New Job....New Adventures!

So for the last 3 months I have been jobless. One of those months I spent traveling around the island of Jamaica, so it really didn't kick in that I didn't have a job; I was having too much fun.

The next two months were a whirlwind of organizing a few things in my apartment, getting rid of clothes, reading tons of books (that's a separate post, Jamaica in particular- 15 books) and generally od'ing on facebook games. Okay, I had overdosed a long time ago, but I now admit that I keep playing the games because my friends (and Mom) are still playing. I play to keep up with them.

Oh, yeah, and I looked for a job. Looking for my type of job is easy or hard, depending how you look at it. Its easy because you sign up with various agencies and the agencies connect you to the people that need help. In other words I don't have to go looking for a job through the classifieds or craigslist. The agency does most of the work. In fact its better that I don't look through the classifieds and such as those jobs are notoriously low pay.

The hard part is that more often than not its not what you know, but whether or not you "connect" with the prospective employer. My first interview I made the mistake of saying that I didn't want to be in front of the computer all day. When I got word that she didn't want a followup interview, I realized what I had done and changed my stance. The reality is that if I really want a particular job, the answer is whatever you, the prospective employer, wants is what I have to want.

So my trial as a housemanager/nanny began last week and I would say I love 90% of it. I expect that I will love the last 10% as I get more of a routine. Right now, because my employer is so hands off, I am floundering a bit as she has other people train me. Granted, that's the epitome of delegation and very smart on her part, it just makes it hard for me to get to know her and what her likes and tolerances are except through the eyes of other people.

The other difficult part of the job, really, is the fact that it's in San Francisco, in a part called Presidio Heights that isn't really serviced by public transit all that well, so I have to drive there and back from Campbell.

The cool part, though, is that I am getting to know SF. A city that I once found dirty and ugly, but with fun restaurants, is now gorgeous. Granted I get to look out over the bay to the hills of Tiburon and obviously Presidio Heights is nothing to sneeze at, but, well, wow.

And I am learning all kinds of cool and annoying things in the process. For example, I heard the fog horn the other day. All day...yes, the fog horn went off all day while the clouds were laying low over the bay. I don't know why but I find that cool.

The annoying thing is how easy it is to get a ticket in SF. Granted I do have a bit of experience with this as my parents, 2 years ago when I was in SF for surgery at UCSF, managed to get my car towed by parking in the wrong spot. Well, apparently, you can get your car ticketed by not curbing your wheels.

AND, I say the other day that a car had been booted. I thought that only happened in NY.

Lastly, in SF, the parking meters accept prepaid cards. You don't have to carry around quarters. Too cool.

So, my next adventure is exploring and adapting to SF. Wish me luck...
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The Best So Far...

I can't believe it has been so long since I actually wrote about the books that I am reading and that I like. There have been quite a few and I won't remember them all sadly enough.

I started reading the Nora Roberts' Wedding Quartet series after borrowing the first "Vision in White" from a friend and then I was lucky enough to read the arc "Bed of Roses" and I have to say "Bed of Roses" was even more satisfying than the first book of the series and that's saying something since I thoroughly enjoyed "Vision in White". And, man oh man, are the covers gorgeous or what? Makes me want to see what the third and fourth books look like. Anyhow, I digress, as usual, sheesh. What I meant to say is that "Bed of Roses" was satisfying because the male love interest screws up royally and when he asks a friend what to do, he is told to crawl. Yep, crawl. Which I must say he does beautfully. Gotta love it when the hero crawls to the heroine. Mmmmmmm.

Then, of course, the lovely Lisa Kleypas came out with "Tempt me at Twilight". Another attractive plot line is when the hero falls instantly in love with the heroine and goes full-steam after his desire, and nothing can stop him. Lisa wrote a quick, lovely novel that I couldn't put down once I picked it up, which luckily I had started early enough to finish before midnight. I say luckily as it was a Tuesday evening, and, dear God!, it would make WAY TOO MUCH SENSE to have books released on a Friday or Saturday! Can't have the book industry making sense though; that would just freak us out.

Oh. Wow. Digressed again. Sorry.

Anyhow, the one real surprise in the bunch is (and I say this because this is a completely new writer for me) "The Madness of Lord Ian MacKensie." It is an amazing story about a hero who may or may not have Asperger's Syndrome. It never outright says that (its a historical and I'm sure they didn't know about such things then...you were just insane) but that's how it comes across. Again, its that lovely theme where the hero instantly falls in love, okay lust, with the heroine and off he goes a-chasing. Loved, loved, loved this book and my book club loved it as well. Can't wait to see what Jennifer comes up with next. Definitely check this book out if you want to sigh after reading.

