything wrong with the second picture. It just isn't quite what the first picture advertised.

Have you ever had a perm? Would you get one, if big hair came back in style?

80s hair crimper commercial:

Yes, Gwyneth Paltrow Can Sing

2011-03-23T04:00:00.000-07:00

For the past few months, Gwyneth Paltrow, previously known as just the Oscar-winning fantabulous actress who named her child Apple, has been on a singing spree. Everyone's attributing it to the fact that she's married to the lead singer of this talented band:

As if vocal skills are one of those things that rub off on you after you've been married for a while. Everyone acts like Gwyneth Paltrow has never sung before, let alone in a high-profile movie. Yet in 2000, at the height of her career, Gwyneth dueted with Huey Lewis for the movie Duets. There were other songs on the soundtrack featuring her, but their version of Cruisin' made the Adult Contemporary charts:

What strikes me as odd, though, is that everyone's talking about Gwyneth being approached about a record deal, based on her singing both on Glee and her singing role as a country music star in the movie Country Strong. It's as if everyone has forgotten all of this buzz happened in 2000...and at that time she was asked repeatedly about the rumors that record labels were interested in signing her.

At that time they were comparing her smoky, sultry voice to Ricky Lee Jones, a 70s star who has since LONG been forgotten, no doubt. Paltrow told interviewers that she was an actor, not a singer, and she'd leave the singing to professional musicians.

Oh, how times have changed.

In fact, Paltrow is said to have signed a $900,000 deal with Atlantic Records. This after Country Strong's $20 million gross and two high-profile guest appearances on Glee. Here she is showing off her fun side with a cover of Cee-Lo Green's Forget You:

Do you think Gwyneth Paltrow has what it takes to become the next big singing star?

Steaks Through the Mail

2011-03-21T04:00:00.000-07:00

I had a bunch of points from my credit card. Normally we'd use them for restaurant gift cards, but that means they're blown in one or two nights out. So this time, I decided to try something different... I used it on a $100 gift pack from Omaha Steaks.

The steaks, of course, arrived about two hours after we left town for a three-day weekend. Luckily our neighbors saw the strange package (a Styrofoam cooler) on our doorstep and rescued it for us. They found room in their freezer and stored them until we returned.

Each item was packaged separately in small boxes. Filets, pork chops, sirloin steaks, hamburgers, gourmet hot dogs, stuffed sole, and potatoes au gratin. It all fit on one shelf of our overstuffed freezer. The idea that you have to have a separate freezer in the garage to purchase things like this is wrong. This isn't my freezer, but it'll give you an idea of how much space it takes up even in one of those standard freezers that have a fraction of the room of a side-by-side:

The steaks and pork chops were so-so. The stuffed sole was fishy. Since I don't like seafood, I have to go by what my husband said and he was largely unimpressed by them. In fact, he said they tasted a little strange. The potatoes au gratin were balls of fried potatoes. I'm accustomed to potatoes au gratin being of the more roasted potato variety. This is what Omaha's potatoes au gratin look like:

I will say I LOVED them. Your kids probably will too, since I tend to be a little unsophisticated in my food taste. Which brings me to the hamburgers and hot dogs.

I'm that person who orders a cheeseburger in a steak restaurant. Yes, THAT person. One, because I'm just not much of a fan of steaks. Two...because I learned long ago that nobody makes a cheeseburger like a place that knows how to do steaks. So I guess you could call me a fan of the steakburger.

Omaha's burgers tasted just like restaurant steakburgers to me. They were well-seasoned and juicy, especially for frozen. The hot dogs were "gourmet" and definitely large and juicy. That said -- if you try to order just hamburgers and hot dogs from Omaha, you'll pay nearly $50 for 16 of each. Yes, 16 burgers and 16 hot dogs will go a long way but is it worth it when you can get fresh ground beef for so cheap locally?

The big problem with Omaha is that everything is frozen. If you prefer fresh meat, you may find you would rather just buy your meat at the grocery store. As far as the "premium cuts of meat," I didn't find that necessarily the case. I couldn't tell the difference, taste-wise...and the taste of the burgers and hot dogs seemed to be attributed more to the Omaha seasoning than the cuts of meat themselves.

Since my first order, though, I ended up on their mailing list and found out that, via e-mail, you can get MUCH better deals than the website. In fact, currently they seem to be offering specials where they'll throw in a cutting board, cutlery set, and extra steaks of you order by a certain date. Now THAT is a good deal.

Note: I received nothing for this review...just relating my own experiences.

Remember Choose Your Own Adventure Books?

2011-03-18T04:00:00.000-07:00

Fridays are Nostalgia Day on my blog.

It was a concept ahead of its time. A reading experience where you, the reader, were allowed to pick where you went next. Since video games hadn't quite evolved to the point where they are now, these books were the only format where you could choose where you would go next...and find out the consequences of those choices.

Published by Bantam Books from 1979-1998, they books were most popular in the 80s and 90s, fading out as video and computer games became more interactive. They were written in second person and at various points in the story, you were given choices as to where YOU, the main character, would go next. Each choice directed you to a different page, where you read the next part of the story.

After Bantam ceased publication, Chooseco took it over, even using the same logo. The new books are available for purchase here. The new books look a little more modernized:

But you can still buy the classics through that same site. They seem to sell for around $6.99.

Even if you didn't grow up reading these, you have to admit it's an interesting concept. It was great preparation for our country's future, sitting in front of our gaming consoles.

What were your favorite books as a kid?

Before You Donate to Japan...

2011-03-17T03:23:00.001-07:00

I'm going to say this again. And, get used to it, because every time for the rest of my life I see someone taking up money to donate to some disaster relief fund, I'm going to speak up about my experience.

What set me off this morning was seeing a post from a well-meaning author on Facebook. She was talking about an initiative by authors to help out as they helped out after the Nashville flood. If you've known me long, you know why that got me off my treadmill and onto this laptop.

Yeah, authors? Your money for Nashville? I don't know where you sent it but if it's to one of the major charities, none of your intended recipients got it. That's the way it is.

Our neighborhood was devastated by that Nashville flood. As we put our lives back together, only ONE GROUP was around to help out. Do you know what group that was? The local churches. A group called Samaritan's Purse also came by to help out. If you want to give, give to a mission trip headed over to Japan. Or, once the disaster is over, donate to a church that is helping rebuild.

Oh, Red Cross will be there a couple of weeks. They'll hand out bottles of water and help provide shelter and, yes, all that is necessary, but by the time the people of Japan are rebuilding their lives, the Red Cross will be long gone. Yet money will still be pouring in.

Much of the money raised in Nashville (including pretty much ALL the money raised in those country music concerts) was distributed to local charities. When neighbors called around to see about either a) getting the money or b) getting some help, they were told efforts in the flooded neighborhoods had stopped. Yet fundraising efforts were still going on.

Some of your charity dollars went to the city of Nashville, to help rebuild. Nashville offered a portion of that money to victims as zero-interest LOANS. Yes, LOANS. That means they'll have to be paid back. They'll loan us charity money that was given to help us. What will they do with the money residents repay? Not quite sure about that...

I'll say this for the rest of my life. I'll shout it from the rooftops if you want me to. Your money isn't going where you think it is. Where was the Red Cross after Katrina? Ask someone who was there and they'll tell you. One author even wrote in his book about the disaster about Red Cross coming in after all the damage had been done, acting like tourists in their clean clothes, shooting pictures of everything and gawking. Just leave your bottled water at the entrance and go back. Walking around with clipboards and asking people what they need (if you aren't going to provide it) does absolutely nothing.

I can only speak from my experience...and in a situation like Japan, recovery isn't even close yet. Just make sure your money is going where you think it is because if you THINK you helped flood victims last summer, you're wrong. Unless you gave the money to Samaritan's Purse, to a church in the area, or handed it directly to a person affected, nothing you did helped anyone in my area at all.

Fanny Packs are IN!

