Coming home to freeze.

Well, as this is the internet age, I have not been able to blog about the fact that for the past ten days, the husb and I were actually out of the country. We were in the Central American nation of Belize, specifically in the town of San Pedro on Ambergris Caye. I trust all of my blog visitors but not the internet at large, so I didn't mention anything at the time.

We had a great time, although we had the non-foresight to go during the rainy season, which means we spent a good percentage of our time inside, watching HGTV (which is where I saw all those stinking Cadillac and Glade commercials). Nevertheless, it was good fun, and we had a smooth trip home yesterday and are now freezing our tushes off in sunny Southern California. It was 100 degrees here the day after we left, and 45 degrees when we returned home last night. But I'm an autumnophile (fun to say if you pronounce the "n"--au-TUM-no-phile), so I'm pretty happy about it. Although we're going to a wedding tonight on the beach and I don't know what to wear to prevent freezing my tush off further.

Belize is a fun place and worth a blog post of its own, but for now I need to go get some slippers on my icy toes and try to find something to wear to the wedding.

So in the meantime, please accept my apologies for my slowness in responding to comments and my not being able to get around to many blogs. We had internet access, but we had to go down the beach to the bar to get it. Then we had to try to rush to finish up before the bartender came, or it would feel awkward that we were sitting there but not ordering drinks--even at 10 o'clock in the morning.

So happy weekend, everybody! More soon.

Hands off!

Happy Independence Day to my fellow USA'ers!



You may or may not have heard that California recently enacted a handsfree-only rule for cell phones in cars. I've never been much of a cell phone-in-car user, so this news wasn't particularly devastating to me. In fact, I found it pretty darn exciting. I think everyone in the world has had the experience by now of being nearly sideswiped, run off the road, or stranded in the middle of an intersection due to the thoughtless driving of someone with a cell phone glued to his/her ear.

Finally! A relief from the tyranny of the attention-impaired.

Tuesday morning started off auspiciously, as I passed several drivers who apparently hadn't heard the news, chatting happily away on their cell phones.

I also passed several drivers who, being forced to hang up and drive, had found other uses for their time--putting on makeup, eating breakfast, searching through their purses, reading the paper...

After a while, I began to wonder if I had been imagining how many drivers really did use cell phones in their cars, before the ban was enacted. Because it seemed so natural NOT to see everyone around me with phone pressed to ear. Could there really have been a time when every other car featured a Chatty Cathy? When my driving experience had been so impeded by my fellow drivers' carelessness?

Can anyone guess where I'm going with this?

Here's the thing--with the cell phone drivers gone, I discovered a new, possibly even more dangerous type of driver on the road:

Me.

The driver who wants to know who's still talking on the phone. Who's breaking the rules? You? That guy? That lady over there?

Yes, I craned my neck, sped up and slowed down, abused my rearview mirrors, and generally put everyone in as much danger as if I had been carrying two cell phones and talking on both of them at the same time.

I'm not proud of myself. And as the week went on, I forced myself to mind my own beeswax and keep my eyes on the road.

But I thought you should be warned: the nosey drivers are on a rampage!

The tale of a shameless no-show

Eek! Long time no blog. I'm sorry for the unannounced absence; we ended up going out of town on a last-minute work thing for the husb. We spent a day and a half in a small city outside Nashville and then drove to Atlanta to see some family and friends. It was a nice trip... for the most part. The lowlight was showing up at the airport nearly two hours before our flight home and not being able to check in. We got in the massive ticketing line and called the 800 number, and the person there told us we were listed as no-shows--but of course, we were still an hour and a half from our flight time.

Then we proceeded to wait in line for an hour and a half, ignored by the roving woman who decided to help everyone around us but decided we were for some reason below her notice, while the line behind us grew and grew and the staff at the counter shrank and shrank, until, at one point, there were two people back there at eight stations (many of which still said they were open).

When we got to the front of the line, we had missed our flight, and the woman looked at us as if we had just fallen off the back of the chicken truck and said, "Well, you ARE no-shows. You should have checked in a long time ago."

You THINK?

Then she said, "We're supposed to charge $50 a person if you miss your flight and have to be rebooked." And despite seeing the line behind us, she had a hard time believing that we had actually been at the airport for quite some time. Which, to me, means that they're going to have to start giving you a little receipt that says "REJECTED AT 9:35 AM" or something. It's been a long time since someone just assumed I was a liar and basically called me that to my face, and let me tell you, it's pretty insulting.

(But you still have to be nice, or they'll book you a "seat" in the cargo hold of a flight that leaves next Tuesday.)

At that point, I almost lost my sense of inner poise, but we were put on the stand-by list for two later flights and sent on our way. We decided to hang in the Crown Room (thank you, corporate credit card) and on going inside that lovely location were met by a ticket counter staffed by five bored but extremely courteous women. I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that when someone "disappears" from the main ticket counter, *poof!* she sneaks up to the Crown Room and tries to look like she's working.

It was pretty awful. I haven't ever been in an airport line situation before where they didn't walk the line and call out people who might miss their flights. The girl in front of us missed hers, and had to go to an ATM and get cash to pay for something or other, since the credit card system wasn't working. Then she ran to her gate and the woman she was with was like, "Oh, I forgot to give her the change!"

Anyway, that's that. That's my punishment for being away from the blog for so long, I guess.

