The Old Normal is Dead

I never ceased to be amazed by corporate America. The latest and greatest is their determination that things are going to return to "normal" come hell or high water. (Normal being a relative term, of course.)

My specific gripe is the insistence on everyone coming to the office every day. Never mind that we successfully worked from home and got everything done for the first fifteen months of the pandemic. Never mind that a lot of people want to work from home or at least have a generous hybrid model.

No, none of that matters. Force them to commute, spewing CO2 into the atmosphere. Force them into the office when they don't want to be there. The executives want everything to go back to the way things were before COVID.

I know I'm not alone in this desire to work from home and that other companies besides mine are freaking insistent on making employees work in the office whether there's a reason for them to be there or not. It's frustrating nonetheless.

I don't know if there's a complete lack of trust by the executives or if they think that if they force us into the office long enough we'll think: Oh, yeah, I love commuting in to sit in a cheap, uncomfortable desk chair and be surrounded by noise and chaos because of the ridiculous open office concept.

Dudes (and almost all them are dudes), this is NOT happening. When I work in the office, I'm so exhausted by the time I get home, I can't do anything. When I work from home, I have energy. I have time to do things and time to write.

That's the big one. When I work from home I can write in the evenings. When I work in the office, I'm so zombified by the time I get home that I just stare at a screen--either the TV or the phone.

For the past month, we were able to work from home again and it was all that was awesome in the world. Literally the best month of my working career. The fifteen months previously where I got to work from home was pretty damn good, too, but anxiety about COVID hung over most of that time. But now that I'm fully vaccinated with the booster, I don't have the same level of fear. Concern, yes. I still have that.

I want to work from home forever. But we're forced in anyway. It doesn't matter what we want. The old normal is dead, dudes. Get over it and embrace the new normal.

Claustrophobic Introvert

Recently at my day job, my entire department was moved to the new standard remodeled area. This includes brand new cubes. I'd like to share with you a claustrophobic introvert's living hell.

Yes, that's all the personal space I'm allowed and when I turn around in my chair, I frequently bang into the wall or the bookcase. Notice how at least a quarter of the bookcase is basically unusable because of the desk. I keep my gym bag down on the bottom shelf in the back because I can grab the strap and pull it out. If not for that, that space would be sitting empty because of accessibility.

The upper left hand side of the bookcase originally had yet another shelf, making that space virtually unusable as well, but I took out one of the three (!!!) shelves jammed in that quadrant to allow taller items to be placed there. And the drawer space? Horrifyingly tight. Maybe it works for the men in the office since they don't have purses, but for women, it's grossly less that what's needed.

Also when we moved into the cubes, we were given new chairs. Chairs with only two controls to adjust it for ergonomic comfort. My back aches after sitting there for a while.

Let me also complain about the short cube walls--the better to spread germs with during flu season--and the complete lack of privacy. Awesome! There's supposed to be some noise cancelling system in there, but apparently it's not activated yet because I can hear a lot of conversations.

I didn't want this entire post to be a bitch session--I'd hoped to inject some humor--but sadly, there's nothing funny about this new corporate standard. Let me close out with the one cool thing (absolutely the only thing I like about this new arrangement). That shiny white surface on the right-hand side? It's a white board! OMG, do I love this! If I ever get my office at home usable again, I might have to do a white board in there. It seems like it would be super awesome for laying out characters/plot points and other story things.

Required Reading

For my day job, our boss wants us to read this business book. He bought us all a copy and we're supposed to read a number of chapters every week for discussion in our staff meetings. That might be torturous enough, but if it were written like a typical, non-fiction business book, I'd probably be able to get through it. This business book, however, is presented in a fictional way with dialogue and story and all that.

Now this is a problem for me because I can't make myself stop critiquing fiction, and while this might be a fine business book, I'm having issues with the fictional aspects.

First, it's written as first person which is a tense I really strongly dislike in fiction. Back in the day, I've been known to drive back to the bookstore to return books I discovered were written in first person after I'd gotten them home. But it gets worse. It's in PRESENT tense. I can't run away fast enough from fiction written in present tense. That is a total deal breaker for me.

Second, I've only read six chapters so far and there have been so many characters introduced, I can't keep them all straight. I can see already that most of these characters are unlikely to make a reappearance at any point in the book and yet almost all of them have names.

