1. I do NOT like Mondays. This despite recognizing they are a necessary evil on the way to Friday. And paydays.
2. I have started working on The Next Paranormal but have been interrupted by another project that I’m hoping to finish by the end of the month.
3. Monica McCarty rocks because she sent me a screenshot of how she uses Scrivener. Oh. My. Gosh. She also explained how she uses it in general.
4. I ate too much chocolate over the weekend. Ruh-oh
5. Carolyn’s Recession Savings Tip o’ the Week: when I shop at this one particular grocery store *cough*Raley’s*cough* that is horribly laid out and organized so it’s impossible to find anything except by accident, I spend about $40 less even though it’s more expensive. Also, they don’t have the greatest selection of stuff. So I shop in this store now. This saves me $160 a month.

That’s it for tonight. I’m tired and going to bed early.

• The Penguin Blog. Sorry, no actual penguins here. This is the blog of Penguin Books, UK. Their team of bloggers have the most wonderful and often lovely posts that I just LOVE them. They have some great links on their blog, by the way. I wish more publishers would blog like this. Are British publishers really that much cooler than the American ones?
• XKCD. This guy is just funny! Hover your mouse over the comic and read the ALT text for even more funny stuff! I’ve posted some of his comics right here in this blog, and bought from his store, too. Major love here. I’m beginning to think physicists are cool.
• Sparkling water. Bubbles are way cool
• Cosmic Variance. A really great physics blog. Always interesting.
• Books (doh!) Paper, electronic, I don’t care. (except DRM sucks) Bring them on! Actually, I guess, I love stories. LOVE them.
• My iPhone
• Tacos from Gourmet Taco in Sonoma
• My tat.
• Being done with my synopsis and chapters (for now)

What about you? What are some random things you love?

I went trolling through my web stats today and in the course of checking the phrases the brought people to my website found these. My responses included.

how much money do novelists make per hour

About .001 cents per hour. Don’t think I’m kidding. I’m not. Seriously.

j.r. ward

I’m so sorry you ended up at my site instead of J.R.’s although hopefully you spent some time at my blog and discovered I love her books, too. I love Zsadist and Vishous the best but I have a serious jones coming on for Matthew and Tohrment. Next time leave a comment or send an email cuz I love talking about books I love!

metaphysical gopher

Wow. I have nothing on this one. I believe I may have blogged once or twice about gophers for eating the rose bushes. One time my mom was sure my cat had gotten out and that the hapless animal she saw dangling from the talons of a hawk was my cat and not a gopher. My cat was fine. I kind of hope the hawk made off with a gopher. If that makes me a bad person, so be it.

In all honesty, it’s not been my experience that gophers are all that metaphysical. I don’t believe I’ve ever thought about gophers in a metaphysical manner. Mostly it’s been in the context of rose bushes disappearing down a hole in the ground, but maybe. Graduate school can fuck with your mind.

when dog dies does his tongue hang out and eyes fixed

Um. Maybe.

mssql query examples

SELECT
   *
FROM
   employees
WHERE
   LastName = "Smith"
ORDER BY EmployeeID

Only this would be a VERY BAD SQL query to run because SELECT * is evil. Never run a SELECT * query against a production server. I mean it. Because next time you want the DBA to do you a favor, she won’t be your friend the way you hope.

SELECT
   LastName
   , FirstName
   , MiddleName
   , PreferredName
   , HiredDate
FROM
   employee
WHERE
   LastName = "Smith"
ORDER BY EmployeeID

Would be a much wiser query to run. Okay?

how many rejections did sophia kinsella get before getting published?

Well, I don’t personally know, but this writing business, she is a tough one, so I’m guessing Ms. Kinsella probably racked up her fair share of rejections along the way.

how to protect my ip address from hackers comcast

Short answer, unless you use some sort of anonymizing service like Tor, which has its own set of vulnerabilities, you can’t. But I wouldn’t worry too much about your IP address. Hackers aren’t interested in your IP. They’re interested things like capturing your keystrokes when you’re logging into your bank account or entering your credit card info. Or turning your computer into a spam spewing zombie, and if you’re on a Windows computer, the best defense against that is Firefox, a firewall and two or three malware detectors, run and updated religiously.

How you protect yourself from Comcast is anybody’s guess. If you find out let me know. I think they’re going to be in some more trouble about their filtering practices.

fangirls spike

Oh my gosh, yes. I am a Spike fangirl. Sign me up!!

indiscreet feet

Wearing socks can help with that.