Transitions

Everything has been on hold the last few weeks while I transitioned to a new job. Of course, I'm a little down in the dumps, but that's to be expected. First and foremost, I haven't been doing any writing, and that ALWAYS makes me blue (I literally HAVE to write to be happy). Second, change is always a little "rattling."

I haven't been working at the new job long, so I don't know if it's going to work out or not. I LOVE being on day shift. It's weird to be watching my prime time tv shows toward the end of my day rather than at the beginning (I'm used to having a bowl of breakfast cereal while I watch House; now I can have a beer instead, and it's very foreign, lol).

And the job itself is almost as different as night and day from my old job; this job is VERY customer service oriented. At my last job, the whole point was to get people in the door and then get them out as quickly as possible (volume, volume, volume). At this job, it's not only perfectly acceptable to spend two hours helping a customer pick out color-coordinated merchandise, it's actually encouraged. Instead of "hurry, hurry, hurry and don't stop to talk to anyone," it's "engage the customer, make them feel welcome." Again, it's all very foreign.

But I have to wear dress clothes, and I can't stand dress clothes!

The most amusing thing about this new job is some of the people who work there. I've already met some awesome, friendly, helpful associates that are going to be a joy to work with . . . but a few people (a minority, thankfully) are actually snobby. It tickles me. I mean, sure, we work in a preppy store, but really! It's still just retail. It's not like we're working New York's fashion week or designing interiors for mansions . . . it's just retail in a preppy store in small-town middle America. I don't see any valid grounds for snobbery.

So we'll see how it all works out. I've only worked a week so far (two-and-a-half days training, two-and-a-half on the salesfloor). I'm not even sure what my regular schedule is going to be like (during the interview, we discussed 8 to 3; but this week I worked a lot of 10 to 3 shifts). So there's still a lot of uknowns.

Change is good (hopefully).

Yikes!

It's been a tough week-and-a-half. On Wednesday the 7th, I got paged at work. I answered a floor line, and it was my hubby telling me that our water heater had sprung a leak and there was a quarter inch of water in our utility room. Since I was on the floor, I told him I'd take my break and call him back on my cell. While I was talking to him, I could hear our house phone ringing in the background--that could only be trouble since there's only one reason for someone calling my house at 12:30 in the morning: something was wrong with my mom. And my fears were right: my mom was in the hospital.

She'd had a bronchoscopy earlier in the day to check on her cancer scar tissue (she was diagnosed with lung cancer in April of 2005--by April 2006, the cancer had been reduced to scar tissue and we began the process of just monitoring to make sure the cancer didn't come back). Back when she was first diagnosed, they did a full body scan to see if the cancer had spread--and found that she had several aneurysms in her brain. She underwent surgery to "fix" those, but had to go on Plavix due to strokes (the stints and aneurysm appartuses--apparti--apparently made her prone to blood clots. Anyway, she has to stop the Plavix anytime she has surgery or any procedure that leads to bleeding (and she usually coughs blood for three or four days after the bronchoscopies due to the tube being fed down her throat).

So she had stopped the Plavix and had the brochoscopy. That evening, she lost her vision. In a panic, thinking she was having a stroke, she took her Plavix. And then she started having trouble breathing.

Our thought, of course, was that the loss of vision was due to a stint swelling (one of the aneurysms is close to the optic nerve, and when it swells, it presses on the nerve) and her lungs had filled with blood due to bleeding from the bronchoscopy. And that SEEMED to be confirmed when the docs declared that she had liquid in her lungs (although they later decided it was pneumonia--strange, since she'd had no symptoms before).

Whatever the source of the "liquid", a few days later we found out that her cancer is back, this time in the other lung.

And as if all that wasn't bad enough--a slightly flooded house, buying and installing a new water heater, and recurrence of my mother's cancer--my job took a turn for the worse, too. So now I've got to find a new job on top of everything else.

I could probably still tolerate the job if it weren't for ONE manager. She has no concept of the time it takes to complete a task, and there's no reasoning with her. Here's a sample conversation:

Manager: "Bob. You have 10 hours of freight tonight in your area. After you're done, go help in the freezer, and then zone."
Bob: "Wait. I only have an eight hour shift. And if we're all supposed to stop and zone at 5:30 am, then I only have a six-and-a-half hour shift. Not even time enough for my own freight."
Manager: "Then you'll just have to work faster."