Third, the portrayal of the protagonist's wife. OMG, she's written as selfish and shallow and very much a whiner. She's very much a two-dimensional cardboard cutout character. It angers me that this woman is presented so unsympathetically. Now granted, the story is first person (PRESENT TENSE!) from the husband's point of view, but if he's married to her, you'd think there's be some positive things to be said about her.

Fourth, the pointless descriptions. Now, I'm not a huge fan of description to begin with, but if it's important for the reader to know (like what the character looks like) or if it advances the story in some way, that's necessary. As I'm reading many of the descriptions in the beginning of the book, I'm thinking, "Why do I need to know this?" Maybe I'll be proven wrong since I have a long way to go, but I'm pretty sure they serve no point other than to make word count.

Additional annoyances are a huge overuse of exclamation marks. !!!!! Gah!!!!! And the first names of the characters are overused in dialogue to the point it reads like a soap opera script. I will concede, though, that this book was written in the 1980s and even romance books from that time frame suffered an overuse of names in dialogue.

This book has excellent ratings and I'm sure it's a wonderful business book, but as a work of fiction, it's pretty weak. If the business guy had written the book by himself, this would be more understandable, but he had a co-writer. One would assume this other guy had some experience writing fiction and there wouldn't be this annoying conglomeration of issues. One would be wrong. There is no excuse for a professional writer putting out a book that looks like this.

Unfortunately, I must slog onward. Unfortunately, it's hard to grab the business lesson I'm supposed to be learning when all I can see are the issues with the fiction. :-/ There might be more rants ahead as I slog through this thing. I'll apologize in advance.

What It's Like To Work For an Airline

This is another blog topic by request post. Feel free to put in your request in comments, via Twitter or in email.

What's it like working for an airline? If you've read Dilbert, you pretty much know what it's like. Unfortunately, I'm not joking.

I work in Technical Operations in the office, so I don't deal with passengers, I can't tell you anything about fares or sales, and I can't help you find your luggage. :-) Sorry, I'm useless. I do input information into the database where we organize what work needs to be done to keep the planes flying safely and at what intervals. You're welcome. :-)

The specific questions that were requested involved stress levels, job security, and if this job is different from any other corporate job.

Since Dilbert is almost universally funny to people, I think I'm safe in saying that no, my job doesn't differ much from any other corporate job. Before I moved cubes--twice--my wall was covered with Dilbert cartoon strips that struck a particular chord. Many other people here have Dilbert cartoons up, too. Enuf said?

Job security and stress level go hand in hand. There's never been job security. From the time I started with the airline, we've hopped from crisis to crisis. It seems like there's a continual threat of layoffs and if I had to do it over again, I would have gone into another field, something with more stability. I put off buying a house for years, wanting to wait until there was some smooth waters. Finally, I thought, hey, if I want a house, I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and do it.

I did. I love my house. I picked out the flooring, the wall colors, the fixtures, even the handles on the cabinets. I've been in it for five years--and my job was relocated to Atlanta. I have to report there in January.

I was here when 9/11 happened. I was here a couple of weeks later when half the people on the floor I worked on were laid off. I was here when oil went over $100 a barrel and there were layoffs. I was here when our pilots went on strike and I was laid off after a couple of weeks, then recalled when they settled. This year, oil prices are going up again. There's early outs being offered. Stress is high again. Will I still have a job after I move to Atlanta? And if so, for how long? I have no idea.

I'm kind of focused on the negative here, and there really is a lot of that, but there are definite benefits. The travel for one. It's not as easy to get anywhere now flying standby, but once upon a time, I used to travel a lot.

My favorite trip was when I took four weeks off and went to Australia with my parents. I had some perfect attendance passes, and back then, the company paid the taxes on them, so the flight was completely free. Australia is without question the most awesome place I've ever been. I saw Sydney and Townsville, Cairns and Fraser Island. We went up to Papua New Guinea and over to Ayers Rock and Alice Springs. I wanted this trip badly enough that I would have gone at some point, but working for the airline allowed me to go sooner and stay longer.