And I do have one non-romance to add. While I was returning from camping (first year I didn't have to drive! Woo Hoo!) I read "The Art of Racing in the Rain" by Garth Stein. This book was recommended to me by the ex-Hippie (okay, are they ever ex-hippies?)high school English teacher that happens to live in my apartment complex. So, I picked this up at the start of the ride home from the campground and finished it just as we got into town. It has an amazing narrator: that of the family dog. Yes, you will laugh and cry just like in "Marley and Me", but its amazingly beautiful and full of love.

But, remember, don't stay up too late reading! You still have to work tomorrow to make more money to buy more books!

Management's Revolving Doors- Part 3

Okay, I haven't worked at the big book store since December of last year and it is now October. After I returned from Christmas break in Wyoming, I went back to the store to set up more time to work and found out that one of my favorite managers had quit December 22nd. Yep, 3 days left of crazy holiday season and the manager literally walks out in the middle of it.

Okay, I am going to be selfish for a minute and say that I was annoyed by this. I don't know the new manager at all and when I do finally get a hold of her on the phone, she says that they are cutting hours left and right. I was told that they used to have 1000 hours and that would be cut in half. Wow. What does this all mean? No hours for me to work at the bookstore.

Also, the new sales manager puts me off. Saying that since they were cutting hours they weren't using contigents (my status) anymore and that district wasn't allowing them to do call-ins.

Okaaaaay.

Missing the old manager aside, I am out of a part-time job that I do for fun. And that also meant that that the manager I liked had been there less than 6 months if I remember it correctly.

Ugh.

Then I just found out yesterday that that new manager quit. And the District head was let go. Wow...again.

What the hell is wrong with this local store that its going through managers like marshmallows at a campsite?

And selfish thoughts again, what am I going to do? I don't have a part-time bookselling job for the holidays which is when its sometimes more fun (but infinitely more stressing) because of the craziness of it all.

And, geez, how many managers has that been since I started? Well, looking back at these blogs, I started in October of 2006 so that's 3 years. In those three years, I have seen 9 managers come and go. That's about 2 a year. How can that be good for any store, much less a book store? Morale aside, let's be honest. Every manager has a different way of doing things and just as the team gets to know the manger, they leave. Some much for team building. I can't even imagine what the head office is thinking.

Two Spaces After a Sentence

I have a good friend who is German and after she asked me to review an email she was about to send, I started spouting rules about English Grammar left and right. Dear God, who knew that grammatical stuff was still circulating around in the old noggin?

Of course, I couldn't do a half-assed job; so, I had to correct that fact that there weren't two spaces after every sentence. Really! Two spaces? "Yep, I told her, that's the way it is."

But after researching it on the internet, I discovered I am officially antiquated. I learned how to type on a typewriter, and apparently because we now use computer fonts instead of typewriter fonts, the use of two spaces is obsolete.

Why does no one tell me these things? I am a dinosaur and no one tells me? What are friends for is not to declare me obsolete? Antiquated? Old-Fashioned? Retro?

Wait, hmm, Retro, I like that one. Perfect. I am retro. I get a cool label AND it get to use two spaces after my sentences!

the Language I Love

A short quip... I love writers who can turn a phrase. Joss Whedon is the king of phraseology. Angel and Buffy (not to mention Firefly) regularly had phrases that made me snort in laughter and bow down to Joss' creative mojo. Here are just a few that I can think of off the top of my head by two writers that regularly thrill me.

"Moral Spankatude" recently spouted in a "Dollhouse" episode to indicate someone's over the top morality.

"Cautionary Whale" Juno used this phrase in reference to her teen pregnancy as written by the ever muse-inspired Diablo Cody in the movie titled "Juno".

"The Big Bad" In multiple Buffy episodes, Buffy and the Scooby gang used this phrase to refer to the everchanging evil of the week. So written by Joss Whedon.

"World Wide Waste of Time" from "Candy Girl" by Diablo Cody on the second page when she hasn't even warmed up yet.

Can't wait to see what new phrases they come up with next!

Housing the Stories of Life

What is life: so supposedly precious and priceless yet something that so many feel so free to steal. Beyond war, beyond battle beyond the facelessness and anonymity of death, at its most basic and personal is the death of a woman at the hands of a man.

I have not lived long, some would say not even half of my life as of yet. Still in that time I have been bewildered too many times by men who chose to kill a woman, more often than not, someone whom they declared they loved.