At this point, I should point out that Bob REALLY only has a five-and-a-half hour shift (he loses half an hour due to his two fifteen-minute breaks AND it's going to take him another half hour to clean up his freight--pull back pallets and bale his cardboard). Somehow, Bob is supposed to do ten hours of freight, plus help another department, plus zone, all in five-and-a-half hours.

In my case, I get told I have two hours of freight. I spend fifteen minutes in the nightly meeting, then fifteen minutes hunting down a jack and pulling my freight to the floor. Then I spend another fifteen minutes pulling freight and garment racks up to the processor (which the manager is all aware of). But at the two hour point, she's out there asking why I'm not done (even though she knows I spent forty-five minutes doing other work). But somehow I'm supposed to do all that other stuff in zero minutes with a wave of my magic wand.

And to make matters worse, I started counting my cases as I stocked them: 184. Our time is based on doing one case per minute. If you do the math, you can see that I actually had THREE hours of freight, not two.

The whole point is that I take my work performance seriously, and I come home every night exhausted, with my feet killing me and a general sense of failure. It's not healthy. I used to work in the computer industry as a quality control manager for business software--software that companies used for their financial records and tax submissions--and THAT job wasn't as stressful as this one . . . AND THIS ONE IS RETAIL! How in the hell can making sure green beans and throw pillows are in stock be more stressfull than making sure IRS tax forms and profit-and-loss statements work?

The world's not supposed to work that way. It's obviously time to move on.

Of course, I HATE moving on. My schedule at work right now is PERFECT, and I know I'm not going to be able to have such a perfect schedule anywhere else.

On the up side, I'm encouraged by the quick response to my job search. I decided "enough is enough" on Thursday morning, submitted resumes on Friday, and got my first call-back on Saturday.

Now we'll just have to wait and see what happens next.

Look on the bright side . . .

I guess I should consider today's local headlines a positive thing--the four or five main news stories on the website of our local paper are all about changing the nickname of our local university sports teams. It's certainly better than the top stories being about gangs or murders or both. But I still have to say . . . really?

I've always been behind the nickname change. And I happen to be one of those people that thinks our society has gotten too politically correct. I just don't think that people should be mascots--it doesn't matter if they're Native American tribe names or not. I'm not crazy about the Fighting Irish nickname, either.

AND, there's a little bit of petulance behind my desire to change the nickname, too; namely, the name has stuck around for so long thanks to a rich guy throwing his weight (and cash) around. I think it's wrong that he pretty much bought himself a university. He built a giant hockey rink for the university (a state-run institution) at about the time the nickname debate was really heating up, and he had 3000 logos put inside the arena. Tell me that doesn't sound like a big, "F-U, I've got money and I'll do what I want"); Three thousand logos? Seriously?

And, when the NCAA expressed an opinion about logos, the rich guy said he'd tear the place down before he'd let them remove the logos (the rich guy has since died, so who knows how his estate will handle this thing).

Reminds me of the little guy from the Family Guy series, who's always running around saying, "Wanna fight about it?"

And yeah, I DO want to fight about it. Even if you have no opinion on whether the logos and the nickname are disrespectful, you want to fight about it just to show this Vegas moneyman that he can't buy a state-run university and he can't buy a town. C'mon people! What happened to that frontier spirit? That "we're earthy, hardworking people that cobbled a good life out of a cruel but beautiful land, and we aren't going to take any guff from some rich city folk and kneel down before the almighty buck"?

Sure, hockey's important around here. But so is the country farmer sense of pride, and I can't believe so many locals are kow-towing to some rich guy who didn't even stick around but took off to Vegas.

I understand that the nickname has history. I understand it is important to people (hey, I went to that college--I had the logo on a bumper sticker on my car, too). But it's time to move on to bigger and brighter things. And it's time to show that people in North Dakota can't be bought. And certainly not bought by anyone who left us and moved to Vegas.

Oh, those bean counters and pencil pushers

We homeschooled our kids for quite some time. One daughter went back to school in eighth grade because she wanted to go to public school for high school (so we figured eighth would be a good transition for her). The other tried to follow the same path, but due to some medical issues, it didn’t work out. She started eighth, went back to homeschooling; started ninth, went back to homeschooling. This year, she should have been in tenth grade. A few months ago, she decided to go back to public school again, but this time in an non-traditional public school rather than the regular high school. Right away, I got a call from a school system bean counter asking us to turn over our homeschool records, including attendance records.