2011-03-16T04:00:00.000-07:00

There are some things you expect to see on the runway during Fashion Week. Rail-thin women with bored expressions on their faces. Odd fashions you couldn't imagine wearing in your life. But there's one thing you never, ever expect to see during Fashion Week...

The Fanny Pack.

Yes, this item, usually associated with over-the-hill tourists...

...showed up on runways this year.

Even superstar Rhianna has been photographed sporting one:

Of course, nobody would DARE call them Fanny Packs. They're "leather hip bags" or "belt bags" or "hands-free bags." And they cost a lot more than the $10 your granny paid for hers.

Diane von Furstenberg's version went on sale in February for $325. This Louis Vuitton version sells for $825 on the Louis Vuitton site.

Of course, you can always head on over to etsy and check out the many hip bags available there. Over there, they seem to still be calling them fanny packs, though.

Would you wear one of these fancied-up fanny packs if you could?

Is Your Morning Coffee All That Much of a Hassle?

2011-03-15T04:00:00.000-07:00

I've been watching these 5-Hour Energy commercials with a bit of amusement. Apparently they've gone from selling themselves as a rescuer of exhausted moms with lazy husbands...

(Come on, we all saw that commercial and wondered why the woman was working 2 jobs, taking care of the kids, AND bringing the groceries home while hubby sat on the sofa reading a magazine.)

...to trying to convince you to replace your morning coffee with their little magic bottle.

The new ads attempt to show what a hassle it is to wait for your coffee to brew, stand in line at the coffee shop, and...you know...actually go to all the work of lifting your coffee cup to your lips repeatedly. Who wants to deal with all THAT?

Seriously. I want to meet the advertising team behind these ads and ask what they are smokin'. I guess anything that gets people talking is a good thing, but it doesn't seem like there's anyone in these pitch meetings willing to look around at everyone and say, "REALLY? We're going to sell people on coffee-drinking being a hassle?"

I make my coffee every morning when I get up. Takes about two minutes. Drinking it takes maybe two more. I don't think of my coffee-drinking time as a hassle any more than I think of my cereal-eating time as a hassle. It's called eating and drinking and, where I come from, that sort of thing is actually ENJOYABLE.

But, we're in a rush-rush world now. Taking five minutes out of our day to eat or drink something when we can just down it in a bottle is a waste of valuable time. Next thing you know, we'll be like those roly-poly people in Wall-E, getting all of our nutrition from smoothies because, let's face it, eating is too much work.

Do You Write to Fill a Void?

2011-03-14T04:00:00.003-07:00

Last week, a comment on my blog got my attention. The writer summarized young adult writers as people who have passed their teen years, "the best years of their lives," and now "want to relive those now extinct years through their writing." He also, in the same comment, brought up the plethora of Cougars, which he says proves all women want to have sex with teenage boys.

Oh, sorry...he called them teenage MEN.

My first thought was: is that how we're classified?

I then realized just how accustomed I am to fighting stereotypes in writing. Everyone seems to want to classify you as a type of writer and, beyond that, everyone has their own perceptions. When I wrote romance, I heard it all...but one thing that always bothered me was the idea that anyone who read or wrote romance was trying to fill some sort of void.

So, of course, it was no surprise to hear that same assumption applied to young adult authors. Children's authors, too. We write because we're disturbed somehow, right? Can't be that we write because we enjoy it. Or because the need to write fills our very souls...and we channel it the best way we can.

That's not to pick on the blog commenter at all. In my defensiveness, I realized he'd made me think. Yes, he's completely generalizing by saying ALL young adult authors are desperately trying to recapture "the best years of our lives" because, honestly, how many of us can say that adolescence was the best years of our lives? I'd venture to say MOST young adult authors wouldn't call our teen years the best years of our lives. Which is why our main characters aren't drop-dead beauties who have it all. They're young women (and men) struggling to make it through the toughest, most formative years of a person's life.

Homecoming queens don't become writers. Nor do cheerleaders. Not in my experience, anyway. In high school, future writers are those girls sitting quietly in the back of the room, reading a book or scrawling poetry into a composition notebook. Through adversity, writers grow and become stronger.

Which brings me to the question that commenter brought to my mind. "Best years of our lives" or not, are we reliving them through our writing? Trying to redo them somehow? I thought about it and came to the conclusion that no, we're not. When we write, we put our characters in some pretty precarious situations. We make life tough on our young heroines. Writing isn't fantasizing -- they're two different things. If we really wanted to redo our youth, wouldn't we just write some nonsensical 200-page adventure for our main character that involves being rich, thin, beautiful, and having everyone love us? Sure, it wouldn't sell, but we write to relive our youth, according to the commenter. So selling in that case is beside the point.

Adolescence brings adventure. At no other time in our lives do we enter each day not sure what it will bring. That boy we're crushing on just might pay attention to us today. Today might be the day we land the lead in the school play or meet someone new. That makes for good fiction. The best years of my life (so far) were my 30s -- but they were also tumultuous and filled with angst. Would I relive them? Heck no. Would I write about them if the market were interested in books about that? Absolutely. In fact, my 30-something experiences pepper my young adult and children's books because they gave me perspective.

I still can't help but feel this sort of thinking is directed only at women. It's sexism as you see sexism everywhere. Nobody accuses John Grisham of writing to fill some lawyerly void or James Patterson of writing because he really wants to be a crime detective. So why can't women writers be given the same respect?

I can't speak for everyone else...I can just defend YA writers based on what I know. Speak up...are YA writers really just a bunch of grown-up women sad that youth has passed us by? Or is this just another case of men looking down on women who do something that involves using our brains?

Remember Merlin?

2011-03-11T04:00:00.001-08:00

There are toys from childhood we remember...and toys that tend to slip from our minds. For those enduring childhood in the 80s, one little electronic toy was a must-have:

Parker Brothers sold more than 5 million Merlin the Electronic Wizards in the 80s. Created by former NASA worker Bob Doyle, PhD, Merlin was the shape of a telephone handset. I know because I used to pretend it was one. Hey, I was a kid! Anyway, Merlin had six games: Tic Tac Toe, Blackjack, Music Machine (where it functioned as a musical instrument), Echo (a game similar to the electronic memory game Simon), Magic Square (a pattern game), and Mindbender.

In 1980, Toy Manufacturers of America named Merlin the best-selling toy and game item in America.

Parker Brothers redesigned Merlin and released it with nine games instead of six. New Merlin looks like this:

Newer Merlin can be bought here, while a later version of classic Merlin is available here.

Or you could just get the Merlin app for your iPhone:

Sex in Young Adult Novels

2011-03-10T03:53:00.000-08:00

My agent retweeted a blog from the Reading Teen site, titled Sex in YA: One Young Mom's Opinion. After typing a ridiculously long comment on my iPhone WHILE WALKING ON THE TREADMILL (hey, I'm pretty impressed with that) I decided I had much more to say. So I literally stepped off my treadmill and started typing.

(On my laptop, not my iPhone. It's easier this way!)

The blog author, Andye, was a teen mom. She became pregnant during her senior year of high school. While she realizes teens have sex, she's noticing something all of us who read/write for teens have noticed -- teens in young adult novels have sex. I'll go a step further and say that teens in YA novels are having sex a lot more often than they did in YA novels when I was a kid. In fact, when I was a kid, it seemed books for teens were quite a bit more innocent than they are now. I don't recall reading about drinking, drugs, or sex at all, unless you include Judy Blume's Forever which was, as I recall, scandalous at the time.

But the comment Andye is addressing is the one that is thrown out every time someone complains about the level of sex in today's YA novels. "Teenagers have sex." We all know that -- we're well aware of it -- but does that mean parents want their children reading about it?

Andye made a good point -- not all teenagers are having sex. She said you wouldn't know that by reading today's young adult novels, but I'll actually respond to that by saying, in the young adult novels I've read this year, only one explicitly depicted teens having sex and that was D.U.F.F., which was written by a teenager. There was more sex in that novel than many adult novels I've read and I was startled by its frankness. But when the book you're reading is written by a teenager, you can't really say it's not realistic. She knows what it's like to be a teenager today a whole lot more than any of us do.