And by and large, I work with some awesome people. There's always a clunker or two, of course, but mostly airline people form a bond. After all, we've been through a lot of downs together. :-)

My job has also allowed me to visit most of the United States. It helped get me to the nation of Kiribati, and let's face it, who goes to Kiribati? :-)

Twice the Fun?

Lat week at work I got dual monitors for the computer. Because of the programs I work in and what my job entails, this is something I really needed and it will make everything so much easier. Once I get used to it.

I'm a tech/gadget person and my computer equipment at home is impressive. I tell people that if we can run a major airline on the computers we have at work that I can launch the space shuttle from my house. But the one thing I don't have at home is dual monitors. In all honesty, I don't need them. I have an iMac for my desktop computer and the screen is enormous and the laptop screen is fine as is.

So far, I'm having a hell of a time remembering where to click. I've typed in the wrong document many times and I never did get the cool Maldives dual screen wallpaper to load correctly. I gave up on that and just have my Tahiti wallpaper up on each screen.

It is very nice, though, to be able to see my spreadsheet without having to click between windows. I can reference the data I need and enter it in one step instead of many. If I could just remember that just because I'm looking at one screen doesn't mean that's the active window. Yeah, I look from the left screen to the right one and start typing, only to discover my left program is still the active one. Sigh.

I'm sure I'll get used to this, too. Eventually.

We're Doomed - Removed

This blog was removed because Human Synergistics International (the company who holds the rights to the training material that was used in the class I talked about here) sent a take-down notice claiming my quoting of four sentences violated their copyright.

I believe their take-down notice to be without merit. As an author, I respect copyright and I believe the quote was covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.

However, despite this, I've removed the post. It's not worth the time or energy arguing about a blog article that was nearly two years old when the notice was received.

Adventures In Tractor Assembly

Everyone who works in Technical Operations at my airline is required to go to Human Factors Training. It's a two-day course to try to make people more aware that little things can start an accident chain. That's a real loose definition, but it's the best I can do to condense all those hours of training down to one sentence.

On the first day, we were split into five groups of five, given a plastic container with Lego pieces and 3 assembly instruction books, and told to assemble a tractor. Only it wasn't quite that easy. First we had to assign roles to each member of the group. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I ended up as group leader. We also had an inspector, a wheel and brake guy, a guy who could only assemble black plastic pieces, and another who could only touch pieces that weren't black. Oh! And a materials guy. He was the only one who could hand pieces to those doing the assembly.

The age range according to Lego was 7-13. Surely, five adults (four of whom are airplane mechanics) can assemble something a seven-year-old child could. Even if we were only allowed 45 minutes.

If you said of course, you'd be wrong. :-)

When I mentioned three different instruction books that would be because there were parts for three different products in the box--a race car, a weird motorcycle thing, and our tractor. I grabbed the motorcycle instructions by mistake. The thing looked like a tractor to me. Luckily, I figured it out before we started putting pieces together.

First human factors crisis averted.

Lego does not put words in their instructions. It's all pictures. I do better with words with images as illustrations than with pictures alone. Strike one. Also, I found Lego's images ambiguous on where to attach things. So did my team.

We tried to line up with colors since there were red, blue, gray and green pieces in addition to the black. Lego didn't always show the color or at least we couldn't see it. Lego also would list we needed two pieces of the same type, but only show one being attached in their drawing. That forced us to page ahead trying to see where to put the second piece, and when that wasn't readily findable, guessing. Later, we'd find where the piece went and have to try to fit it on after we'd gone past that stage.

It took a while, but we finally built up some momentum. And then the instructor said shift change. That meant the guy who'd just started figuring things out had to hand off his job to someone else. Not long after this, the instructor started asking how we were doing and when we'd be finished.

This was a human factors element because mechanics would be dealing with this in the hangars. Me? This didn't bother me very much because it's a different mindset in the office--at least to some degree. I did nearly tell the instructor, though, that we'd be done faster if he'd stop bothering us. :-)

The first team finishes their tractor in 35 minutes. It looks like a tractor. I look down at ours. We're still working on the center assembly and looks nothing like a piece of farm equipment. A second group finishes their tractor and a third group right behind them. My group is still working.

Pieces fall off our center assembly when we turn it to add a new Lego. This isn't good.

Time is called. We're not even close to finished.