Yeah. How about not? Of course, we ended up arguing about it, and the school employee got quite frustrated and snappish. But I’m not going to do anything that’s not required by law or that might set a precedent that the school system will try to push onto other homeschoolers.

I explained all this to the employee, to no avail.

1) The homeschooling laws do not say that records have to be turned over to the school system;
2) When my other daughter went back to public school, and when this daughter tried public school before, these records weren’t requested--why are they suddenly important?;
3) What’s the point? They aren’t going to give her credit for her homeschool hours (ie, she’s basically starting over as a 9th grader), so since they are treating her academic record as if she never homeschooled, then why do they want the homeschool records?
4) Less than one month after the start of the school year, she turned sixteen-- which is the age that ends compulsory attendance. So for most of the school year, she wasn’t required to attend school, anyway;

When I repeated that we’ve never had to hand over the records before, she said that the homeschool monitor usually takes care of that-- funny, we haven’t had a homeschool monitor in YEARS; so if some monitor has been handing over attendance records for us every year, she’s just been pulling the figures out of the air.

So I refused to hand over the records. The employee said, “Fine. I have to send these records to the state. I’ll note here that you refused to comply.” Hmmm, sounds suspiciously like that old public school chestnut of “marking your permanent record,” LOL. I was never intimidated by that AS a student, and I’m sure not worried about it now.

So I laughed when I received a letter from the school system a few days ago (my husband said, “uh oh, you really pissed them off this time").

The letter demands that we contact them immediately about standardized testing for my daughter, as the law requires that homeschooled children be tested in grade 10. The complication of course, is that the school system has already done testing for this year, so I would likely have to pay out-of-pocket for it.

EXCEPT . . . if you read the notes above . . . my daughter is in public school in NINTH grade this year . . . ROFLMAO! So she won’t need testing until next year.

It does piss me off a little, though, because the homeschool monitor never did contact us about testing. But I just assumed it was because my daughter was over 16 (school is not compulsory and therefore neither is testing). But it’s irrelevant at this point.

So I can’t wait until Tuesday, when I can call the school employee again and point out the error in this new “crisis” that they’ve invented.

I get way too much enjoyment out of pissing people off.

I need to move . . .

So there is a local blog that has a list of other blogs that it is linked to. And they pretty much sum up the area I live in:

Most are dead (because there's so very little to do around here);
Those that are still alive are either
a)about hockey
b)about Christianity

And that pretty much sums this area up. If you don't like hockey and aren't a Christian . . . well, you're not going to have much to talk about with the locals.

I like living here because the country is so damn beautiful (if you've never seen the wind whisper through miles and miles of prairie grass, you're missing out) and the hunting is good (I may not be republican, but I LOVE my guns). But other than that--P.U! You can shop here. You can go to church here (and the two coincide--our stores don't open until noon on Sundays, by law, so that they don't interfere with church). You can go to the local art show put on by schoolchildren-- but other than that, there isn't much.

That's what makes this month and next such a delight for me-- there finally IS stuff going on. This month is the writer's conference (but not in the traditional sense; you won't meet editors from Doubleday here and pitch them your idea); and next month is the local Pow-wow. Little islands of "something to do" to tide me over until deer season in the fall.

Always read the fine print

This is a great example of why you should always read the fine print before signing up for something.

I belong to one of those "point earning" groups that lets you earn points by reading emails and filling out surveys. You can then turn the points in for gift cards to Amazon, Walmart, etc. It's a great program and I've been a member for years.

Lately, however, it seems like they've been getting stingier with the points. All the emails used to be: "read the email, click on the link, get 5 points; sign up for the offer that follows and get (between 250-5000) points." But lately, at least half (if not more) of the emails only offer the points if you sign up for the offer that follows (in other words, you don't get 5 points just for reading the email).

Worse yet, some of the sign-ups are really invasive. For example, I got one for a survey a few days ago. It sounds innocent enough: sign up with this organization that collects opinions, get points for every survey you complete. Sounds good, right? Especially since I love to share my opinion about everything, even when I'm not asked, lol. But then I read the fine print:

"(Company name omitted) is different from other online communities - we measure your behavior as well as your opinions. (Company name omitted) utilizes a piece of software stored on your computer that anonymously transmits aspects of your Internet browsing behavior so we can understand the sites, products and services you interact with. (Company name omitted) will only contact you regarding research -- we will NEVER send you SPAM or pop-up advertising."