However, Andye is referring to the way sex is alluded to in YA novels. If the main character isn't having sex, she's feeling like she's the last person in the world NOT having sex. (I can say *I* felt that way as a teen.) If the book is a love story, sex is always an issue. Should they have it? WILL they have it? If they don't have it, will he leave her?

When I first started writing way back in the mid-90s, I wanted to write young adult. My first three books were a series about teens working in a movie theater. I completed all three novels before I began researching the market and found, at the time, that young adult books were not selling. The market had dried up since I was a teen. I auditioned to write for Sweet Valley High twice because the only books selling well were series being put out by book packagers. I turned to category romance because that was what was selling at the time -- and at the time Harlequin and Silhouette were doing some fun romantic comedy type series.

In the mid-00s, when I learned the tides were turning and YA was once again a viable market, I began writing but I wrote in the style of what I read when I was a teen. It was the same style the movie theater series I wrote in the mid-90s employed -- a style similar to what Sweet Valley High was written in. Teens didn't have sex, drink, or do drugs. They weren't dealing with heavy-duty issues. They were kids, sweet and innocent.

Rejections poured in. Finally, a kind agent told me my voice was too young for young adult. Another agent echoed that. At that second agent's suggestion, I rewrote my young adult novel for a "tween" audience and resubmitted it...to much better reception. I began making my characters younger in all my books and, at that point, I landed my wonderful agent. She looked at a couple of my other young adult novels and said the voice seemed more middle grade.

Young Adult today is something FAR different from when I was younger. It's darker, edgier, and the characters are much more mature. But when I think about it -- 15-year-olds weren't reading young adult novels when I was 15. I remember my sister reading the Cheerleader series, about high school cheerleaders, when she was still in junior high.

Today's Young Adult is READ by young adults. Even adults read it. I'd dare say this is why it's edgier. It's a more realistic encapsulation of the entire teenage experience.

Do you think young adult novels cross the line? Would you prefer the teens in YA to be more realistic...or to be sweet and innocent?

How to Get More Blog Readers

2011-03-09T04:00:00.000-08:00

We're all busy. Very few of us have extra time during the day that we don't know what to do with. Yet we feel compelled to write -- to share our words with others.

Some blog to communicate with others. They want to share recipes or parenting tips. Some blog to make money and win free products. Then there are the writerly among us -- those who squeeze in a few pages on our novels every day in between checking how many comments our blogs received and heating up dinner in the microwave.

In blogging, though, one of the hardest things to find time for is reading other blogs. Yet if you don't, it's only a matter of time before your blog becomes a ghost town.

I've been blogging since 2006. At one point my blog had more than 10,000 daily readers, but that was on another site. The community is different here, but one thing hasn't changed. If you want readers, you have to read and comment. It's really that simple.

As a typical Virgo, I have a system for everything. Every day, I make a point to read the blogs of those who comment mine. This means going to week-old blogs, pulling up comments, and reading every single commenters' blogs. It also means making sure I follow those blogs. But a few weeks ago I realized my blog had stagnated. I'd never get more readers if I didn't go out and find them. I learned a long time ago that the way to do that was read blogs I'd never read before.

Where do I find those blogs?

On my commenters' blogs.

Here's my rule. I got it from SITS. SITS is a site devoted to developing a community in this world of blogging. On Saturdays, SITS invites everyone to not only comment on its daily blog but to click through to the commenter above you and comment that person's blog as well.

A few weeks ago, I decided to try this everywhere. My new rule was every time I visited a blog, I was to click on the commenter above me and visit hers as well. Instead of 12-15 comments a day, I'm now getting more than 30. I hope to keep building on that because it sure feels better to write when somebody's actually reading!

Do I have time for this? No more than you do. But I cut my blogging down from seven times per week to five and now three. I blog three times a week and devote the time I was spending blogging to reading YOUR blogs. I feel that's more important anyway. We're all here to learn from others and to indulge our love of reading, right? If not -- and if you're only blogging to the same select four people that you've been blogging to since 2008, ask yourself...isn't it time to maybe branch out a little?

The Messy Microwave At Work

2011-03-07T04:00:00.000-08:00

This sign is hanging above the microwave at work:

It reminds me of the episode of The Office, where the receptionist (Pam) hangs a sign above the microwave after finding an extreme mess inside one day. This was how her sign read:

On the show, the sign initiated a heated debate between employees and the receptionist who posted it. Which was more obnoxious, the person who left a mess in the microwave or the person who created that sign? Yes, Pam's was much more condescending than most signs, but the argument does bring up a valid point. When people post signs all over office buildings, does it have the effect of stopping bad behavior? Or does it just annoy people so much they deliberately disobey the signs?

In other words, they REBEL.

I once worked with women who posted signs every fifteen feet in the ladies' restroom. Please advance the paper towel roll for the next person. If you sprinkle when you tinkle, please be neat and wipe the seat. Please wash your hands. On and on and on it goes. Another time, someone had summed all of these rules up in a nice little numbered list, which she'd laminated and posted on the wall for all to read. Yes, folks, I'm talking about RULES for using the bathroom. And nothing as cute as this:

What's your opinion? Which is worse -- the signs or the people who can't seem to respect others?

Remember Floppy Disks?

2011-03-04T04:00:00.000-08:00

"Why are these things called 'floppy disks?'" someone asked me in the late 90s. "They aren't floppy at all."

That person was referring to these:

Which, at the time, were the backbone of computer work. You backed up everything to those little suckers and hoped the little metal clip on them wouldn't break. Everyone who dealt with floppy disks lost at least one file. No wonder they were replaced by the more dependable CD-Rs and, eventually jump/flash/thumb drives.

In the beginning, floppy disks were larger and flimsy (in other words, FLOPPY). They looked like this:

They were almost as easily destroyed as the 3.5" disks that would later replace them. The early floppy disks fit into drives that looked like this:

Of course, in an age where we can fit as much data as used to fit on an entire server on a device the size of this:

It's easy to see why floppy disks are a thing of the past.

Is Britney's New Song a Rip-Off?

2011-03-02T04:00:00.001-08:00

Everyone over the age of 40 has one thing in common. When we first heard the new Britney Spears song, Hold It Against Me, we thought of another song from the late 70s with the lyrics: "If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?"

We thought it was a cute little twist back then, too.

Overall, Britney's song has drastically different lyrics and music from the Bellamy Brothers' 1979 song. But her chorus begs the somewhat familiar question:

"If I said I want your body now, would you hold it against me?"

I personally prefer hers because, well, I'm not a country music fan. But my first thought when I heard it was, not such an original idea.

Still...I didn't think the Bellamy Brothers would SUE over it.

That's exactly what's happening, apparently. Last Monday, an attorney released a statement from the country stars, stating a lawsuit is pending due to the similarity in the lyrics. "Literally thousands of fans for both artists have also taken notice," the attorney said.

Don't blame Britney. The song was actually written by Max Martin, Dr. Luke, Bonnie McKee, and Billboard. Dr. Luke has been accused of plagiarism before, most notably in a case against Avril Lavigne for her hit song Girlfriend.

GIRLFRIEND, I think it's time you got a new songwriter.

The songs are, of course, not similar in style at all, but there's no denying the double-entendre is the same. However...can you copyright a double-entendre? Does the copying have to be word for word for it to be plagiarism?

Judge for yourself. A clip of Britney's song:

The Bellamy Brothers' song:

Do You Wash Your Hair Too Much?

2011-02-28T04:00:00.001-08:00

It's something I've done all my life. I can't even remember when it started. But day after day, year after year, I've shampooed my hair every 24 hours.

Recently my hairstylist asked me if I wash my hair every day. When I said yes, she asked why. I told her I just can't stand the oily feeling it has.

"You shouldn't wash it every day," she said. "It's not good for it."

