Last Sunday was a day of which nightmares are made.  This is true.  I’ve been on deadline for a good while now and in the last few weeks have been burning the oil all round the clock.  At this stage I typically steal short cat naps in between 20-30 page days.  Friday + Saturday had been marathon days, netting 55 pages.  I was smokin’.  (Not in the literal sense.)

So Sunday morning a week ago, 6 a.m., I stagger out of bed after about 3 hours sleep, flop in front of my PC and frown.

The screen is dark.   I jiggle the mouse, pound the keyboard, check all the wires.  My screen is D-E-A-D dead.  This goes both for my laptop screen and my external monitor (because I gotta have the print really big).

Beginning to tremble, I call the 1-800 number.   The dude on the phone tells me to restart the machine.

Now, really.  Isn’t that the first thing any of you do?  I did.  Many times.  Finally, the dude says, “We cannot fix this over the phone.  You must return the unit to us in a box.”

I AM ON DEADLINE.  Luckily, I saved my file to a backup drive, so I had my book file.  I stole Mr. R’s tiny netbook and continued writing, but my zone was smashed.  Argh!  Curses!  (And I did lots of that too, trust me.)

Net, I have to send off my PC to the manufacturer to have it fixed.  It is worth it, because laptops are really expensive and this one is under warranty.  But when my old one died, it cost more to fix it than it was worth.

The same for our TV and VCR.  The same for the washing machine and refrigerator.

Seems like most things don’t get fixed anymore.  Remember on Andy Griffith, they had Emmett the Fix-it Guy?  There are no Fix-it shops any more.  I was looking for a battery in my MP3 player because it’s not holding a charge anymore – no battery, I’m just supposed to toss it!  That gets stuck in my craw.

Although my mother reminded me just this weekend that I used to say if my toilet broke, I’d just get a whole new house.  I don’t think I meant that.

Are you a fixer or a thrower-outer?  What do you do when stuff breaks?  Do you call a repairman or your hubby or can you fix it yourself?  Anybody know an Emmett the Fix-it Guy?

PS:  This blog has been changed, LOL.   I found out the word I’d used for “thrower-outer” had very … um … different connotations elsewhere in the world.  Thanks to Goddess Archer for the save!

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We did a blog a few days ago on cat people and dog people.  Well, I have both, but today I am a Dog Person.

I have a dog named Loki.  He is named after the Norse god of mischief and the name is perfect for him.  We had some bumps with Loki at first and there were days I wished I only had cats when he was at the height of his puppydom.  But now he’s two and has settled down to be a nice, goofy, 75 pound lapdog who thinks he’s a cat.

(Sometimes he tries to get into the cats’ hideyhole, but only his nose fits.  He gets so sad.  It’s hysterical.)

Anyway, Loki is a good dog.  Today, though, he is a Very Good Dog.  Last night he thwarted would-be home intruders by barking and growling and snarling like he had all three heads of Cerberus.  Good dog.  Very Good Dog.  He is now Loki the Brave.  He got a mega-treat, given to him by my trembling hands.  Nobody was hurt, but it was scary and I was SO GLAD he was there.

This got me thinking about dogs who do heroic things.  Of course there is Lassie, whose barking always saved Timmy from the well.  There are therapy dogs and seeing eye dogs and companion dogs who help people every day.  You read about dogs who bark to wake their families, saving them from fires.

I like to put dogs in my books.  In my second book, HAVE YOU SEEN HER, the heroine has two identical German Shepherds, Jim and Jean Luc (yes, that’s my Star Trek nerdiness shining through).  She’s only allowed to have one dog in her apartment, so she walks them one at a time so her landlord won’t know.  Having two dogs helps save her life at one point in the book as the dogs fiercely protect her.

Do you have a brave pet?  Do you have a favorite brave pet story?  Who are your favorite fictional pets?

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I have a confession to make.  I am a bad friend.  Or maybe not.  You be the judge.

Last night, I picked my very good friend up from the airport.  Some facts in evidence:

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• The airport is an hour north of my house.
• It was dinner time.
• The airport is about 15 minutes from the Cheesecake Factory in Tampa, where we never get to go unless we’re in Tampa for a reason – like picking my friend up from the airport.
• I love chocolate.
• My friend is gluten intolerant.

Okay, so the family and I pick her up and we go to the Cheesecake Factory.  If you have never been, they serve a lot of different foods and CHEESECAKE.  Which should have been obvious.  There is one dessert on the menu my friend can have – the Godiva flourless chocolate cheesecake.