Our tractor is still only the center assembly and now our work is going to be critiqued. All the guys who finished their tractors had made mistakes on things. Well, I thought, we might not have made it too far, but at least what we did was correct. It wasn't. We'd attached part of the assembly in the wrong place. We failed. Utterly.

Since this is training what were the lessons learned? The big thing was that we should have divided the work and had more than one guy working at a time. I didn't think of that because I like to follow instructions step by step and not jump around. The second thing I learned was that I should never be in charge of a project like this. I have no experience in building things and can't make informed decisions. The only good thing about my being the leader is that I didn't have to do any assembly. Believe me, our tractor would have ended up in worse shape than it was if I had.

On Day Two, we were given a plane crash scenario--we are survivors of a plane crash, but we're in the desert and it's a 135 degrees. Rank the importance of the items you have. Then he told us to work in our tractor teams. My announcement? We're doomed.

Back to the Future

The other week, I was reading through the company policy for dress code. You see, I have a bunch of training coming up this month and it says right on the page that we are expected to meet the dress code requirements. I figured I'd better know what they were. (For those of you unaware, my company was bought by another and we've had a bit of adjusting to do.)

Some of it made sense like covering tattoos or not allowing jewelry to be worn in piercings other than the earlobe. The tattoos because you never know what might offend a customer and the piercings... Well, let me tell you about the time I went to Waldenbooks and the boy behind the counter had a piercing under his bottom lip. He wore a thin bar in the hole, and because he couldn't move his bottom lip to talk, he was incomprehensible when he spoke. I kept leaning in and going, "Huh?" It's just common sense to not wear something that makes it impossible to speak clearly.

Some of the dress code stuff made me shake my head and go WTF? No jeans, not even on Fridays. Shirts must be tucked in. Men must wear ties if meeting with someone from outside the company. Socks/hosiery are a must. Um, our headquarters is in Atlanta, GA and they expect women to not go bare-legged with a skirt or dress in the summer? Seriously? I live in Minneapolis and I never wear socks in the summer.

There was a bunch of stuff like this and it left me wondering why this dress code was so old fashioned. NWA was pretty conservative when I first started, but even they loosened up more than this.

I kept reading in a kind of rapt horror. Then I saw the tell-tale sentence: No wearing Walkmans in areas where it would be dangerous to do so.

From this, I'm assuming this dress code was written in what? 1980 and apparently hasn't been updated since. Please send me back to the future.

Language Precision

I have a ton of training to take at work over the next month. One of these classes was last Thursday and was filled with engineers. It was also taught by an engineer. The class was supposed to take an hour, but I looked around the room and thought, No way are we getting out of here that quickly. The only thing that might save me is the class went from 10am to 11 and a lot of engineers go to lunch at 11.

It didn't take long for me to groan silently to myself. One of the first manual sections we reviewed contained the words: and/or. An engineer asked for clarification, and when he received it, began to argue that it should be and, not and/or.

One of the things that still amazes me is how many engineers demand exact precision in language and how literally they'll take every word. Some don't, but a lot do. And just try using the secondary definition of a word. Yeah, argument time for sure.

Nothing makes me crazier than when I'm talking to one of them and I say something like, "You should wear a red shirt on Fridays--" I don't even get to finish that sentence before they'll jump on the phrasing. You see they take should to be an order and don't like that. Never mind that I'm not trying to give an order. I'm just saying that I heard wearing a red shirt on Fridays is a way to show support for the US troops, but they think I'm telling them they have to wear a red shirt. Sigh.

So there we are in training with an engineer arguing over and/or and other engineers jumped in to support him. The engineer leading the course took a note, deciding that his fellow brethren had a point--and/or wasn't precise enough.

This is the way the entire class went, but that was about the only time anyone in that room participated. The instructor would ask a question and they'd all sit there. When you're told up front that the entire class would circle back to one fact, wouldn't you make a note of it? And when the question was asked, wouldn't you give that answer? Apparently not if you're an engineer. I, however, have a journalism degree. I did note it and when the rest of them sat there, I gave the correct answer. :-)

And yes, the class did run over, but only about 10 or 15 minutes. I feared it was going to be much worse.

Adventures Can Happen Anywhere

Adventures can happen in the oddest places at the oddest times. Yesterday I had one when I least expected it.

