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Saturday, June 17, 2006

Oops! Almost Forgot

I almost forgot to blog this morning. Actually, it wasn't that I forgot, it's more like I thought I'd already done it and then realized that I hadn't.

The reason why I almost forgot was my quest for shampoo. My stylist got me hooked on Alterna hair care products and then the salon stopped selling them. That means a trip online to find them. The first time I ordered from a seller on Amazon, one who ended up getting really bad ratings although I didn't have a problem with them. Of course, I also ordered a fortune in product so maybe they were extra careful with me. Now I'm almost out of shampoo and this seller is no longer on Amazon. Which I guess is just as well since they had such lousy reviews.

The quest for a new seller begins, but I wanted one that was carrying all the stuff I wanted to order and there wasn't one. Sigh. The problem is that I don't want to buy the 12 oz size, I want the big 32 oz size because I hate having to order constantly. Next I searched for what I wanted online and turned up a ton of sellers, none of which I could be sure of since they're unknown to me. I even tried eBay, but the shipping costs were ridiculous! $10 plus $2 insurance and the cost was $1 cheaper than retail. I don't think so.

I finally found a salon in Peru, IL that carried everything I wanted in the size I wanted it in, plus had free shipping. Couldn't find a review on them either, but I took the chance because I have relatives who live in Peru and I figured if worse came to worse, I could ask them to swing by the salon and get my money back or my product. I also--for good or for ill--tend to put more stock in the integrity of small businesses in the Midwest. We'll see what happens in the next week or ten days.

I officially moved the pictures of Kimi and Nic from my Characters To Be Written/Working On page to my Characters Done page! Yea! I know it's silly, but it's kind of a tradition for me now and signifies that a book is done. Of course, there'll be revisions, but the big work is done. Now if I could just move Ryne and Deke. ;-)

Speaking of Ryne and Deke, the second half of the WIP is as uneven as I feared. The transitions are very rough and that's going to require work. There are also paragraphs that come out of nowhere. I know what they're about (luckily I remember), but no reader will be able to follow my train of thought. I guess this kind of ties into transitions as well, but I don't consider it that way because the problem is that there is NO transition. :-) I'm almost done reading now--just another 50 pages--and I'll start working on revisions. First half shouldn't be too bad, second half is going to be a bitch. I've got a lot of work to do.

Rained like mad here yesterday, we even had hail. I had a small lake in my backyard and those helicopter seeds from the tree in my yard plugged up part of my gutter even though I have that grate on top of them. My dad wanted to go out on a ladder in the rain. Sigh. I talked him out of that. He was over working on my cabinet for the computer room. He got a lot done too.

I have to get moving since the Quest for Shampoo ended up taking much longer than I'd planned.