Lousy Weather

The weather has really been crappy this year - tons of rain, Hurricane Irene - and it's cost people psychologically and monetarily.

Put me in the money category.

We're having a rare October snow (a heavyweight one), and the branches have been coming down. Now, that's bad enough. But when one especially thick branch came down on our fence and destroyed a section of the fence.

Oy vey. You can see the mess in the pictures below. What might have cost of hundreds of dollars will probably now cost us about a thousand bucks. Of course, we have that much just lying about. (Sarcasm, naturally.) There's no way I'm going to ask my mother, because she's given us so much over the years. I'd ask my sister-in-law (my hubby's sister), but we'd be beholden to her forever, that's if she deigned to give us anything.

Yeah, she's watching her pennies despite her husband making well over $100K a year. Yeah, right.

Anyhoo, I do have two permanent job prospects, and I'm crossing my fingers that one of them pans out, especially as I have to explain away a firing from a few years ago. (I'll be honest about it; I just have to say it right and say it as if I mean what I'm saying.)

A permanent job would blunt the dough we'll have to cough up for this. ::sigh::

Do You Really What to Diss People?

Especially people who have a ton of knowledge on any particular subject?

This post on Kris Rusch's site really resonated with me today, because I'm going through something similar, except it's in the corporate office realm:

The Business Rusch: R*E*S*P*E*C*T

Which is why I can't really get into any long-winded post. All I'll say is that I feel like I've been sucker punched; I've been working very, very hard in this temp job, at a rate that's well below what I'm used to. (And I know: I was expecting to make anywhere near what I was making, but it's nice to bitch and moan about it occasionally. ;-))

Thus Kris' post. Read it, and see if you don't go WHAT?! about what some people had the temerity to tell her, someone who's won awards, someone who's run a publishing company, someone who was an editor at a fantasy mag, someone who's written fantasy, science fiction (SF), and romance novels. And those novels have sold quite a bit.

She knows her stuff. Duh.

Yet one guy tried to tell her how the publishing biz works, and the other said she didn't know how to write in whatever genre he was talking about.

Double duh. I finished reading one of her SF shorts (forget which one it is at the moment), and I just recently purchased the first in her Retrieval Artist series. The Retrieval Artist one I bought for two reasons: because the opening brought a tear to my eye and because the premise sounded really interesting.

Here's the Retrieval Artist one, if you're so inclined.

The moral of the story: Don't diss those who have a boatload of knowledge in whatever arena; that's called respect.

A Fascinating Read

I know I've been sort of absent of late, and it's due more to my busy/hectic/hellish schedule at my day job. This also happens to be Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and the foundation I work for has DVDs and other things that domestic violence agencies are clamoring for.

It all gets dumped on me.

Now, I think what they're doing is a good thing; but I've had to recreate a spreadsheet and color code it in order to get all this stuff out the door on time.

But I digress.

This post on Kristine Rusch's site is just a wonderful post that you MUST read. She makes comparisons among baseball, politics, and publishing that I'd never thought about. She also talks about how the G.I. Bill led to an explosion of readers after World War II. For those who don't know, after the guys came home from World War II, the U.S. government offered to pay their college tuitions through this bill.

Cool deal, hmm?

It all made sense to me, and that's speaking as a baby boomer.

Go and read it. Then re-read it.

And see if you agree that it's a fascinating read.