Everyone, all together:  OMG, AAAAAAH.  It really is that good.

More facts in evidence:

• We ate a lot of nutritious food in our dinners, she fish, me veggies. (Well, and steak, too, but it was lean.)
• We were full, so we ordered our cheesecake to go.
• She, being gluten intolerant, ordered the Godiva flourless cheesecake.
• Me, being a pal, ordered the same.  It is a sacrifice, I know, but I’m just that kind of girl.

So she comes to my house Saturday night because it is very late by the time we get home and by the time we got her to her condo and got back home, it would have been almost 2 am.  We put our cheesecake in the fridge and everyone goes to sleep.  Sunday morning we get up, Mr. R makes us a delicious gluten-free breakfast and she leaves to go to her condo, near the beach.

FORGETTING HER CHEESECAKE.

Now, here’s the bad friend part.  More facts in evidence:

• Her condo is 45 minutes from my house in good traffic.
• This time of year, it is bad traffic as all the spring breakers are here so it’s more like 65-70 minutes away. (Grrrr.)
• I won’t see her until next Saturday.
• The cheesecake is calling my name. Like, loudly.  “KAREN, I AM HERE.  I AM GODIVA.  RAWR!”

I CONFESS.  I ATE HER CHEESECAKE. Well, technically, I shared it with Mr. R and my daughter.  But it’s the same as eating her cheesecake, because that meant I didn’t have to share MINE with them.  Mr. R told me I should tell her it was still here, that I should even freeze it and give it to her next weekend.

Pah. Silly Mr. R.  Freezing cheesecake.  That would make it all mushy and I’m far too good a friend for that.  So as I sit here typing this blog, I am eating her cheesecake.  And Goddesses, it is good.

So, what’s the verdict?  Am I a bad friend for eating her cheesecake?  Remember, we are talking GODIVA here.  The really good stuff.  Would you have saved the cheesecake for your friend?  What are the limitations of your friendship?  Sharing your clothes?  Keeping their secrets?  Or are you a better friend than me, and there are no bounds to your friendship?

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“Time to make the doughnuts” means “Time to get to work,” right? Of course it does, if you remember the Dunkin’ Donuts commercial!  If you don’t, here’s my favorite Fred the Baker commercial:

“Where’s the beef?!?” means “All flash, no substance,” which you totally get if you remember Clara from the Wendy’s ads in the ’80s.

I love commercials.  Mr. R speeds through them or channel surfs during the ads, but I find them fascinating bits of cultural flavor, especially the ones that create expressions or iconic images that live long after the commercial is no more.

“Even Mikey likes it!”
“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”
“Pardon me – can you pass the Grey Poupon?”

Do you remember the Pepsi ad from the ’70’s with that adorable little boy being licked by even more adorable puppies?  I can still hear that boy’s laughter ringing in my ears and it still makes me smile.  If you’re too young to remember or just want a smile, here’s the link: watch?v=bQYEDLef9iQ

Local ads can be even more fun – the worse the better!  Mr. R and I still quote an ad that ran in the Cincinnati market back in the late 80’s – the Buy-Right Kid who sold bargain basement furniture.  He had a (bad) band.  And a wife who would only feed him frozen cookies for dinner.  Did I go to Buy-Right?  No way.  But 20 years later, I remember the ads almost word for word.   I’m not sure if that says something good about the ad-makers or something bad about me, LOL.

Do you like commercials?  Watch the Superbowl just for the ads? What commercials have stuck in your head over the years?  Do you have a favorite local ad?  And the million dollar question – do commercials influence your decision to buy a product?

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They say “information is power.”  Not sure who the “they” are, but “they” must be wise, right?

Hmmm.  Not so sure about that anymore.  In this age of info-at-a-click, we get deluged with data, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not feeling any more powerful than I did before.  In fact, I’m feeling a lot less powerful than before.

“Before what?” you ask.  Ahh.  Before THIS (cue scary music):

This is a dust mite.  It lives in your carpet and feeds on your dust.  (ICK!)

“Eat my dust!” you might say.  “Welcome to it!  Eat it all!  Saves me the trouble of vacuuming!”  You might say that, but you would be WRONG! (cue more scary music)

Because living in your dust is more ICK than you can shake a stick at.  Leading scientists say so, and we know they are never wrong.  So, living in your dust is:

• Shed bits of human skin, animal fur, decomposing insects
• Food debris
• Lint and organic fibers from clothes, bedding and other fabrics
• Tracked-in soil, soot, particulate matter from smoking and cooking
• And, disturbingly, lead, arsenic and even DDT.