I've been told that all my life. I've even tried, from time to time, to skip a shampoo but halfway through the day I ended up rushing to the shower as quickly as I could get there. I could no longer stand to be around myself.

Experts have been warning against shampooing every day for a long time. According to an article on FashionHippo.com, Ken Paves, a celebrity stylist who does Jessica Simpson’s, Eva Longoria’s, and Lady Gaga’s hair, suggests washing hair from once to 2 to 3 times per week, depending on the hair type. It has been suggested that Jessica Simpson only washes her hair once a month.

There was a time...a century or so ago...when once-a-month-shampooing was customary for women. Then the New York Times published an article suggesting it was okay for women to shampoo twice a month and the world went crazy. Over time, we've gotten to a point where most women shampoo daily.

Yes, daily. Ask around. I did a little informal poll among my Facebook friends and the overwhelming majority shampoo daily. One of the most stylish, beautiful women I've ever known (a friend from my single days) proudly boasted that she washes her hair every three days. And her hair is long, silky, and shiny.

Washing your hair less often not only keeps it from drying out from all the heating products you use to dry it, it also allows it to retain some of its natural oils, which are good for your hair. If you color your hair, it will fade less quickly, and some even say it grows faster, as shampoo does some kind of damage to the roots. I don't know if I buy that...I do know that shampooing every other day leaves some extra time in your schedule on the off days...and who couldn't use more time?

Tresemme is now marketing a product that it says will allow women to go a day or so between shampoos. Called "dry shampoo," it is a drugstore version of a product that has already been offered by high-end beauty product manufacturers for a while. Simply spray the dry shampoo...

...on the oily areas and brush it out. From what I'm reading, though, it seems to have the same effect as the much cheaper remedy I've seen recommended since I was 14. Get some baby powder, sprinkle about a half a teaspoon on your palm, rub together, and gently rub over the oily areas. Brush until the residue is gone.

And you'll have oily hair covered in powder.

Remember Almost Home Cookies?

2011-02-25T04:00:00.000-08:00

There was a time when, if you wanted soft, chewy cookies, you had to buy a boxed mix. You then had to add egg, water, and some oil. Store-bought cookies were crunchy, a la Chips Ahoy.

Then Nabisco came out with a soft, chewy cookie it called "Almost Home." Marketed to taste similar to the cookies Mom used to make, these cookies had a distinctive taste. They weren't really homemade-tasting, but they were soft and chewy, which was a nice change from the crunchy cookies we were used to. The package was made to look like embroidery:

The cookies were smallish but filled with chocolate chips. Competitors came out with their own versions -- Soft Baked from (I think?) Duncan Hines, to name just one. Soon Almost Home was eclipsed by all the other options on the shelves. Today, Almost Home cookies are just one more 80s nostalgia item.

Today there's no need for soft shelf cookies, thanks to refrigerated, pre-cut cookie dough that allows you to have warm, homemade-tasting cookies in just a few minutes:

But Pepperidge Farm, master of yummy cookies, has its own soft, chewy cookie that would put all others to shame:

With choices like that, I'm not sure any of us can say we really miss Almost Home cookies.

Fattening Restaurant Salads

2011-02-23T04:00:00.000-08:00

When I was in my early 20s, I seemed to think I knew the answer to weight loss. I couldn't really understand why I wasn't losing weight...until I really started investigating what was in all that restaurant food I was eating.

For instance, at one popular restaurant chain, O'Charley's, my favorite meal was a fried chicken salad with Thousand Island dressing on the side. I figured since my fattening dressing was on the side, the salad couldn't be all that bad for me...right?

Then one day I learned the truth about O'Charley's fried chicken salad: 900 calories, not including dressing. This is only slightly more calories than their 7 oz. sirloin steak (430) and bacon cheddar BURGER (490) COMBINED. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have the steak and cheeseburger.

The perception that salad = good is just that, perception. I did a search for the ten worst restaurant salads and found one list that cited salads at Chevy's, Chili's, Baja Fresh, Quizno's, and Romano's Macaroni Grill as worst...EACH has more than 1000 calories.

So...at Chevy's, that means instead of this:

You could have nachos grande for just a few calories more:

Instead of Chili's Quesadilla Explosion Salad, you could have this burger for LESS calories:

(Minus the fries, of course.)

And at many, MANY restaurants, there are salads with more calories than a steak, especially when you add on the calories in whatever dressing you choose.

Just a little something to be aware of...

Goodbye to Cursive

2011-02-21T04:00:00.001-08:00

The Mommy Machine wrote a blog last week about the disappearance of cursive writing from school curricula. Seems everyone has decided it is no longer necessary for people to learn to write in cursive. Instead, most schools will teach keyboarding skills.

I, for one, find this sad.

"Why do we need to use cursive?" a co-worker asked. Good question. Do we need to write ANYTHING anymore?

What about when we're signing four thousand pages to get a loan from the bank on our first home?

What if we become suddenly very famous and someone wants our autograph?

What if we just want to write a love note to our loved ones?

Then we'll have to print.

I'll admit it -- I'm a writer. Not just in the sense that I write novels and blogs, but in the sense that I LOVE to put pen to paper. Even though it's faster to write my novels on a computer, when I want to feel like I'm relaxing AND writing, I'll settle onto the sofa with some paper, a pen, and my pillow desk. (Yes, I'm one of THOSE people!) I consider that fun, even if it's still semi-work.

Part of growing up was mastering your own cutesy cursive style. It was what made you YOU. You watched the popular girls take notes in class and admired their pretty loops and neat, symmetrical letters. Of course, high school classrooms are probably going the way of college campuses, with students using laptops to take notes instead of notepads and pens:

Maybe this already IS standard practice. If so, I need to start incorporating that into my novels, but my stepdaughter is in fifth grade and she's still taking notes.

I get it. Computers are easier. Digital signatures are the future, while handwritten ones are the past. Still...as easy as computers are, I'm glad I grew up in the era I did. Now, it seems, kids will be expressing their individuality by choosing a bright-colored laptop. Love letters will be typed and printed out. Maybe, eventually, rock stars will pre-print their autographs and hand them out when asked.

Remember Epilady?

2011-02-18T04:00:00.000-08:00

I was surfing around when I came upon this blog: Tatty Tiara, reminding me of THESE painful things of the past:

Apparently they aren't a thing of the past, as the blogger mentioned above had just purchased one. Which led me to jaw-droppingly utter the words, "Those are still around?"

Yep. They even have a website. Scary stuff.

Many of you will say you're too young to remember Epiladies. I am too, so shut up with that "I'm younger than you" show-offy stuff! Epiladies were big in the 80s, when I was too busy hanging out with friends and listening to Duran Duran to keep up with the latest trends in beauty products. If you're too young because you weren't born until the 80s or 90s, just keep that to yourself!

Epilady was the brand name for epilators. What do epilators do? They remove numerous hairs at a time, pulling them out from the root. Like an electrical version of waxing. Sound great?

Nobody in the 80s thought so.

Ask your mom. Ask your grandma. They'll tell you stories of the first time they plugged that Epilady in and gave it a try. With tears of pain in their eyes, they pretty much all unplugged the device and put it back in the box it came in.

Today's Epilady is even scarier than the spring-loaded models of the 80s. Here is what a modern-day Epilady looks like up close and personal:

Panasonic sells its model, called Epiglide, in stores like Target. It's alive and well, but beware. The last time I even heard of Epilady was at a garage sale in the 90s. A woman walked up, picked up the Epilady for sale, and said, "I haven't been to a garage sale in ten years where I didn't see one of these for sale. Everybody hated them."

Consider that your warning!

Rock N Roll Is Dead? SERIOUSLY?

2011-02-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

In 1958, Danny and the Juniors had the number 19 most popular song in the country...called Rock N Roll Is Here to Stay. According to the song, it will NEVER die.

Newscasters last week begged to differ.

Citing declines in consumer interest in the rock music genre in general, reporters told us all that the once-popular video game Guitar Hero was being discontinued.