Thank you for all the compliments on the new look! And thanks also to those of you who are clicking the pre-order link and signing up to be notified when the book is available for pre-order.

The high point of the travel (not the trip, because the trip had a lot of its own merits) was the fact that used my Amazon Kindle so much. And that means I'm finally ready to write the review I've been promising for, oh, four months. I'll post it tomorrow.

I hope everybody is happy and healthy. I'm going to visit some blogs now!

Confession time!

I owe my editor a revised draft of my manuscript next week, so in the meantime, I'm crazy busy.

In sewing news, last week I busted out Butterick 4919 because, and this is not the kind of thing you can really announce in advance on the internet, we went on the husb's company cruise this weekend! I finished the approximately 12 feet of hem Friday morning an hour before we left to catch the boat. The dress was great except that it was soooo low cut in front, especially compared to the illustration on the pattern. Before I wear it again, I'll definitely tack that closed. The result is that the photos are going to require a lot of Photoshopping, because not only is my bra showing in most of them (just the tiniest bit), but that tiny bit of bra has a weird little tuft of thread on it, so it looks like I'm just wearing the most ghetto support garments ever. (Tim Gunn would faint dead away.)

Oh well! The dress was kind of a statement -- the fabric is crazy bright colors that reflect the husb's company colors (what can I say, I love a theme!), and it looked especially bright compared with everyone else's sedate blacks and blues and dark greens. But it was very fun to wear, and I would definitely make the pattern again. I'll post a review over at Pattern Review within a week. I don't have any photos of myself on my camera, or I'd post one.

Okay, off to write! Duty calls!

Nice city... I guess I'll stay forever.

Well, some people like to leave a city on their "scheduled departure" day. But I think that's so pedestrian. I decided to throw a major snowstorm, arrange for the cancellation of hundreds of flights, and stay an extra weekend in New York. Those in the know will understand the significance of being in a Times Square hotel on St. Patrick's Day. The only saving grace is the 35-degree weather -- might scare away the amateurs, leaving only the most hardcore and obnoxious drinkers. Locked away in the second -floor lounge all day, anyone?

So anyhoo, I didn't update after my Author's Day Out on Tuesday. We hauled ourselves out of bed mid-morning (we have pretty much remained on our West Coast schedule, what can you do?) and started the walk toward the selected restaurant, which happened to be Mesa Grill. Ye olde husband has been dying to go to Mesa Grill for just about ever, so he was excited. We meandered the 30 blocks and made a brief stop at H&M (I need to remember we have one in Pasadena), then went to Mesa.

Lovely Editor and Agent M were there. We had a really grand lunch. We talked about all kinds of things -- a lot of reminiscing about teenagedom, some talk about the city, and life in general, and a bit about the book. Titles are still a major area of consideration, because we want to make sure the title is a great reflection of both the category and the paranormal element. After lunch, we went up to the Hyperion Books for Children offices and met a lot of the people who work there. It's really fun to have faces to attach to the names (and walls to attach to the place).

Then we went down to Agent M's office and took up way too much of his valuable last-day-before-going-out-of-town time chatting about current and future projects.

Then, to get back to our hotel, we mastered the beast that is the New York City subway system. Yes, it bows before us. We are its masters.

It was really fun, and as I mentioned to the husb (hip new term I just invented), one of the things that made it so cool (aside from the fact that we spent the whole day talking about me, ha ha ha) is that it's something we've never done before. Meet with editor and agent, talk about projects? It's different in person.

I really do like New York City.

But please cross those fingers that our flight makes it out tomorrow!

Bye!

The lullaby of Broadway...

So, yes, I think I failed to mention before now that I'm in New York this week.

Nice city. I thought I would hate it. I'm not usually a fan of crowds or crowded places or any kind of chaos or loudness. But for some reason, it doesn't bug me. It just seems to fit.

(I think part of me is still convinced we're just on a studio backlot.)

We looked into staying at the famous Algonquin, but at the last minute decided on another little boutique hotel. Very cute, niiiice employees, comfy beds, free internet. We weekended with my brother and his wife, got some whirlwind tours of the city, which is nice because now we don't feel like we need to do it ourselves.

Yesterday we arrrived in Midtown Manhattan and explored. We saw the view from Rockefeller Center, bought Winston a vibrating dog toy that is sure to be his nemesis (how strange the life of a dog -- "We missed you, Winston! Here's something you will instinctively hate so much that you're going to spend three weeks trying to kill it! Aren't you glad to see us?")...

Today, lunch with Agent M and the Lovely Editor. Tomorrow, Mary Poppins on Broadway. In between, I'm getting another Swatch. And that's about all we have planned. I did want to try to get some writing done at some point. So we'll see if that happens.

On the dog show front: my company produces an American version of the renowned British show "Crufts". Last year I totally called the winner -- ("You should call Larry Fenner. He's taking his Australian Shepherd") -- this year, I did not TECHNICALLY call the winner (Ch. Araki Fabulous Willy), but I kind of did, in that I have been pasting his ads all over the walls (yes, top show dogs have ads), because they say, "EVERYONE LOVES A FABULOUS WILLY."

Turns out everyone does! Anyway, because of this, I consider myself 2 for 2.

Sorry to be irrelevant and absent. Today is an exciting day. Lunch should be fun.

(Excuse my spelling errors, I am using ye olde Powerbook, and the key pressure is quite different.)