These scientists have even come up with a computer algorithm to model how the dust gets in and leaves — IT NEVER LEAVES — and how your dust is different than your neighbors’ and your Aunt Didi who lives in Poughkeepsie.

This, my friends, is far more than I want to know.  I do not want to think about the bits of shed skin in my carpet or the decomposing insects that get into my food.  I am far, far happier not knowing.

Information may be power, but ignorance is bliss.  I like bliss.  Unfortunately, I’m also a power-hungry information junkie, so I’m totally conflicted.

The best thing I can do is not click on the articles with disturbing titles like “Dust’s Disturbing Components,” “Space Junk Collision Averted,” (whew!), and “Danger Lurks Under Megacities,” opting instead for comfort-reads such as “Kardashian’s Sizzling Mini” (it did indeed sizzle) and “Surprising Things You Can Recycle.”  (That recycling one was a real nail-biter.)

“How Asexual Species Survive” was one I couldn’t resist.  I clicked, therefore I know.  Whether I wanted to or not.

Are you an information junkie?  Do you click on articles?  Do you feel more informationally powerful than you did before?  What have you learned that you really did not want to know?  Did you read the one about Kardashian’s sizzling miniskirt?

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I just got a new Droid phone.  It’s a very cool phone and I’ve been playing with it for days.  One of the apps I downloaded was ringtones.  My ringtone used to be the Law & Order theme, then the Mission Impossible theme, for years.

But a new phone should have a new ringtone!  So many choices!  I downloaded lots of fun tones.  Right now the main tone is Travis Tritt’s A Great Day To Be Alive because it always makes me smile.  Dedicated tone for Mr. R is Martina McBride’s My Baby Loves Me (just the way that I am).  And notification for messages is “Grrr Argh.” (You’ll know this if you’re a Joss Whedon fan.)

My most recent heroine, Detective Olivia Sutherland in SILENT SCREAM, has the Loony Tunes theme play on her phone and when her boss calls, it rings “Bad To The Bone.”  I’ve given special ringtones to quite a few characters – it’s another way to individualize them, and it’s fun.

I think it would be fun to assign ringtones to historical characters, too, both fictional and real.  For example, George Washington’s phone would play We’re Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister.  Take that, English monarchy!

What’s your ring tone?  If you don’t have one, but could pick one, what would it be? What tone do you think your fave book character might pick, either historical or contemp?  What about real historical figures?

And just to make it interesting, I’m giving away an arc of SILENT SCREAM to one lucky poster!

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I just returned from NYC, where I spoke at the NJ RWA convention.  (Waving to Donna and Elsie, who I saw on Saturday!)  I had a very good time and the NJ chapter members were simply wonderful.

After the convention, I spent Sunday with my oldest daughter, who’d come with me.  We walked around 5th Ave area on Sunday afternoon and then she asked to go to the American Girl Place.  For those who haven’t heard of it, it’s a doll store.  A freaking huge and cool doll store.   We walked in and said, “Wow, it’s bigger than we thought.”  Then we realized it has 4 stories!

Oldest told me that she’d fallen in love with American Girl when she was 11 years old.  Unfortunately, that was right about the time I got laid off and we had very little money.  She didn’t ask for a doll then.  She knew things were tight.  Now we could afford a doll, but the one she’d fallen in love with was discontinued .  Nevertheless, we explored every square inch of that doll store.  When we got to the top, we found a cafe, where you could have tea!

So we did.  We were the only ones in the cafe without a little girl at our table, LOL, but we had a simply wonderful time.  We ate the little sandwiches and my daughter told me the story about every one of the dolls in the place.   She read the back of the menu to me – it was the story of the store founder, who’d started the store after spending a lovely day at the ballet with her own daughter.

I was so touched that the founder understood it’s not just a store – it’s a place where memories are made.  We eked out every drop of wonderfulness out of the place and it was so very sweet.

Then later (sshh) I found the Samantha doll my daughter had wanted on Ebay.  Samantha is on her way to FL and I can’t wait to see my daughter’s face when I give it to her!  I’m eight years late, but better late than never!

Where were your fondest memories made?  Did you ever go back and do something later that you had wanted to do before and couldn’t?  Did you ever fall in love with a doll?

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