Kids today are into hip hop and R&B, newscaster after newscaster reported. Rock and roll is dead.

Ahem.

Excuse me, but I beg to differ.

What the heck do you think THIS is:

Or this:

And I'd dare say most of what P!nk does is technically rock. Call it punk. Call it pop. Whatever...just because it has a beat doesn't mean it can't be termed rock 'n' roll.

Rock 'n' roll in the 80s were all about metal bands. Long hair, makeup, and lots of noise. In the 90s, we went grunge. Sure, hip hop has taken over the charts, but I see plenty of guitar going on with some of the new bands.

Confused by all this, I looked up the definition of "rock 'n' roll." Most web definitions seem to now place rock 'n' roll as something that describes music of the 50s and 60s. Which means rock 'n' roll died when disco came along. Rock 'n' roll was replaced by pop, country, and R&B.

I respectfully disagree. I say rock 'n' roll, by 50s/60s definitions has never disappeared. It has simply evolved. There are plenty of artists (P!nk and Lady Gaga, for example) who find a way to blend various genres. But if we merely define rock 'n' roll by music that can be played on Guitar Hero, perhaps Guitar Hero did have a bit of a narrow audience. There aren't too many hip hop songs that can be played on guitar.

Even Rock Band is suffering. Many say it's the fact that the peripherals (drum set, keyboards, guitar) are so expensive...not that nobody cares about The Beatles anymore.

Still, it's hard to deny, looking at the Top 100 songs today, that hip hop definitely rules the charts. But does that mean Train and Nickelback will never have a number one song again?

I think not...

This rock band just won a Grammy, by the way:

Mandatory Tipping...for Asians Only?

2011-02-14T04:00:00.001-08:00

First off, happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

Last week, a news story caught my attention. Seems some restaurants in Hawaii, disturbed by the tipping practices of a certain percentage of their clientele, have decided to instigate a mandatory 15 percent gratuity to anyone who doesn't speak English.

Here's the issue -- in Hawaii, an estimated 17 percent of all tourists are from Japan, where tipping isn't common practice. Waiters are getting stiffed...and restaurants are taking action.

But not only are the waiters facing putting in an hour on a table with no tip to show for it, IRS regulations require restaurants to automatically consider eight percent of their total sales as tips, whether eight percent in tips is collected or not. With such a high Japanese customer base, restaurants are apparently claiming eight percent of its sales aren't tips...but servers are forced to pay the taxes anyway. Even on tips they aren't receiving.

The Hawaii Rights Commission is reviewing the practice as possibly discriminatory, even though nobody has yet complained. Chances are, in the end restaurants will just start enforcing automatic gratuities for everyone...a practice that is usually very unpopular with customers.

What do you think? Is this discrimination? Or should restaurants be allowed to institute automatic gratuities on a certain type of customer?

Remember Circus of the Stars?

2011-02-11T04:00:00.000-08:00

Today, I'm taking you back. Back to a time when fictional TV shows ruled the airwaves. When celebrities were actors, not reality show stars. When a gathering of sitcom stars walking tightropes and performing magic acts was must-see TV.

Circus of the Stars was a recurring special that aired on CBS from 1977 to 1994. Celebrities making appearances included Lucille Ball, Ed Asner, Vanilla Ice, Telly Savalas, and Brooke Shields:

Not to be confused with Battle of the Network Stars--

--which featured TV stars competing in athletic events, for Circus of the Stars, celebs trained with circus professionals to pull off circus acts on live TV.

In 2008, reality show production company Endemol Entertainment debuted a show called Celebrity Circus. The show followed celebs as they trained alongside professionals to be circus performers. So...for those of you wondering how Circus of the Stars would have been different if it had been introduced during the reality era, now you know. (The show was canceled in 2009.)

From Circus of the Stars -- Brooke Shields walks on broken glass:

Keeping Kids Entertained

2011-02-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

I was reading a blog by a frustrated mom, trying to deal with her kid being out of school for snow. She wrote about the challenges of keeping her daughter entertained. I said, out loud, as I was reading, "You mean REAL moms deal with this?"

As a new stepmom, I have to admit, I'm lost. If a time comes when my husband isn't around, I panic. How will I keep her from getting bored without completely exhausting myself? I am, after all, not a mom.

You see, those of us who aren't moms are sure that it's different for real moms. When your child is born you just naturally have the magical ability to make sure your children are never, ever bored. Snow days don't intimidate stay-at-home moms. In fact, they're overjoyed for a day to bond with Junior.

At most, the stay-at-home mom would be annoyed that her daily routine had been interrupted. But she'd gladly put aside her cooking and cleaning to make snowmen or build Lego castles. And real moms never, ever are too tired after four hours of hide and seek.

I think a huge part of it is having just one child around. Two or more children can entertain themselves...and all the moms end up doing is refereeing fights all day. That's an all new set of problems, I guess.

When I was in my 20s, a pregnant woman around my age said something that sticks with me today. "I would never have just one child," she said, "and not for the reasons you'd think. Two children a couple of years apart are actually LESS work than one child. Two or more children will play with each other. If you have one child, you end up being that child's playmate. As you get older, you just don't have that kind of energy."

I thought that was odd, being twenty-something and full of energy. I remember playing with my ex-husband's niece (an only child) for hours. We'd crawl around on the floor, play hide and seek, chase each other around the house. I'm sure I got tired but it wasn't the same as when I hit my late 30s and tried playing hide and seek for 20 minutes. Or sledding in the snow for an hour and a half. That stuff WEARS YOU OUT.

Then you turn around and see a set of parents standing nearby, watching their kids sled down together. Every now and then they go down and make the long climb back up to the top of the hill, but there's plenty of time for the kids to wear themselves out without the parents giving themselves a coronary.

It really was a comfort to read that blog. To know that real moms actually feel these things too. Or maybe it was just ONE mom...

I'm a Stylish Blogger

2011-02-07T04:00:00.001-08:00

Nancy gave me the Stylish Blogger Award:

Recipients of this award are supposed to pass it on to seven other bloggers and tell everyone seven things about ourselves. So...here are my seven things:

1. I'm related to Jesse James via my maternal grandmother's side of the family. By the way, the Jesse James I'm related to is this one:

Not this one:

2. I majored in broadcast journalism in college. The plan was to be a TV reporter. I did my internship at Nashville's ABC affiliate plus anchored and reported the news at our campus station for 2 and a half years...but when I found out how little TV reporters made, I chose a different career path.

3. I hate crickets. I'm terrified of them. Not only are they creepy little insects, but they have the ability to JUMP, which means one very well could land on you.

4. I attended the same high school as Taylor Swift. Well...sort of. We both attended Hendersonville High School but since I graduated (25 years ago!) the school has moved to another building a couple of blocks away. Different building, same name. She recently donated $75,000 to redo the school auditorium and they named it after her.

5. My new hobby is imitating restaurant recipes. If I find something I like, I Google the recipe and try it at home.

6. I was born in Buckhannon, West Virginia but I've never been back and I remember nothing about it. We moved from there when I was very young.

7. Since I started working when I was 23, I can retire at 53 at half my salary. That means I have to make up the other half...through writing, I'm hoping!

I'm passing this award onto these 7 wonderful bloggers:

Night Notes on Napkins

Travel Nurse Extraordinaire

Remember Banana Clips?

2011-02-04T04:00:00.000-08:00

I think it was popular for about five minutes around 1986, but it is one of my fondest hairstyle memories of the 80s. I'm talking about the banana clip.

For all of you 90s and 00s children reading this, a banana clip was a cross between the combs people wore in the 70s and ponytail holders. They looked like this:

They made your hair look like this:

As I recall, getting the banana clip IN your hair was a tricky maneuver. You had to flip your hair over and slide the banana clip into place slowly, flipping your hair back at just the right moment. It usually took me five or six tries but back then I had extra-thick hair.

(Your hair thins with age, kiddos. Sad, but true.)