I was supposed to go to SET training yesterday, but a half an hour before it started, I was told to go to Part 145 Mod 1 training instead. I know, the names don't mean anything to you, but it helps keep them straight as I talk. SET training was 45 minutes, Part 145 Mod 1 is 4 hours.

This changes also required me to mentally shift my schedule for the day. Not my favorite thing because I'm not a real fan of spur of the moment anything. I like time to plan, and although this is far cry from say, hopping on a plane and flying to Singapore, it's still a disruption to my mental organization and I don't like this. I always end up feeling frazzled as my mind tries to adjust to the new plan.

The Part 145 Mod 1 training is in a training room above Hangar 4. This is an area of the building that I'm unfamiliar with because I never go over there. Keep in mind that lining the hallways are rooms to clean airplane parts, shops that fix parts, boxes with parts, and all the other equipment needed to fix airplanes. When I say the training room is over hangar 4, I mean it is directly over hangar 4, so I'm in the maintenance operation area.

I'll skip all the training stuff, including the fact that I nearly got bumped out of the room, and get to my inadvertent adventure.

We get a break and I seek out a restroom. I went down the hallway by the training room, but there's just more training rooms. I go down the stairs and to my left. I find the men's room, but that doesn't help me. Someone finally points me the other direction and tells me it's down by the garage door (remember, I'm in the hangars area.)

I thought I missed it. I walked and walked and walked and there are multiple "garage doors" all over this place. I was thinking I was going to have to ask someone for help, when I finally spotted it. Whew! It's actually a fairly large bathroom with those round fountain type sinks like you sometimes see in grade schools. I wash and dry my hands, put some lotion on, and leave to head back to class.

I stop short just outside the door. This doesn't look right. Which way do I go?

I study the area, trying to figure out which way to turn. This really looks unfamiliar. In fact, it doesn't even look like a hallway, it looks like a hangar. How can I come in from the hallway, and when I leave, it's a hangar?

The light bulb goes on. There must be two doors!

I turn around and go back in the bathroom. Sure enough, there are two doors. I go out the other one, the one I would have known to use if I'd 1) been paying attention when I walked in. That side of the bathroom was much different than the opposite side. 2) wasn't completely directionally challenged. 3) wasn't already feeling a bit frazzled about being late getting back to class because of how far the restroom was from the training room.

This time I am in the hallway, but I still have to figure out which way to go. Yes, I am that directionally challenged and the other items in the previous paragraph apply here, too. I chose left. I had a 50/50 shot and I was right! Woot!

Of course, I still needed help finding my way back to the main hallway after class, but that's another story.

Adventures In Chair Assembly

At work on Tuesday, the 757 engineers received new desk chairs. Unassembled.

(In case you're wondering why I didn't get a new chair, it's because I'm no longer part of 757 Engineering. I'm now in Maintenance Programs and under a different manager.)

My first thought upon seeing this unassembled chairs is that this should be right up an engineer's alley. Most of them have hobbies that seem to involve putting things together--or taking things apart and then putting them back together. Apparently, chairs are another story.

Instructions? We don't need no stinking instructions! Then he turns to me and asks what he should do first. I said I think you'd start by putting the casters in the base. It makes sense, right? Start at the bottom? So he opens the plastic bag with the casters and hands me the instructions. A quick glance at the paper said I was right, but even after asking me do you think that's what the engineer did? Um, no.

While I'm perusing the directions, he decides to insert the pneumatic cylinder into the seat bottom. The reason I know it was the pneumatic cylinder is that's what it was called in step 2. I would have just called it the tube thing. ;-)

When I glanced up and saw what he was doing, I was like, dude, that's step 2 and you're putting the cylinder in the wrong place anyway. I showed him Figure 1.

At his objection to having to follow the instructions, I said, "I'm glad I'm not going to be sitting in that chair." He reconsidered doing things his way and decided to give the manufacturer's process a chance.

At this point, one of the tech writers came in and sat down. All our tech writers are former airplane mechanics, so I figured they didn't need my presence. While the two of them were working to install the casters, I excused myself for a restroom run. When I came back, the casters were in the base and the pneumatic cylinder had been installed correctly. Mostly. The men had decided to remove the plastic sheath. I was told I never should have left them on their own. Hmm.

