I bet I can fit a whole bag of popcorn in my purse

Of a four-author team, how many do you think showed up for yesterday's conference call about the book being 6 weeks behind schedule? That's right: one. ARRGGHH. One who didn't show is dealing with his father, who's very ill; besides, he's one of the most responsible authors, so I'm not worried about him. Mr. Conflict of Interest didn't show, of course, and the fourth guy just . . . who knows? He never responded to Kid Manager's e-mail about the meeting.

Six weeks might not sound critical, but the problem is the publication date. With the original schedule, the book would have been published July 1, which is good positioning to sell to colleges for the fall semester (also the biggest time for sales). Making that July 1 pub date now is doubtful. August 1 might be possible, but not if these authors continue turning everything in late. Of course, their dragging their feet puts more pressure on me to turn work around way faster than normal to try to make up for lost time. Thanks! Love you authors, too!

******

How much does an intercom system cost? Through some freakish combination of architecture and sound waves, you can't hear a thing from downstairs when you're upstairs in my house, unless you're standing next to a heating vent. A Shriner parade complete with tiny motorcycles and a high school marching band could tromp through the downstairs, and I'd never know it if I were upstairs. I'm usually downstairs, but Kevin and Daniel are often upstairs, Daniel in his room and Kevin in the art room. So when they get a phone call or I need them for something, I have to yell up the stairs for them because I'm not going to hike up and down that damn spiral staircase 40 times a day (although I'd have thighs of steel if I did). I've about had it with yelling, waiting, bellowing louder, waiting some more, and repeating ad nauseum. (On the plus side, if anyone holds a Ma Kettle contest, I'm a shoe-in to win.) I can't afford to install a professional intercom, but surely Radio Shack has a fairly inexpensive gadget? I need to look into that before my vocal cords give out.

******

I just checked movie listings for the theater we usually go to in Indianapolis and noticed that matinee prices are good only until 4:00. Don't most theaters offer matinee prices until 6:00, or has that changed? Money-grubbing bastards. Of course, both movies I want to see start at 4:05. Hmmmph! See if I feel guilty for sneaking my own snacks in.

Bad cats and authors

I took a day off from updating to let poor Sasha acclimate; I understand that at her age, getting used to change is much more difficult (ahem). I don't know what got me in the mood for updating more regularly. Partly it's because work has been slower the past few months, so I actually have time to sit here in the mornings with my coffee and think about what to write. The bigger reason is, I think, that time seems to be slipping by faster and faster--sometimes careening out of control--and writing an entry is a way to grab time and force it to slow down a little. Also, if all the crossword and logic puzzles I do to ward off The Alzheimer's don't work, maybe I can print out and read old entries to remember the past.

******

Maybe you cat people can tell me what the hell has gotten into my cat Picard. I have a houseful of spoiled or neurotic pets, but he's always been my good boy--sweet, laidback, undemanding. Several months ago, Kevin bought one of those water jugs for animals; you know, it looks like a miniature version of an office water cooler? He was tired of refilling the old water dish several times a day, and this water jug can last for a few days, even with four pets drinking from it. I knew Picard was fascinated by water; he loves to watch me run water in the bathtub, and sometimes he runs into the bathroom when he hears me brushing my teeth, hops into the tub, and looks at me expectantly, like I'm going to run a nice bubble bath for him.

Lately, however, he's gotten downright freakish about water--specifically the water in the water jug. When you fill the jug up and turn it upside down into the tray, the water bubbles loudly a few times until it settles down and starts flowing. Over the past few weeks, I'd heard some strange thumping noises occasionally and noticed the kitchen floor around the water jug was damp. I thought Holly was getting impatient with how fast the water came out and was nudging it with her nose, knocking some water out into the floor. The other night, I decide to catch her in the act, so when I heard the thumping, I ran into the kitchen--and saw Picard attacking the bubbling water jug! That damn cat is convinced an evil water creature is causing the bubbling, I think, and he's going to make damn sure he kills it. He glares at the jug for a minute, slinking up to it slowly, and then pounces, thwacking the jug with both front paws like Rocky Balboa working over a side of beef. He's whapped the jug so hard sometimes that he's knocked it over, and then all that water spills onto the floor. I hate to scold him every time he goes near the water jug because I don't want to make him afraid of drinking from it normally. I can't have a constant puddle of water on my kitchen floor, though. Any ideas?

Speaking of my very bad pets, I added a few pictures of them on Flickr. There's a link over there to the left; I'm not awake enough yet to link to them here. It's 6:30, people, and I've had only cup of coffee. Not fully functional yet.