Why would we go to all that trouble? Because, as stupid as banana clips looked in straight hair, in curly hair they kicked butt. And the 80s were all about curly hair. If you didn't have it naturally, you sat in a salon chair breathing fumes every few months to fry your hair into it. Or you slept in sponge rollers every night.

Banana clips not only made curly hair look great, it made shoulder-length hair look longer:

Like the look? Never fear...you can buy banana clips today in most drugstores and (I'm told) some Wal-Marts. Just curl your hair up, put the clip in, and pull the curls around it and nobody will know you're even wearing one!

Teenagers Have Their OWN Music

2011-02-02T04:00:00.000-08:00

I read a lot of books, especially in the young adult/middle grade genres. I also have an 11-year-old stepdaughter. While I don't claim to know everything about what kids today like, I deliberately try to keep myself in touch with what music they are listening to, TV shows they watch, and actors they are into.

But I'm noticing something lately. YA authors -- many of whom I respect and enjoy -- seem to keep mentioning singers and actors from other generations.

In one book, the artist mentioned was MC Hammer. In another, the main character was listening to Janet Jackson. While I'm sure today's kids might know who MC Hammer is because he had his own reality show --

-- I'm pretty sure if today's kids were talking about a musician, they'd be talking about someone from THIS century, not last. But, most importantly, the audience for these books are kids. Accurate or not, if most of your readers are saying, "WHO?" you're losing people. Chances are they're skimming over that part and moving on, but why not give them something they relate to?

Kids today are listening to Ke$ha. Katy Perry. Rihanna. Taio Cruz. You don't have to necessarily immerse yourself in young culture, but at least get a grasp on what is popular today. If you're looking for someone who wears strange fashion, ask a child or read up on entertainment news. It's far better to mention Lady Gaga than Madonna. Yes, kids today know who Madonna is, but they don't relate to it as much. That was, sad to say, their parents' music -- soon to be their grandparents' music.

That's not to say you can't have a random character who is really into 80s music. But if it's not a part of that person's character and it isn't being pointed out as something that sets that person apart, it just comes across that the author is writing more about her childhood than her characters'.

That's just my two cents anyway.

90s Rocker Disses Glee

2011-01-31T04:00:00.001-08:00

I have to admit it: I've become a Glee addict. One thing that impresses me about the show is that the musical numbers aren't what you'd typically associate with glee clubs. They've taken on Journey, Queen, even AC/DC:

Yet when Guns N Roses guitarist Slash was approached about having a song on what is among THE MOST POPULAR TV shows on TV today, he said no. He told Entertainment Weekly that while he tries to be optimistic about current entertainment, he draws the line at Glee. "Glee is worse than Grease and Grease is bad enough."

Slash isn't the first to turn down the show. Kings of Leon and Red Hot Chili Peppers have also turned down the chance. Royalties or not, it makes sense that many musicians opt to not allow their music to appear. That's integrity. It's respectable.

What's not respectable to me is the snobbery that comes along with this type of thinking. We get it. Musicians know music and musicians (some, anyway) believe Glee is the musical equivalent of junk food. Which leads me to wonder...

Have these people even watched the show? Even one episode? Because, while the music might not be hardcore rock 'n' roll, there's some real talent behind this show. And besides, in a world of doom and gloom, isn't it nice to sit down and spend an hour watching something uplifting and fun?

Plus -- I LOVE Grease. So do a lot of people. Am I wrong here?

Remember Answering Machines?

2011-01-28T04:00:00.000-08:00

There was a time, not all that long ago, when you walked through the door of your house to find a red light blinking next to the phone. That was the first you'd know of anyone trying to call you for the past four hours.

It's probably hard to believe, but yes, we actually did go to the movies and dinner without ANYONE BEING ABLE TO REACH US. No texts, no checking our e-mail, and certainly no annoying phone calls.

You can clearly see it in movies from the 70s and 80s. Kids called our parents at work -- on their desk phones -- if we needed them. If you went out for the evening, you left the babysitter with the phone number of the restaurant you'd be dining in and the movie theater where you'd be later. If there was an emergency, the babysitter then had to try to get someone to find you.

Then came pagers...

Thus, the introduction of the concept of being reachable every second of the day. It was perfect for on-call workers like doctors and nurses. But you still had to track down a phone...

In the early days, answering machines had cassette tapes that had to be rewound. You'd have to press a button to record over your outgoing message, which was on one tape. The incoming messages were on another. It looked like this:

Now it's all stored on a server somewhere, accessed via a phone number assigned by your phone company. You don't have to worry about changing tapes but you also can't save a message forever like you used to be able to.

But we rarely need voicemail these days. We live in a world where we can be reached immediately. There's no more "waiting by the phone for a boy to call" on a Friday night. If girls want to go out with friends, they go. When the call comes, they'll know it. But it comes at the price of being able to enjoy the moment.

Plus, I personally miss those days of coming home and finding out who had called while I was gone. The only way to do that now is to "accidentally" leave your phone at home when you go out and, come on! Who would do something crazy like that?!

Elevator Laziness

2011-01-26T04:00:00.000-08:00

I hate elevators.

It has to do with my claustrophobia, I'm sure. Mostly, though, I just don't trust them to work without failing. My fears were realized recently when the elevator at work came to a stop on the top floor. I was stuck for more than a half an hour.

Panic? You betcha. And while I was in there, you can also bet I got pretty worked up. "This is stupid," I muttered to myself. "I should be able to take the darn stairs."

The building where I work has five floors. I work on the second of those floors. Most of my day involves traveling from the second floor to the first, back to the second, then up to the third and down to the second. Sometimes to the fifth. I could do most of these journeys via the stairwell...but there's one huge problem.

The stairwell doors are locked.

I can exit on the first floor -- I'm sure that's a fire code thing -- but I can't exit on any other floor. So that means I spend quite a bit of my day on the elevator...traveling from one floor to another.

THIS is our building's security.

I thought about arguing the senselessness of locking these doors when all of the doors to offices in the building are locked with a key card required to enter. If someone breaks into the building, where are they going to go? The lobby of each floor?

I did a little research, though, and found this isn't so uncommon a practice. In fact, it's fairly common for facilities management to lock the doors between floors. The logic is that 'miscreants' will not wait in the lobby for elevators -- this draws too much attention to themselves. They'll instead sneak over to the stairwell (yeah, as if they could even FIND that secret passageway) and wander the various floors, causing trouble. That's the logic, agree or not.

After researching and finding this is a known thing, I decided I didn't have an argument against the locked stairwells. I just continue to take the elevator from one floor to another. Now, though, I make sure I always take something to do when I enter the elevator. After all, you never know when you'll be stuck inside for a half an hour...

Writing Soap Operas

2011-01-24T04:00:00.000-08:00

One day recently, I left work early. I got home just in time to catch my favorite childhood soap opera:

Okay, I didn't watch much of it, just the very end. Just enough to realize there's a reason most of us go to work every day. We work because we need to avoid daytime dramas.

Every guy on daytime TV looks like this:

All of the actresses look 12. Those who don't are now the parents and grandparents, but THEY were the 12-year-olds when we were watching as teens. They now look pretty much the same, just surgically altered so that they now resemble pod people...

But the worst thing about soaps are the plots.

I imagine it has to be tough, coming up with interesting storylines for a show year after year. When I was sixteen, the pod woman above was one-half of Days of Our Lives' supercouple at the time, Bo and Hope:

In the 15 years they've been on the show, they've survived an assassination attempt, a miscarriage, being marooned on a desert island, an exploding cage above a vat of acid, amnesia (of course), a strange baby switch, the death of a child, Hope's kidnapping, and more... In fact, it seems most soap opera characters endure more than their share of tragedy. There will be miscarriages, deaths, and children who turn out to be murderers. They will at some point suffer from amnesia, temporary insanity, blindness, or demonic possession. You know, things that happen to all of us at one time or another.

