Lisa Hendrix

As in Home Again, Home Again.

I went off on a journey with my son and his girlfriend this weekend.  No, no markets involved — rather, it was colleges. They’re applying at (mostly) the same ones, so we went off to take a peek at campuses. All three are approximately 450 miles from home, so that  meant 8+ hours of driving each way, with three teens in the car (I took my daughter, too, rather than leave her home to harass her father), a crowded hotel suite, and miles of hiking hilly campuses. The girlfriend also had an audition at a fourth school that specializes in performing and fine arts, so that added to the general stress level (though she was way calmer than I would have been).

Anyway, after four days of non-stop kids, plus a quick stop to drop off a box of books for the baskets which will be raffled off at the Rose City Romance Writers READERS LUNCHEON (April 18, featuring special guest speaker Lucy Monroe — you really should check it out back clicking on that link), I’m back home again, looking forward to a good night’s sleep and a fresh start on the book.

How did you spend your weekend?

That’s right. Not $121 million.  Not even $165 million.  $1.2 BILLION, in bonuses and retention payments, a big chunk of it to the very idiots in their Financial Products unit who drove the company into its $175+ billion hole.

According to the Wall Street Journal (via more accessible post at BoingBoing) it breaks down like this:

$121.5 million in incentive bonuses for 2008 (6400 employees)

$450 million bonuses to Financial Product units employees (? employess, but said to be “executives”)

$600 million in retention bonuses (4,000 employees)

TOTAL: $1.2 billion

And of course, the CEO neglected to notify anyone until Saturday that this was going to happen Sunday.

Bonuses. Retention. 

How about PINK SLIPS, you jackasses?  And I not at all respectfully suggest the first one should go to CEO Edward Liddy.

Email to the Board goes to boardofdirectors@aig.com 

Phone calls to 1-877-244-2210.

Let them know just how much you love what they’ve done with your money. Then let your President, both your Senators, and your Representative know how you feel as well.

And spread around that contact info. It’s not about politics. It’s about survival. Ours.

Last October, I posted about a terrific explanation of the mortgage crisis that had been done on This American Life.

Well, they’ve done it again: Alex Blumberg and NPR’s Adam Davidson explain how a bank works in terms any of us can understand, and then explain toxic assets and all those other terms bandied about on CNN and MSNBC.

That show, Bad Bank,  is available for listening on the TAL website, but is also downloadable on iTunes (free at this writing, but perhaps costing a buck or so later — search podcasts for This American Life, then pick the show Bad Bank).  

Go grab it, then listen. Carefully. Do not imagine you understand  what the hell is going on until you do.  We cannot be good consumers or informed citizens until we get this stuff.

On Sunday morning, 17 called and asked if he could have some friends over for a last-minute SuperBowl party.  Now this surprised me, because he’s a theater kid and neither he, nor his girlfriend,  nor his theater friends have ever demonstrated any interest in football.  But we said yes, told him to tell his friends to bring the junk food, and set about tidying up the house to make it presentable,  and then I went to fetch a variety of pop and a couple of bags of ice while my dh started making a big pot of chili.

Shortly after the kids arrived, it was clear they did, indeed, have no interest in football, as they brought a Wii and all its accoutrements. By then, the chili  had been brought up to temp and dumped into the crockpot, and dh asked me to taste it for spices.

I did, and almost barfed. Seems one of the packages of ground meat had gone bad.  Way bad. Ugh. Pot of chili ruined.

Love of my life got rid of the nasty chili while I went into the pantry to dig through the cabinets for ingredients for a new pot (For speed, I used a base of canned chili, jazzed up with fancy beans, Ortegas, etc.)

As the new chili bubbled, I slipped off to the john.  It smelled of chili in there, which I chalked up to my husband dumping the first batch down the toilet.

A bit later, however, hubby went in there and promptly stepped in water—overflow, it turned out, from the shower, which had backed up. Turns out that was the smell I smelled, because hubby, bless his heart, hadn’t flushed the chili, but had run it down the disposal.  The whole 6 quarts of it. Clearly too much for the rather finicky pipes of our nearly 50 year old house.

Off to Safeway for Liquid Plumbr.  Let sit.  Nothing.  More LP, more sitting, more nothing.  Much use of plunger (including imprint of hollow handle-top on my palm). Nothing.

Next morning, one more large bottle LP, couple of hours of sitting, more plunger. Nothing.