******

I have a conference call this afternoon with Kid Manager and the authors of the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Late book (my apologies to Judith Viorst). I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to that! Kid Manager has been nagging the authors via e-mail all week, trying to get them to commit to a time this afternoon. They all live near Seattle, and finding a compromise between EST and PST hours isn't always easy. Finally, KM settled on 3 p.m. EST, but she still hadn't heard from one author as of yesterday. This guy is, in general, a pain in the ass. He won't return phone calls or respond to e-mails, he ignores instructions on submission criteria, and he turns in sloppy and incomplete work. He also writes the most cryptic e-mails I've ever read in my life. Half the time, I can't figure out what the hell he's talking about. In response to Kid Manager's notice of the meeting time and call-in number, he wrote the following:

by the time I get home from work it is usually after 7pm PST.... M-F

We just fired an investigator for a conflict of interest issue... I'll have to read the updates via email

OK, so I assume that means he can't make the meeting at noon his time, but why didn't he say so earlier this week?? And what does that investigator have to do with ANYTHING? Is attending this meeting a conflict of interest for him?? What updates is he going to read? Updates about the investigator? From whom?

Arrrrggghhhhh. Wish me luck, yes?

Taco power: Resistance is futile

Daniel has a blog on a gaming site. I haven't asked to see it (partly because it's on a gaming site and, therefore, mostly about topics that make me yawn with excruciating boredom), but he left a Word document on my computer the other day that he'd copied to his blog. It cracked me up, so I'm including it here--unedited, which as you know, killed me--because I really don't think he'd mind:

"I enjoy the delicious taste of tacos. Why, you may ask? They combine the awesomeness of ground beef, the chesseiness of cheese, the dubious nutrutional value of a few strands of lettuce, the delicious spiciness of taco sauce combined with the coolness of sour cream, all wrapped in a crunchy (or soft) tortilla. Whether or not you like the taco, you must acknowledge that it is the supreme accomplishment of mankind, the culmination of all we've strived to create. Art, technology, literature, even video games, all must bow to the awesome POWER of the taco. Please feel free to post both pro and against comments regarding this, but know that you cannot deny the truth. All hail Taco."

The boy does love tacos, I can tell you that. He likes trying different salsas each time; last night, I think he used mango salsa, which he pronounced "interesting." I can't believe he's the same kid who used to have a list of five foods he deemed acceptable to eat. His tastes have definitely broadened. So take heart, parents of picky eaters: There's hope!

Kevin's been doing some writing lately, too. For his artist-in-residence gig, he had to outline the projects he plans to work on this year as well as a summary of his philosophy on art and its role in, uh . . . I don't know. Society? The community? Something like that. He jotted down several ideas in bullet form and asked me to take a look to see whether he was on the right track for his philosophy. I love him, but his spelling is nearly as creative as his art. Oy. Anyway, he had some interesting ideas about what art is, and he believes the notion of "fine art" stymies a lot of creativity. He's working on a theory of "everyday art" and getting ordinary people--that is, people who don't consider themselves artists or to have any talent or creative ability--to attempt artistic expression, particularly with nontraditional media. I suggested an idea that I think could be effective: a class combining school-age children with adults. Kids, up to a certain age, don't censor themselves as adults do. Ask them to draw a picture, and you'll rarely hear them say "But I can't draw!" Kids just assume they can. So including them in a class might inspire the adults to loosen up a little on their self-criticism.

The only "creative" endeavor I have planned for today is digging through junk in the closet and trying to find my Silver Screen edition of Trivial Pursuit. One of the Curv3s employees comes up with new trivia questions or scrambled words every month, and then prints them in big letters and tapes them to the floor in front of each aerobic station so that you have something to occupy your mind while you're jogging or doing jumping jacks or whatever. For me, it helps cut down on the boredom of exercising, too. I was talking to her the other day about what she's planned for this month, and she said she'd used a ton of questions from the original Trivial Pursuit game and needed a new source of questions. So if I can find my Silver Screen game, I'll bring those questions in for her, maybe as a tie-in with the Oscars? What month are the Academy Awards aired, anyway?

Like my plum lipgloss?

It's only the second day of January, and already I have a repair guy in my house because something broke down. Arrrghhhhh. The igniter on my furnace cracked, and my ductwork needs to be cleaned out. (Hush.) I was just getting caught up on bills, too. Figures, right?

Who knows what the repair guy thinks of me. It was too cold in the house this morning to shower, so I have some wild-ass hair going on, and I'm dressed like a bag lady in layers and layers of clothes, but I HAVE LIPSTICK ON, by God. I am my mother's daughter, after all. The surgical nurses had to fight her to get her lipstick off the last time she had surgery. When the anesthesia wore off, the first words she croaked were "Jeff, find my lipstick and a mirror--and don't look at me until you do!" Bless her heart.