Imagine being a soap opera writer. You possibly could be, actually. Cherie Bennett, a top young adult novelist in the 90s, won awards as associate head writer (along with her husband) on The Young and the Restless. Cherie's most successful series:

The conflict we put into our books has a resolution, but could you imagine if your novel had to continue on into infinity? Fifty plus years or more? Sometimes the same characters, growing old, having children, dealing with those children's drama? You would throw in some amnesia and exploding cages on desert islands too. What else are you going to do? If your characters sail through life, happy as can be, people will get bored. So you create drama.

As long as the public is longing to see a couple together, you have an audience. But the second that couple reaches "happily ever after," we get bored. Remember Sam and Diane? Mattie and David? Mulder and Scully? We as an audience aren't sure what to do once Snow White finds her Prince. The movie is supposed to end then...but a soap opera...

Never ends.

Never. Ever.

Can you imagine what a challenge that would be to write? It's probably not nearly as easy as it looks. Plus, day after day of one hundred percent dialogue, spoken on a soundstage. You can't hide behind special effects, as half of Hollywood's movies do. All you have are your words, your actors, and a viewing audience that expects you to keep the drama coming.

Remember Two-Toned Jeans?

2011-01-21T04:00:00.000-08:00

Just like mullets ("Business in front/party in the back"), jeans also had two identities in the 80s. Someone coming toward you had faded jeans and as she walked away, her jeans were dark. A pretty interesting concept, you have to admit.

Bell bottoms came back in style, as did skinny jeans and hip-huggers. (Neither of the latter two seem likely to go away anytime soon.) So why not two-toned jeans? And no, I'm not talking about these oddities from H & M:

I'm talking dark in the back, light in the front. Or whatever variation you can think of. So, what do you say?

How about we bring two-toned jeans back?

Published At Eighteen

2011-01-19T04:00:00.000-08:00

I've read no shortage of young adult novels in my lifetime. There is no shortage of mega-talented authors. But for one of those stand-out authors to be EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD???

Now that's rare.

Since I started reading this book:

By this author:

I've stopped to think many times what it would have been like to have had my first novel on bookshelves when I was 18. Would your friends at that age get it? How would your literature professors deal with your success?

Not to mention the fact that at 18, the future lies ahead of you. Most of those who want to write at that age are still in the early phases of learning. At that age I didn't even know I wanted to write novels. I was studying journalism, planning to write for TV stations and newspapers.

DUFF (which stands for Designated Ugly Fat Friend) is not only incredibly well-written, it's eye-opening. Everyone who writes young adult novels should read it. The author, Kody Keplinger, is definitely sophisticated and incredibly intelligent for her age, but she's still just 18. Which means she was probably 16 or so when she wrote it. It gives insight into the mind of today's teenager from the perspective of a teenager. What more could you want as someone who writes about teenagers?

I have to admit, though, it's eye-opening to have the first young adult book I've ever read with THAT much sex in it be written by someone so young. Kids have sex, even though we like to pretend they don't. If you have a child in high school, you might not want to know this much of what is going on!

Kody Keplinger. Remember that name. We'll all be hearing a lot from her.

(NOTE: She's actually 19 now, as her second book comes out...)

Kody Keplinger's blog

There is no ME in team, apparently

2011-01-17T04:00:00.001-08:00

I've always preferred to work alone.

Most of my life, nobody's given me a choice. In school, teachers loved to pair people up on projects. Sometimes you were even in groups. All the way through college, I was teaming up and every time it was the same. I finally came to the conclusion when you work as a team, one person did most of the work and everybody else watched.

That continued once I hit the work world. I spent my 20s "working together" on things, which meant sitting back and watching while someone else showed me the ropes. I came to the conclusion that I work best when someone gives me my piece of the puzzle and lets me work on it separately.

I'd say it's that way for most reasonably productive people.

Yet still, to this day, I see people who can't seem to deal with working alone. I've seen workers take other workers under their wings, letting those workers shadow their every move for months, even years. How often is the "shadow" absolutely miserable? How many of those people would prefer to be given a manual and an assignment and left to figure it out on their own?

And why do some people insist on having someone watch them work? Is work more fun with an audience? Is this some bizarre version of co-dependency?

Remember Metal Lunch Boxes?

2011-01-14T04:00:00.000-08:00

When I was five, my lunch box looked like this:

These days, my lunch box looks closer to this:

They keep your cool things cool and your hot things hot. They're lightweight, making them more functional.

When we were kids, though, it was all about metal. We showed off our favorite TV shows and cartoon characters for all our school buddies to see.

And don't forget the matching thermos:

Yes, there are still metal lunch boxes:

But for day-to-day lunches, kids are more likely to go with the practical these days:

Somehow, it just doesn't seem the same.

The End of One Era...the Beginning of Another

2011-01-12T04:00:00.000-08:00

Two years ago, I made the decision to move my blog to Blogger. It was a necessary change...but a tough one. As I looked back over my life, I realized every time I'd forced myself to move on from something and begin something new, I grew from the experience. This has been one of those growth experiences.

If you stagnate, you never grow. We all learn that as we graduate high school and move on to college or whatever we do next. As hard as it is to leave our old friends behind, we realize it's necessary. We can't stay in that bubble of protection forever.

To grow, we must first let go.

In my 20s, I spent seven years in public relations with an arts agency. It was a creative job but day after day, the life was being drained out of me. I was being stifled as a writer and GROSSLY underpaid. I realized if I ever wanted to grow, I had to jump.

I jumped.

It was hard. Many times I worried I would regret the decision later. And often I do look back and realize that was a great job, even if it had no opportunities for advancement or promotion EVER. But I always realize that was one phase of my life. It was my 20s. In my 30s, I tackled new challenges.

When I was on MySpace, it wasn't abnormal for my blog to log 5,000 views a day during MySpace's heyday. It was nice seeing my photo up there in the top ten of all blogs. I got a rush out of it. But I wasn't growing.

It was something I couldn't explain to anyone on MySpace without...well...insulting them. There was nothing about MySpace that was stifling me as a writer, necessarily, but when I came here I found myself surrounded by people who "got" me a little more. People in relationships, fellow aspiring writers. Through meeting all of you, I grew a little each day, and I continue to grow. Beyond all of that, though, sometimes, quite honestly, mere change itself causes growth. A new situation stretches your boundaries, reignites your passion. Change for the sake of change might not necessarily be good but stagnating is NEVER good.

At one point I worried writing was just a "phase." Certainly it had followed short-lived forays into acting, figure skating, broadcast journalism, and radio DJ-ing. Each "hobby" bored me after a couple of years and I moved onto something else.

But 15 years later, I'm still writing. I might not be writing category romance anymore, as I was in the 90s, or MySpace blogs about single life, as I was from 2006-2009, but writing never changes. It's the one thing I do every day in some form or another. And it's the one thing I'll do until the day I die.

But can you blame me for wanting to shake it up a little every now and then?

It Was All a Dream

2011-01-10T04:00:00.001-08:00

It was 1986. One of TV's top-rated TV shows, Dallas, faced a dilemma. The previous year one of its biggest stars, Patrick Duffy, had left the show to pursue other options. When those other options didn't quite pan out, he decided he wanted to come back. Problem?

Duffy's character, Bobby, had died on the previous season. We'd all watched his final words and heard the heart monitor flat-line. How on earth could producers and writers handle this one?

The show was, in essence, a soap opera, so there were a variety of choices. Brain transplant. Lookalike twin shows up. But Bobby was a very loved character--viewers wouldn't want his lookalike twin. So Duffy's wife came up with a great idea...as a JOKE. Why not make the entire season without him a dream?

An entire season had passed since Bobby's death. The plot had gone in some strange directions, as I recall. Ratings were down, a fact that might have made producers realize things had gone astray somewhere. It was the perfect way to start with a clean slate. But it was a huge risk.