So, a call was made to the plumbing service  The same plumbing service that was out a few months ago when our incoming water line failed.  Now, to their credit,  they were here within a couple of hours both times, and to their further credit, the receptionist/scheduler didn’t even laugh when I suggested that I was due a freebie.  They just showed up, fixed the problem, and handed me a bill.

So I added it up.  Plumber + ingredients of first batch of chili + ingredients of second batch of chili + multiple bottles of totally and utterly ineffective Liquid Plumbr = $117

All for one pot of chili.

How about you? What’s your most expensive meal disaster?

You know those annoying  commercials where Person A offers Person B a piece of overly sweet junk food, and is refused with the comment “That contains high-fructose corn syrup. You know what they say about high-fructose corn syrup.” And then Person A says,  all cocky, “What do they say?” and Person B stumbles to silence while Person A lays out the party line that it’s really just sugar and it’s all okay?

Well, it turns out that the correct answer to “What do they say?” is “It’s full of mercury, bozo.”

Actually, it had its high point, that being the inauguration of President Obama and the sight of that big Marine helicopter soaring off with his predecessor. (Oorah!)

Even as we celebrated, though, I spent Inauguration Day watching our gray kitty, Zelda, who suddenly wasn’t doing too well. Polycystic kidneys, the vet told us nearly a year ago. Genetic. Nothing to be done, short of a kidney transplant. But she puttered along just fine until Tuesday.

Then there were copy edits on Immortal Outlaw (copy edits are the ones where you catch typos, punctuation, and grammar errors, along with stupid repeating words). Copy edits aren’t bad. In fact, they’re quite wonderful, especially when you’re lucky enough to get a really good copy editor like I have for the last two books. But they are time consuming. And I had a sick cat, who had to be helped to the litter box and looked worse as the week went on.

But we puttered along.

Then last night, at about 11pm Read the rest of this entry »

How books get written and bodies get changed.

I started the separate blog for my weight loss/fitness effort, New Year, New Ass. There you will find secrets revealed, ideas floated, and the beginnings of a process I hope will carry me into a more healthy future.  If you’re interested in cheering me on or joining the effort (come on admit it—you can stand to drop a pound or two, and that way we can cheer for each other), click on over. You can participate by commenting or by becoming a Follower.

The next post here will be about the first steps of writing a book, à la Lisa.

First the obligatory Happy New Year wishes. May the coming year bring you…yada-yada. You’ve seen it everywhere. I have nothing new to add. (That’s meant to be a New Year’s Bonfire in the pic, btw.)

I’ve been doing a lot of ruminating about this blog over the last few weeks. The past year has been a learning experience; I’ve had to figure out the mechanics of WordPress plus suss out how to approach the world via this blogging thing. I mean really, my first reaction to the idea of personal blogging when I heard about it was, “Why would anyone be interested in what Joe Schmo has to say?” ( I had the same reaction to Twitter, btw. Never buy stock based on what I think of a social media trend.)

So, probably as a legacy of that thinking (why would anyone be interested in what I have to say?) and my inherent nature (shy person forced to be out-going by circumstance), my blog has been relatively, dare I say, dull. Directionless. And above all, harder than hell to write, because I have no idea what’s next.

So, on the assumption that any direction is better than no direction, I’ve chosen a couple, one professional and one personal. Both relate to things I want to accomplish in the next 6 months or so: Complete my next paranormal historical romance (my WIP*, Immortal Champion) in record time and drop 40 pounds. I intend to blog about the writing process, trying to do so in a way that will be interesting to both writers and readers (some technical posts and some that are emotional/inspirational/revelatory). And with luck, I can make the weight loss thing interesting and useful, too, with the daily grind aspects on a secondary blog and posts here for entertainment and accountability purposes.

Accountability. Franky, that’s why I’m doing this. I want your help to keep me on the straight and narrow (as in, how I want my rear profile to be). There’s nothing quite as motivating as the prospect of public humiliation to keep me focused. 

So, that’s the rough plan. Those aren’t the only things I’m going to write about, of course, because I’m kind of an intellectual magpie and pick up all sorts of shiny things that I’ll undoubtedly want to write around. But the processes of creating a book and decreasing my pant size will form the framework for a while.

I’ll check back in tomorrow with a bit more detail, like just what that pant size is (egad), where you can find that secondary blog, where I’m at in my WIP, and how I’m going to approach both projects.

Feel free to question or comment below. I’m especially curious whether any of you want to join me in dropping a few pounds…or in writing a book.

* WIP = Work In Progress

because I finished the book, had 12 people for Thanksgiving dinner, and now have line edits to complete.

Patience, please.  Just another day or two, and then I have some plans for you.