I'd better go down to the basement and hover helpfully while the repair guy sucks out 40 pounds of dust and pet hair from the furnace ducts. I'm sure he couldn't do his job unless I were peering over his shoulder and making lame attempts at furnace humor. On the other hand, see no showering above. Perhaps staying upstairs would be kinder.

You don't buy wine because the name amuses you?

I was going to make resolutions for the new year, but you know, I'm not so good at sticking to them. And then there's the matter of being realistic: Saying I'm going to be more organized or follow a budget, for example, does little but prompt wild guffaws and derisive snickers from people who know me. Hmmmph! So I decided instead to vow I'm going to continue doing two things I started last year:

• Making better food choices
• Exercising--and maybe adding other kinds of activity on alternate days (yoga, possibly?)

I'd like to work on several personal qualities--being more patient with my family, for example--but I have to be around to do them, and I won't be if I don't keep eating better and exercising. So those two things have to come first, right?

******

Kevin got home last night in record time after the store closed at 10:00. Usually, he gets home 30-45 minutes later because of shooing last-minute customers out, cleaning up the photo booth and developing machines, and so forth. The store was practically dead after 8:00, however, so he was home by 10:15. We had a wonderful bed picnic, with lots of fruit and cheese, some delicious French bread, and this wine I picked up at Trader Joe's a couple of months ago. For an inexpensive wine, it wasn't bad. Charlie sampled some cheese and a grape, and then fell asleep, exhausted by his wild partying.

We watched the countdown on the Fox channel, but then switched over to Dick Clark right after midnight. He wasn't as pathetic as I'd feared and sounded much better than he did at the Emmy awards last year. Still, it's bizarre to see him looking old. He was ageless for as long as I can remember.

I have to go throw a pork roast in the oven. It's already marinated in a citrus-ginger combination, and I'm making sweet potato biscuits later. Hmmm, I need a veggie. Maybe green beans? I'd better go see what I have. Kevin's already made one trip to the grocery store today for me, and I think he'd balk at making another one. Heh.

Beware my 40-watt porch light, burglars and murderers!

Not only do I read too much Stephen King, as Janet pointed out, but also, I've watched way too much TV in my lifetime. Yesterday morning, as I was putting on my tennis shoes to go exercise, I thought "Sock, sock, then shoe, shoe. Your way is styooopid!" And then I giggled to myself.

Confused? OK, in an episode of All in the Family, Michael was putting on his shoes while talking to Archie, and Archie noticed that Michael put on a sock, then the shoe, and then repeated the process on his other foot. Archie was horrified. He told Michael everyone knows you're supposed to put socks on both feet first, and then put both shoes on. Michael pointed out that if a fire broke out in the middle of putting on his shoes, and he had to run out of the house into the rain, he could at least hop around on one foot--the one that already had a sock and shoe on it--and wouldn't get the naked foot wet. Archie's way, he'd be running around in his socks and get both feet wet.

Not that I think all of life can be explained through the medium of TV shows, but sometimes I do find meaning in seemingly meaningless sitcoms or cop dramas or whatever. Remembering this All in the Family episode made me realize that even if there's no good reason for doing something a particular way, we're capable of justifying it--sometimes with sound, simple reasoning and sometimes with convoluted, farfetched logic. And, of course, our way is always the right way.

I get irritated with Kevin, for example, because he never remembers to turn on the outside light next to the back door before coming to bed. I insist that light should be on because if a burglar or an axe murderer--you know, the same one who tried to break in through my creaky basement door the other morning, or one of his pals--is lurking around the back yard, the blazing 40-watt yellow bug light is going to deter him. The police might spot him in the brilliant clarity of that light, after all! I assume all burglars and axe murders are prudent and cautious fellows. You don't get successful in those lines of work by being slapdash and careless.

I say "we" because everyone I know justifies his or her methods of doing things with varying degrees of nuttiness. It's not just my own peculiarity. One friend told me her husband, who's a chef, insists on putting forks in the dishwasher tines down to avoid contaminating the eating surface with bacteria when grabbing the forks to remove them from the dishwasher. His way, you grasp the forks by the handles, thereby preventing bacteria on your hands from contaminating the tines. I pointed out that bacteria could, theoretically, travel down the handle to the tines. I mean, those little suckers can travel, or spread, right? His method seems pointless to me, but I'm sure it makes perfect sense to him.