So they want more than my opinion. They want to install software on my computer that will track me. But hey, at least they aren't going to send me spam. They'll track my every move and then sell my data to other companies that will send me spam, but at least they won't send me spam.

Needless to say, I didn't sign up. I don't even like toolbars and cookies and stuff because of the tracking potential. I'm certainly not going to volunteer for tracking.

Doing the Happy Dance

I just received word that one of my stories was accepted for publication. It’s a real cause for celebration--not just because every acceptance is cause for celebration, but because of the circumstances leading up to it!

I started writing in 2006. Within a couple of months, I started getting acceptances. I wrote for all of 2006 with amazing results--I received plenty of rejections, but my acceptances-to-rejections ratio was very encouraging. Maybe I really was a writer after all.

But then I wrote a short for a fantasy anthology. They rejected the story as not being quite right for the anthology, but they loved the story and the character. They said that if I ever turned it into a novel, they’d like to see it. So that’s what I did. But something happened in the editing process. I don’t know if it’s just because I hate editing and editing something the size of a novel was too overwhelming or if it was because I had never written a fantasy before (horror is my usual genre). I got writer’s block. Actually, writer’s block isn’t strong enough to describe what I had. Writer’s coma or dead muse are better descriptions. I got halfway through editing and everything froze.

I spent the next year to year-and-a-half drifting. There were some other things going on in my life that weren’t working for me, either. I decided I had to do something to shake things up. So I went out and got myself a job.

After a year and a half of working the job, I decided to see if my muse was ready for resurrection. And it seems to have worked. I started in January. I’ve written two new stories and revised three old ones (only one of the new ones has been sent out--the other is still in revision). Of the four sent out, one has been accepted so far. I feel like I’ve finally gotten my groove back.

Of course, being the doubting Thomas that most writers are, I won’t consider my groove officially back until I get a new story accepted (the one accepted is a revised old one). Then I’ll really feel like I haven’t lost my touch. But still--even getting an old one accepted is a major milestone and a sure sign to keep pounding at the keyboard.

Water-logged

I work part-time for a large retail chain, and you would think they could afford to get the roof fixed on the store. I've worked there for almost two years, and in that time, what started as a few drips has escalated to the truly ridiculous. Now you can hardly move down some aisles for all the buckets sitting on the floor to catch drips. In one area, the leaks have become so bad and the buckets so numerous that they would actually be better off putting a kiddy pool in that spot to catch all the drips (seriously . . . there are seven or eight buckets in that one 5 foot by 5 foot section of floor). It's gotten so bad that the ceiling tiles are starting to drop. One missed me the other night by only a few feet. When it hit the floor, it disintegrated into several pieces and splattered water all over my back. And then the water running in sounded like a waterfall as it ran all over the merchandise (beccause, of course, the water had pooled up behind the ceiling tile once the foam got too sodden to absorb any more).

I don't see the situation getting any better, because we're in a rainy cycle PLUS there's probably at least six feet of snow on the roof that's melting.

And I thought the one little leaky spot in MY roof was a crisis!

If I actually get hit by one of those soggy things, I'm going to have a meltdown.

OMG! Why am I always the last to know?

A little backstory is required for today's post. Some of you may (or may not) remember the movie Tremors (Kevin Bacon). What you might not know is that there were actually four movies AND a tv series on SciFi. I bet you can tell already that I'm a HUGE fan.

Anyhoo, I collected all four movies and wanted . . . no, craved and pined for the series to be released. I can't tell you exactly how long it's been-- at least five or six years since the series ran. And there were other Tremors nuts like me. I belong to a lot of horror/scifi type lists, and the discussion of "WHY WON'T THEY RELEASE THE SERIES?" popped up a lot. Finally, I gave up (and I'm assuming the others did, too, since I haven't heard any more discussions about it).

And then last night, I ended up in the Electronics department briefly. I sometimes cover the electronics break (someone has to since it involves keys), but I NEVER do on a Monday night (essentially, new releases are released at midnight on Monday's shift). Last night, the person covering the electronics break was working over in a department far away from electronics. So I, as the closest person to electronics, had to go over there and help customers from time to time. And what did I see as I was digging through a box, looking for "Precious"? TREMORS THE SERIES!!! Why, oh WHY didn't anyone tell me it was coming out?

Of course I bought it. I had to. Fate had intervened, and sent me over to paw through the new releases box for maybe the second time in the two years I've worked there on the very night that the series I've waited at least half a decade for was finally released!