The stories are universal. We all have them in our lives. Mine are numerous and each time I have to add another to my collection I ask myself or my mother (the therapist) or my father (a loving man) or my friends or people at random why it happens.

Please explain to me me, why or how a random woman, beautiful in her health and radiant in her impending motherhood could trigger such horror and destruction. Because that’s what it is when a man grabs a woman who is jogging along a road to a marina in Puerto Rico, to meet up with her fiancé and then rapes and kills her and leaves her naked the waist down by side of a road all within the space of an hour.

And when we ask “Why? Why did you do this?” he can’t answer even as he says that he didn’t know she was with child. I understand even less.

No one else, it seems, can answer.

All that is left is her fiance’s broken heart as she called him to say she loved him while in the trunk of the man’s car. All that is left is a family; sisters, a brother, a mother, a father having to live with the knowledge that their loved one died in the worst possible manner and that the child she was carrying is a life unfulfilled. All that is left is friends who crowd around her sister, unknowing how to comfort her and shaken in our own belief in our own safety.

And I look back on my life and think of the other stories. The man who killed his wife and then his mother even as his mother shouted to his children to run and hide. Now his children have to live away from all they know to be familiar, unable to talk for months. Now his children have to live with the knowledge for the rest of their lives that their father killed their mother and their grandmother. What kind of life is that to give to your children?

And I remember the story of one of my charge’s first hairsylist who was stabbed by her husband. He killed that wonderful gentle woman who brought such joy to so many children as she cut their hair for the first time. And after he killed her he fled their home only to return still covered in her blood as police stood in the house, trying to make sense of the death. But, of course, there was no sense in it.

And these stories are of people I knew. My own life collection does not include the random acts that you read about in the paper. No, mine are all too personal.

I grieve now and when it happens again which it will, I will grieve again. The stories and the bewilderment and the grief are my constants.

And I am impotent, unable to do anything else but to pour out this sadness and useless rage in words and unable to stop the future which will surely bring more stories to house.


* The sister of a friend of mine was recently murdered in Puerto Rico. As she was jogging and 6 months pregnant a man grabbed her and stuffed her in his trunk. She still had her cell phone with her and called her friend for help and then called her fiance to tell him she loved him. She was found an hour later by the side of a road and the man who murdered her, who had no such previous history of assault, was found very soon after. He could give no explanation as to why he did such a horrendous thing.

Must Reads!!!

I hate to use cliche's, but they work. Sadly, they work too well sometimes. So forgive this one.

When it rains, it pours...especially in the romance world. Fabulous books are out and I have no time to read them all. But I have read quite a few.

I love Nalini Singh. The head of the romance reader's book group that I go to once a month urged me to check out one of her books. Rarely am I pleased with other people's suggestions. Yet, after she mentioned her for the umpteenth time, I finally broke down and bought a book. Actually, I bought an anthology "The Magical Christmas Cat" (who came up with that weird-ass title?), so if I didn't like Nalini's story, I would have 3 others to try out.

I went out the very next day an bought all the Nalini Singh books I could get my hands on. And then passed the addiction along to another friend. Nalini is contagious.

Her newest novel this month is "Angel's Blood" which starts a whole new series separate from her psy/shapeshifters series. Beyond being a fabulous writer, Nalini creates story lines that seem wholely unique from what is already out there. And "Angel's Blood" has the best ending ever!



Beyond "Angel's Blood" which I read in December as an ARC, Elizabeth Vaughn is coming out with "White Star" and Angela Knight is coming out with "Guardian".

"Guardian" is totally yummy. There is no other way to describe it. And "White Star" has renewed my faith in Elizabeth Vaughn. After "Dagger Star" I was devastated that maybe she has lost her super-writing powers. But, no, they had just been temporarily paralyzed, I think. But, now that I really reflect on it, It seems every other book is not as good. Maybe that's the pattern. Anyhow, after reading "White Star" I immediately went back and reread "Warprize". Love that book!

But up next, is "Bone Crossed" by Patricia Briggs. And can I just say what a gorgeous cover? I am thinking that maybe I will take this one on the plane with me while I fly to Seoul (to visit a friend, vacation, whoo hoo!). I was astonished to see "Bone Crossed" advertised in Entertainment Weekly a couple of weeks ago with a full page ad. Wow, how you get that PR as a writer? I have never seen that except for really big writers and rarely for SciFi.

Meanwhile, Stepanie Laurens and Robin Schone and Mary Balough and Emma Holly are all coming out with novels now or in the very near future. I guess my days of sleeping are over...