******

I feel compelled to clarify my complaints about Kid Manager in my previous entry, after reading the lovely Lisa's comment (who has a great name!). It sounded like I was lumping all young recent graduates into the same group, and I didn't mean to do that. Wisdom most emphatically does not always come with age, and I think the young are often beset with uncertainty more than hubris. I know I was. Also, I've worked with many people in their early 20s who are better organized and more capable of staying on top of details than I am.

What bothers me is how common it's becoming to throw inexperienced people into managerial positions they're not ready for--and that it's often done because hiring someone right out of college is cheaper than paying, say, a middle-aged person with several years of applicable experience. I know staying in business is tougher these days for companies, but I think cutting corners without considering the consequences is a disturbing trend in business--at least, the business I'm in. Hiring practices are just one example, too. I could blather on ad nauseum and bore you to tears, but in short, I'm seeing major changes in several clients that are going to drastically reduce the quality of the books they publish. And that's a damn shame.

******

I have no big plans for New Year's Eve tonight. Daniel's going to his dad's, and Kevin is working until 10:00. We're planning a bed picnic--probably fruit, cheese, French bread, and wine--while watching the countdown on some channel. I don't know whether I can bear to watch the post-stroke Dick Clark, poor man, and I get quite enough of Ryan Seacrest on American Idol, so I'll have to find an alternative. Whatever you're planning to do, be safe, yes? Happy last day of 2006!

I'm buying WD-40 today

I got up this morning at 5:30, which is ridiculously early. I hate waking up when it's still dark outside, but I do enjoy having a quiet house to myself. So I was happily curled up on my couch reading and drinking coffee, when suddenly I heard a loud creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeak. I spilled half a cup of coffee on myself (which had, thankfully, cooled down to lower-than-magma temperatures) because I practically levitated off the couch. I knew which door it was right away. The door to the basement closes but doesn't actually latch; it has a lockplate that takes one of those old-fashioned keys, and I don't lock it because it's a pain in the ass. Besides, there's a locking door to the outside at the basement stair landing. The hinges need to be oiled, so it makes a creepy creaking noise, much like the sound effect starting off the radio program "The Shadow," every time we open it.

Anyway, I was convinced an axe murderer had broken in a basement window or the coal cellar chute, and was now inching that door open on his way to chop me into a bazillion pieces. I meant to dash upstairs to wake Kevin but was frozen in place, and I couldn't convince my legs to move. Just when I thought my heart was going to pound its way out of my chest, my cat Cairo strolled into the living room, trying to look nonchalant. That damn cat had been skulking around the basement; I suspect she goes down there to stalk mice or bugs or critters I don't want to know about. If we close the door while she's down there, she's figured out how to hook her paw under the bottom of the door and open it. If I'd had my wits about me, I would have remembered that, but a creaking door in a quiet house is one of the scariest noises I can imagine, and it set off my paranoid fantasies, I guess.

******

I don't mean to sound like a cranky old lady, but lately the publishing world has been taken over by kids just out of college. They have little to no work experience and don't know much about managing a project. It's not their fault; project management takes time to learn, and having an experienced person show them the ropes would be helpful. Like most businesses, however, publishing companies are going through heavy budget cutbacks, so these kids get thrown, without any preparation, into management jobs meant for people with far more experience.

One of these poor kids is managing a book I'm editing now; I worked on the previous edition with the same group of authors, who are hell to keep on schedule. The previous manager warned Kid Manager about them, and I had a long talk with her before taking on the book about the challenges of working with them and the importance of riding herd on them to keep the book on schedule. The first chapter was a week late--clearly a red flag--and it's been downhill from there. Kid Manager is supposed to send out weekly status reports to the authors and me, listing what's been done and what's due that week. She's done nothing to check on the book's status, however, and it's not my job to tell her how to do HER job.

We're now a month behind on the production side; the first chapter was supposed to have gone through its second author draft and my second edit on December 7. Kid Manager finally called me this morning to ask "How's the book going?" Uh, I've been sending her my own weekly status reports, yet she was shocked to hear no author seconds had been turned in. I know she has a heavier workload than she should because of personnel cutbacks, and as I said, she's young and inexperienced, but damn it, it's not rocket science to look at a schedule, compare it to a list of what's been turned in, and see that things haven't been done on time.

So she's trying to coordinate all four authors for a conference call next week in an attempt to get the book back on schedule. I don't have the heart to tell her--nor is it my place, really--that when a book is this far behind, there's no realistic way to make up for the lost time. I guess the silver lining is that she's going to learn a lot, and quickly, about book management with this project, but it's going to be a painful lesson for her, I'm afraid.