I spent the rest of the assembly process reading directions aloud. And rereading them. And holding out the paper and pointing to the diagrams.

The final outcome? Chair was assembled, but the tilt feature won't work. All in all, I thought we did well. I'm still kind of amazed, though, that an engineer and a former mechanic needed me to help them get that chair together.

Brave New World? Not Quite.

I'm always interested in technology and gadgets. I lurv gadgets! And even though I'm not writing futuristic romance right now, I'm always watching and reading about new stuff because you never know when something might come in handy for a story.

Over the years, I've seen a lot of articles about how video conferencing is going to replace in-person meetings. That flying on business is/is about to/will become obsolete. Interesting, I thought, but I had no firsthand experience.

Until Tuesday.

For those unaware, I worked for Northwest Airlines which was bought by Delta Air Lines. I'm in Minneapolis, but half of our department (including the manager) is in Atlanta. For a bunch of reasons, I wasn't part of earlier staff meetings, but on Tuesday I was and I learned a few things about video conferencing that I hadn't considered or read about.

The first thing that struck me was how difficult it was to hear. I have really acute hearing and pick up sounds a lot of other people can't hear. This didn't help me in the meeting and others complained they had trouble hearing, too.

I'm not sure where the microphones were to pick up the sound and when I had to speak, I shouted. I'd say that I probably sounded like some technology idiot, but since I couldn't hear a lot of what was said in Atlanta, I assumed they'd have trouble hearing us as well. So yeah, I shouted, as did others. I'm glad I don't sit near that conference room.

The second issue was having to see myself on one of the two monitors. Why? I don't need to see our conference room, I'm in it. There was nowhere to hide from that damn camera either.

My last item is the biggest issue. I had a really hard time paying attention. A really, really hard time.

This could just be a me thing. When I'm home, I can't just sit and watch television. I just can't pay attention for long enough to the screen or the show. That's part of the reason why I love baseball so much--it's very forgiving of my lapses. Even when I'm watching a show that interests me, I'm doing other things. I'll even leave the room to do these things. I've been this way for probably ten years, maybe a little longer. I can lose myself for hours in a book, immerse myself in that world, but I can't focus for half an hour on the TV.

Now I'm in a meeting and half the people attending, including those leading it, are in Atlanta and on the TV screen in our room. My focus kept wandering. We received handouts. I started reading. I don't know how long it took before I realized that I'd completely forgotten we were, you know, having a meeting. :-)

That got me thinking about technology predictions and using tech in stories set in the future. Instead of focusing only on the possibilities--both positive and negative--I have to remember that (for example) meeting via video conference is not the same thing as meeting in person. Maybe some day, but not now. This goes for any technology. Some of it will not be as effective for everyone as it is for some.

I'm still mulling this over and how it would convey in a story, but it's definitely something interesting to consider. And all from a staff meeting. :-)

I Think I Want a Nap

I think my head is going to explode. Seriously. I've spent the last 9 days writing from nearly the time I wake up in the morning until I go to bed. I kind of petered out today, though, after only about 5 pages. Horrible headache and I needed to write a fight scene. Those scenes should be high energy and it helps to feel energetic when I do one. Needless to say, that's on the agenda for tomorrow.

What else is stressing me out this week? Well, I'm blogging at 2B Read on Tuesday and Fresh Fiction on Wednesday. I need to send out a newsletter to announce the release of In Twilight's Shadow on Tuesday and I need to send half a bazillion emails, including review quotes to my agent and editor. I also owe my fabulous editor a thank you note because she sent me copies of Twilight's Shadow early!

No matter how many books I have out, I still get hugely excited to hold the finished story in my hands. I already checked and my point of view shift that I discovered in galleys did get fixed. Yea! I wish I had time to sit down and read the book--that's my ritual when a new one is released--I sit down and read it and revisit my characters. I'll have to save that for later.

Anyway, I'm feeling hugely stressed right now and I have to go back to the Evil Day Job tomorrow where I'll be running around like a mad woman trying to get caught up on everything that accumulated in my absence. Gah!

Company Gifts

Next month I have one of those milestone anniversaries with my employer and for my years of service, I received a catalog from which to choose a gift. I don't get my commemorative pin and a gift, I had to choose one or the other. So I combed through the catalog and discounted most of the items as being things I wasn't interested in, but they had a pair of binoculars and I don't have any of those.