And yes, I've been running around like a fool ever since. Half the store now knows about the release (as I bounded through the store with my purchase much like Steve Martin when the new phone books arrived-- a la, "The Jerk").

I'm not much of a movie/DVD person. I only watch a few shows on a regular basis. But some movies/TV series are "must haves."

So now I've got the complete "Tremors" collection.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, you're missing out. The original movie was good because it involved the sand-worm mythos (which is kind of like bigfoot-- it pops up all over the place). Movies two and three were good because they "evolved" the sandworms and focused more on Burt Gummer's character (he's my hero). The fourth movie was mediocre, as it traveled back to the days of the Old West. I didn't like it as much. But the series-- the series is where creativity soars. There's more to worry about in those hills than just some little old sandworms! And thank god the residents have Burt around to save them from all the dastardly critters (and PLANTS!!!) that crawl out of the woodwork!

You know, I picked up the first season of House this week (another of my "must haves") at a rock-bottom price, and I thought THAT was exciting-- this has totally eclipsed that.

If you haven't seen Tremors, do yourself a favor and at least rent movies 1-3. They're so much fun!

Burt quote:
(they're all stuck on a rock, trying to figure out a way to chase away the "graboid" circling them like a shark-- they decide to improvise some bombs)
Burt: "We can use long lengths of this cannon fuse to give us time."
"Canon fuse? What do you use that for?"
Burt (deadpan): "My cannon."

Another Burt quote:
The lights go dim as the creatures cut the power.
The lights roar back to life.
Burt: "Back up generator."
The lights dim again.
They roar back to life.
Burt smiles. "Back-up Back-up generator."

Maybe I should call those guys from "TAP"

After my hubby's older dog died, I started letting the "puppy" (who's actually four years old) sleep in the bedroom from time to time because she's been so depressed over missing the older dog; a special treat, as neither dog was ever allowed in the bedroom before. One night, while my hubby was working a night shift, I woke up to her growling-- really scary, deep bass growling, totally unlike her. And when I sat up, she was staring up into the far corner of the bedroom, at the ceiling. Her hackles were up, and she had pressed herself into the opposite corner (as far away as she could get from where she was staring--and she's a German Shepherd). I was freaked out, but chalked it up to the "logical explanations" everyone gave (an owl landed on the house, a mouse was messing around in the crawl space, etc.).

Last night, it happened again while I was gone to work. It really freaked hubby out. Now, there's no access from the outside there--or anything to attract a mouse to that same spot again-- so what are the odds that a mouse would be in that EXACT same spot again (not to mention, any mouse would be stupid to get near my house-- I have several cats). Or, that the owl landed there again (we have a bunny living outside, but his burrow is on the far east side of the house, on the outside of the fence, a good forty feet away and around the corner from where my puppy was staring-- an owl wouldn't even be able to SEE the bunny there).

So what's freaking my dog out?

The only other "freaky-deaky" stuff that's ever went on is that one night a couple of years ago it sounded like something heavy walked across the roof from one end of the house to the other. It wasn't cold, so it wasn't the house settling. The mystery is that there aren't any trees nearby, so we're not sure how something (and this would have had to been a racoon-size something) could get up there and stomp across the roof. But, we chalked it up to "critters always find a way" and didn't think about it again.

Maybe my house needs an exorcism. I don't know how, since we're the first ones to live here (the house was a repo-- something happened and the original owners never even got to move in). But still-- ten years AFTER we move in, it gets haunted? I'm not even sure I believe in hauntings (haven't made up my mind about it yet). But maybe I should start wearing garlic to bed, just in case . . . or whatever scares away ghosts.

Interesting

I was hit with a flash of inspiration and started my next short story. The premise was great, the first line was awesome . . . and then nothing. Five hundred words or so and I hit a block. I tried to change things up like last time and write in a notebook . . . still nothing.

It occurred to me that the anthology that this story is being written for happens to be the same as a song title. And, I just happen to have that CD. On a whim, I popped the CD in and blammo! A flood of ideas! None of them have anything to do with the song, so I don't know where they're coming from--but who cares! The story is practically writing itself.

I wish I'd tried this stuff a couple of years ago when I hit a block so bad that I pretty much gave up writing.

Which brings me to my other "writer's block" cure: you'll notice I don't post every day. That's because my last cure for writer's block was to change things up dramatically and I took a job at a large retailer working the overnight shift. It worked . . . sort of. The job gave me the human contact and socialization I was missing (and new characters and situations for inspiration), but it was sucking up so much of my time that I still couldn't write. I was always either sleeping or working. I dropped to part time a few months ago, and that seems to be the perfect balance.