It's easy to say the idea backfired. It was largely panned in the press...as well as mimicked on Saturday Night Live and numerous other shows. There were plenty of plot holes that were never explained by the disappearance of an entire season. For instance, as Pam allegedly "fell asleep" to have this dream, a primary character (Sue Ellen) was battling alcoholism and hitting rock bottom. When Pam "woke up" to (SURPRISE) find Bobby in the shower:

...Sue Ellen's alcoholism was miraculously cured. Pam's hair was also inexplicably longer than when Bobby had died at the end of the 1984-85 season. Rip Van Ewing?

But, even as panned as the decision was, not only did it avoid the usual cheesy soap opera twists, it set a precedent for something that is STILL being talked about and parodied today. In 1999, the two actors re-shot the entire scene for the mega-popular animated TV show Family Guy:

But perhaps the best parody of the twist ever came in 1990, with the series finale of the show Newhart. Bob Newhart, the show's star, had a very popular sitcom in the 70s called The Bob Newhart Show, with Suzanne Pleshette playing his wife. For the final scene of his popular 1980s series, Newhart wakes up in bed next to his 70s wife, telling her he just had the strangest dream that he was an innkeeper in Maine with a blond wife. That finale still makes "best TV finales of all time" lists...it made the entire series a dream. Without Dallas's supposed gaffe, would that have been possible?

We all could hope to have such "bad writing" in our fiction...

Remember Braided Ribbon Barrettes?

2011-01-07T04:00:00.000-08:00

You didn't need much. Just some Goody barrettes like these:

And some ribbon:

Maybe some beads for the ends:

Then all you had to do was start braiding.

Braided ribbon barrettes were all the rage when I was in elementary school. We'd find ribbons to match our outfits, braid it up, and head out to the roller rink to hang out with our friends. It was an early lesson in crafting...a perfect opportunity for young people to create something of our own.

Still today, lessons on "Retro 80s barrettes" can be found online. You can make your own or buy some on Etsy from crafters. They look the same today as they did when we were kids:

It's a look I'm reminded of every time I see Olivia Newton-John in Xanadu:

Going to Wal-Mart in a Hand Basket

2011-01-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

A former blogging buddy of mine posted a status update last week that got my attention. Apparently Wal-Mart has decided to do away with the single person's shopping staple. I'm talking about the hand basket:

Maybe not ALL Wal-Marts...I don't know. But a web search revealed several other people outraged at Wal-Mart's decision to get rid of the hand basket. Maybe they figured we were already in Hell, so we didn't need a hand basket anymore?

One of the most outspoken groups on the issue is the disabled. Apparently wheelchair users are big users of hand baskets because, guess what? They can't push a cart. Yes, they can transfer to one of those motorized scooters if one is available (apparently teenagers like to commandeer all of those) but what if they want to stay in their wheelchairs while they shop? Or what if all the motorized scooters are taken?

My blogging friend said the explanation he was given was that the baskets were a "tripping hazard." Since Wal-Mart is sued almost every single day somewhere in this world of ours by some enterprising shopper who "accidentally slipped" in one of their stores, that could be understood. Especially if the money Wal-Mart is losing paying out on these lawsuits is more than what it figures it's gaining by giving you a basket so you'll buy more items. But some say there's another reason for doing away with hand baskets...

It encourages you to use a cart.

Anyone who believes that has never shopped with a man. Okay, maybe that's unfair. I, too, shrank away from the cart before I was married, and I can understand all too well why men choose the hand basket over the cart. The cart signifies a commitment to full-out shop. We're talking produce section, bread aisle, dairy case... The kind of shopping that requires a grocery list and coupons.

I know. I was once that person. I went straight for the hand basket on EVERY SINGLE grocery shopping trip, even if it meant going to the grocery store four times a week. I would have rather run in and grabbed a few things and checked myself out than deal with trying to maneuver a cart around all the annoying people blocking aisles with THEIR carts. Hand baskets were, to me, a symbol of freedom. A rebellion against domesticity. A statement that I did not have to rush home every night to cook dinner...I could go to the gym for an hour, then rush through the grocery store because by then all the married suckers would be home.

Had hand baskets not been available, I would NOT have opted for a cart. Neither would the men I've known who swear by hand baskets at the grocery store. We simply grab as many items as we can comfortably carry and head for the self-checkout. That's how we roll.

Well, that's how THEY roll. Now I'm a cart person once again!

Writers Can't Say That

2011-01-03T04:00:00.001-08:00

Last week, I happened upon a great blog by The YA 5 (a group of great YA authors). The blog was titled Walking on Eggshells in Publishing. ALL the Time. Miranda Kinneally spotlighted the issue of authors feeling the need to keep quiet on our online opinions, in case we might say something that would offend a potential agent or publisher.

Miranda says she's opinionated, as are many of us. But how many of us would love to speak out about a book we didn't particularly like or a rejection from an editor that we felt was out-of-line?

Editors read blogs. So do agents. They especially read them if they show up in a Google search of their names. And if you blog on Blogger, you can bet your blog shows up fairly high in Google searches, especially if you post someone's name in it. Okay, so editors and agents aren't regularly scouring blogs of aspiring authors...but the second you put something "out there," it's out there until you think to delete it. It might be out there even longer, if someone thinks to save a copy of it or e-mail it around to a few select friends...

And what about book reviews? No matter how much you hate that book that everyone else is talking about, if you trash it, you could offend the publisher. A publisher that could be considering taking you on as an author. A publisher that could be YOUR publisher someday, for that matter. But even if you don't share a publisher, how will it look for you to be trashing other authors once you're an author too? In an extreme example, imagine if Stephenie Meyer had trashed John Grisham publicly before she was anyone. Imagine if someone, somewhere had a copy of that public trashing to drag out and show everyone.

But Miranda brought up a good point...have we made ourselves afraid to ever speak our minds? Do we hold back every Tweet because we fear someone might take offense to what we say and put us on that big list of "BAD WRITERS" that all agents and editors study every night? Isn't that a bit like censorship?

Or is it the same as any profession? If you're an attorney and you vent about other attorneys online, you very well could be committing career suicide. Same with medical professionals, businesspeople, and even actors. Everyone in Hollywood cringed when Megan Fox publicly trashed filmmaker Michael Bay, her Transformers director. She compared him to Hitler, said he was a "nightmare to work with" and said, "unless you're a seasoned veteran, working with Michael Bay is not about an acting experience."

My first thought was that not only had the actress destroyed any chance of ever working with Michael Bay again, she'd destroyed her chances of working with ANY decent director. What director would want to work with an actress who would publicly trash him like that? Even if she looks like THIS:

Professional suicide. Or is it? Is there a point where people look at an opinionated person and appreciate her honesty? Could it actually work in a person's favor to speak out?

Probably not. Because, no matter how talented you are, unless you're bringing in major bank, nobody wants to work with someone they believe is "difficult." And, like it or not, making a scene not only labels you as "difficult" -- it also gives you a much worse label. Unprofessional.

Freedom of speech is for other parts of your life...not work. It's the very reason people privatize their Tweets and hide their Facebook pages from employers. What you say CAN be held against you and WILL. How many people were fired over their MySpace pages several years ago? How many job-seekers have been denied because of pictures on their Facebook pages? It's the same for writers. People judge you by what you put out there...so just make sure whatever you have "out there" says what you want to say to your future publishers and readers.

Remembering the Zeros

2010-12-31T04:00:00.001-08:00

On my blog, Fridays are all about nostalgia. Normally the nostalgia is for decades past...but someday we'll all be nostalgic about the decade that didn't ever really have a name.

Someone tried naming it "the oughts." It never caught on. Some call it "the 2000s," but that could apply to the entire millennium. Some call it "the zeros," which would make the current decade "the tens." Which makes this past year the first year of the next decade.

How did your tens begin?

For my family, this year was a roller coaster. This picture of my house sums up the worst of this year for me:

And this picture from my wedding sums up the best:

It all seems like a lifetime ago. But here I sit, in a rebuilt house fully insured in case a flood happens again, a little older and a lot wiser...and MUCH more appreciative of everything I have.

So here's to the year to come...a year that will be great, no matter what!

What are your hopes for 2011?