Yea, I thought, getting more excited, binoculars. Then I could bird watch (turkey, hawk, etc) from my house or deck and get a good view. I could also check out my garden when it's wet and rainy (like today) without getting my feet wet. Cool, I'm going to choose binoculars!

But before I made the selection, I thought, wow, I don't know much about binoculars. I should check out a few reviews and see if this pair/brand/magnification is decent. I went to Amazon first since they carry everything and so many products have reviews. Do you know what I found? The company gift was for sale for $13! Gee, thanks, NWA, but no thanks. I'll buy my own binoculars and I'll pick something that's halfway decent.

I guess I should be grateful I get anything, right? But I figure by the time they buy in bulk and get their discount, we're probably talking, what? $5? Maybe $7? I went with the commemorative pin instead. After all, there might not be an NWA after the merger mania dust settles.

I spent the evening at the hospital again. My dad looks better, but progress is slow. I want him to be better now. I'm still exhausted and I think my mom is, too.

Gone With the Wind

We'll have to chalk this up as Wednesday's post early--or maybe Monday's post late. It has been one hellaciously busy week, so far and it shows no signs of letting up.

After a week off, I returned to the Evil Day Job (EDJ) on Monday just in time to hear the NWA/Delta talk really take off. I also had to catch up on all the work that piled up in my absence. If y'all have turned on a television lately, you know that after months of talk, the merger did get announced. Oh happy day. Not. Today we had two meetings to tell us basically what you've all seen on the news.

Anyway, let's move on to Adventures in Gale-Force Winds.

It is really windy here today, blowing steady at 30 and gusting up to 40mph. I arrive home and go to back in the garage when I look to the right and see a piece of downspout from my gutters nearly in the street right at the edge of my yard and my neighbors. I put the car in park, jump out, and grab it before it blows away.

I decide I better check the other gutters and make sure those downspout extensions are still attached. They are, but as I'm staring out the patio doors, it finally registers that my wind spinner is gone. I have that thing on a shepherd's hook and it's never come off before, but it did today. I decided to check email first, then I pulled on my shoes, put on a jacket, and went to reconnect my downspout. I put a rock on the inside of it to weight it down and began the search for the missing wind spinner. I found that in the middle of my backyard.

I walked over to my parents' house, and after about an hour, I returned home--and discovered my downspout was missing again. Sigh. So I searched and searched for it on both sides of the street, but I couldn't find it anywhere.

Instead, I noticed that another long rain spout was knocked off and the cap from my porch railing was off, and oh yeah, my welcome mat (which is fairly heavy) was folded up against the bottom of the door.

Now I'm sitting here, listening to the wind whip by the house and wondering what other pieces are going to come off before they finally die down. At the very least, I'll be out buying a new section of downspout soon.

Let's Fight Off Monday!

Have y'all seen that commercial from Monster.com? The one where people grab satellite dishes, coffee table tops, mattresses and whatever else they can get their hands on and race to the top of a hill. They hold up their items like shields, trying to fight it off, but the sun rises anyway. The tagline? Stop Fighting Mondays.

I love that ad--and I feel that way right now. I wish I could grab up something and fight off Monday. It's another five days at the Evil Day Job (EDJ) and this week also has a dentist appointment. Talk about way down on the fun-o-meter.

No movie reviews this weekend. My disk from Netflix arrived with a big ol' crack in it, and so I was forced to rewatch Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. The original is the best and most fun. :-)

I just missed seeing a show on the National Geographic Channel last night about Special Ops soldiers. I caught like the last 5 minutes. I can't believe I was watching HGTV and coverage of some multi-state garage sale when I could have seen a show about Spec Ops. Sigh. I hope they repeat it.

The Front Fell Off

Yesterday was actually a pretty entertaining day at the Evil Day Job (EDJ) and a pretty good one overall. One of my engineers managed to pick up a new nickname--Nostradamus--because he was talking about how the NWA/Delta merger has been in the works for a while because of studying our redesigned logo. It was a planner who tagged him with the name, but I think it might stick. At least I'm going to do what I can to make sure it does. :-)

Then came the highlight of our day--and yes, it takes little to make the highlight reel at the EDJ, but this is funny anyway. A maintenance specialist at Continental sent one of my guys a link to a video. It's about two minutes long and the five of us were laughing out loud as we watched. It's called The Front Fell Off and it's definitely worth watching.