As a matter of fact, one of the short stories I'm currently working on relies heavily on my experience working for the large retailer (with a heavy dose of spec-fic thrown in, of course). Now we'll just have to see if anyone wants to publish it!

Quirky Muse

It’s funny how the muse works sometimes .

I had inspiration for a story, but since I was busy with other projects, I just jotted some notes and set it on the back burner. Two weeks later, I came across an anthology that the story would be perfect for. The focus was a little different, but the story could be worked to fit. The antho is holiday themed, and although the original story idea didn’t involve a holiday, there is a holiday that fits perfectly. So I sat down at my laptop and started to write. I ran the original idea up to 4000 words. But when I tried to write in something about the holiday, I ran up against a block.

For almost a month, I fought that block.

My hip was hurting yesterday, so rather than try and write at my laptop, I curled up in the floor with a notebook. And guess what? The block broke. The holiday is working in perfectly and I’m at 1500 new words and counting. The story will definitely end up over the 5000 ideal (and probably pare down to around 5000 in revision). Apparently, that part of the story just needed to be written in a notebook.

But that’s one of the things “they” suggest if you’re facing writer’s block: change your method of writing (paper vs. computer). And I guess it works!

So my muse is quirky, OCD, and petulant. She works best when I'm writing isolated, in a clean room (clutter freaks her out), with a Thunderstorm CD in the player. And occasionally she likes to mix it up by sprawling on the floor with an old-fashioned notebook.

Weirdo.

No sardines? I'll show you no sardines . . .

This is what happens when you tell the pizza guy to leave off the sardines.

Actually, this is what happens when you have a late meal, get lazy, and leave the empty pizza box lying around. Why the hell the cat would want to lay in it, I have no idea (it couldn't have still been warm). Not to mention it was covered in grease, and she's a very fastidious cat (can't stand to have dirty paws).

Although . . . maybe she had been licking the bottom of the box and when I rounded the corner, she decided to act natural:
"What? No, I wasn't trying people food. This is a bed. That's all it is. Just a bed. Go about your business, nothing to see here."

(on a side note, I obviously need to practice more with my camera-phone. Talk about a crappy picture).

And so it begins . . .

Okay, so I've been trying to get back into writing after a two year hiatus . . . I'll go into that some other day in another post. Anyhoo, it's really been tough. And even though I'm trying my best to meet my writing goals, I'm finding myself falling short on an alarmingly frequent basis. To try and get more in a writing frame of mind, I'm picking up blogging again (a variant, if you will, of the famous "Morning Pages" method a la Cameron).

First I went to my old blog at my web host. That whole thing doesn't really suit me anymore. So I tried out (at the suggestion of others) facespace and mybook. Boy, I must be old, because they were really confusing. Lots of pictures and icons and avatars, very little (or well-hidden) content, random strangers wanting to "friend" me (is there a prize for the most friends? Prom queen? Student council president?). So then I buzzed over to try and be a twit. First, I don't have enough time in the day to update everyone every 10 minutes. Second, there's no way I could explain myself in such a limited amount of characters (as is obvious from this post). Then I went back to a couple of other blog sites where I had made test accounts in past years. I was able to log into them both, but I'll be dogged if I could see what I'd done. I mean, I could access account settings, change the look of the blogs, subscribe to feeds, tag friends (again with the friends; enough already), but I couldn't find any place to "see" what I posted before (other than the url of the blog). In other words, I couldn't find the simple "preview" button that's easily found in this blog's control panel. So, I decided to stick with this one. It's the one I have my "professional" page set up in, and it seems to be the easiest to use.

So now I've got some place to do some daily (knock on wood) posting to get warmed up for each day's writing session. Hence the title: Chaos Theory. Some posts will be on my experiences as a writer trying to gain more pub credits (and fame and fortune, thank you very much); some posts will be on life in general (mine's a little weird, but aren't they all); some posts will be rants about stuff in the news . . . actually, a lot of posts will be rants . . . it's one of my favorite hobbies. And, of course, there will be links and other random junk that I come across. Perhaps "Windlistener's hodgepodge" would have been a better title. Then again, maybe not-- a hodgepodge sounds like something you put weed in to smoke.

Now let's just keep our fingers crossed that I'll be back regularly to post. Therein lies the rub.