I hope you find it as funny as we did.

Eight Is Enough

My RITA books arrived. Eight of them! I think the contest needs more judges or something because that's a lot of reading when I have writing to do. I think I have about 6 weeks to read, which should be enough time, but I'll have to double check my instruction sheet to be certain.

It's supposed to be hugely cold here this weekend, which would actually be a perfect time to curl up in bed with a book, but it's also a prime writing time for me. So guess what I'll be doing? Yep, writing. I signed up for my chapter's Book In A Week--we do it every month--and I'm behind on my goal. I'm going to need Saturday desperately.

The newspaper here had an article on hard-to-kill houseplants and it's got me thinking I should get a few more plants. And then I remind myself that I didn't want a jungle inside my house. I have two poinsettias, two amaryllis and 1 lucky bamboo plant. It's already starting to get jungle-like, although the red poinsettia has been dying almost since the day I brought it home.

If y'all have been hearing the merger talks between NWA and Delta, you know things are not calm and peaceful at the Evil Day Job (EDJ). The last thing I want is to relocate to Atlanta. For one, I just moved into my house about 18 months ago and for another, Atlanta is having a horrible water shortage. Why would you want to move more people into that city? Anyway, I keep reminding myself that there's no point worrying about it until I have to, but there are days that's tough.

And some person who's name was "unknown" on caller ID woke me up at 1:30 this morning when he tried to logon to the Internet using my phone number. Argh!

New Website!

It's official; the new website is up and functional! Yea! There's still some work to be done. One of the pages has an awkward layout and there's other little things that need tweaking, but the major work is done. :-) You can take a look at pattioshea.com and let me know what you think. If it totally sucks, I can reload the old site, but I'm really hoping it's okay and I'm totally excited to have something new.

New Year's Day was spent at the Evil Day Job (EDJ). Sigh. I can't believe they make us work on a holiday like this. There was one other person there yesterday since only my union lost this particular holiday--the other unions and management lost other holidays--and there are only like five of us from this union on the floor. It was nice and quiet and I was actually able to take my lunch hour without ear plugs. :-) Too bad I wasn't writing yet because it would have been perfect.

Today I begin the new book. I'm actually looking forward to getting started and I probably would have kicked off on Monday if I hadn't gotten bogged down in my brilliant idea to redesign the website. :-) No tweaking it for the rest of this week. I have to clean my house and write. The site can wait till Saturday evening or longer. Unless it sucks and I need to reload the old one, of course.

Didn't Make It

I fell short of having the new website ready to load. I have two more books to do pages for and some links to set up yet; I was this close. If only I didn't have to go to the Evil Day Job (EDJ) today and I could stay home and finish this morning, but I do, so that means needing to wrap up this website tonight. Tomorrow begins the onslaught of the New Book.

So speaking of books, how did the galleys go? I'm sure you're all wondering, right? I made 12 corrections. That's an incredibly small amount. The part that's scary is that 11 of those changes are to fix my stuff, only 1 change is for an extra word.

My mistakes include the point of view debacle where in the middle of my hero's POV, I have a paragraph from the heroine's POV. Why? Because during copy edits I needed to add the paragraph for explanation, thought I was in the heroine's head and didn't double check.

My other lulu of an error was having two full moons in approximately a two week period. I almost missed that, but as I made my last read through on Friday at the EDJ, I thought, "hmm, didn't I mention the full moon once before?" A quick little search of my WordPerfect document when I arrived home showed that sure enough, this was the second full moon in the book. I changed the first reference to starlight because I needed the moon more in the second scene later in the book.

Everything else was mostly nitpicky stuff.

Last Friday night, I go to make my final changes to the galley, and I decide I need to refresh my memory, so I look for the cover letter with the instructions on how they want the markups handled. Um, I couldn't find them. Anywhere. I think in my cleaning frenzy that I mistook the galley letter for the letter that came with the copy edits and shredded it thinking I was done with it. I was left with my memory of what I did the last time I had galleys for Tor. Hopefully, they didn't change their process.