Last Day on Earth

There's been no rush hour traffic this week. I never passed a car until I pulled onto 27 by the Stoughton water works. Really weird. Like I was the last person on earth.

All the time I was thinking about my last drive to work, last time driving by the lake, looking a the cottages, the rocks I named (shark rock, turtle rock, duck rock), last time by the place where they sell eggs, and the cows and the deer crossing the road and the intersection where it's a pain to make a left turn (two of those actually), and the fancy new driveway of stone and the tear down and the Jesus statues in somebody's front lawn and the four cemeteries I pass--a big time mememto mori, and the zoned out Vietnam vets in the little park, and the fast food places in Stoughton and the Turnpike Cafe where I never ate and the other places I never ate and the stone yard and the Irish Center and everyplace on the way to work. If you look at a thing long enough, you own it, at least in some sense.

So it was hard and awkward to say goodbye to everyone, IT people not being the touchy-feely types with lots of hugs and stuff. More the foot-shuffling "nice working with you, good luck" kind of thing. I'm not good at goodbyes. My manager was supposed to take me to lunch but of course there was the crisis du jour with one of the web sites and so we have a rain (maybe a snow) date. That was all right. I had a salad, first healthy meal in a week.

Stopped at Shaw's and had a devil of a time finding the barley. They were out of pearl barley so I got the other kind, no big deal. Made beef vegetable barley soup with the bones and scraps of the prime ribs. Found a recipe on line. Soup was delish. Had good rye bread to eat with it, real whipped unsalted butter (just a dab) and everything tasted properly hearty. Soup is wonderful. One of these days I'll write an ode to soup but not tonight.

Finished wrapping the presents for our little visitor who comes tomorrow, so we'll have a second Christmas with some baking, shopping and festivities.

I mailed my short story off to MWA and no agents or editors responses graced today's mail. Sometimes I think about sending like maybe 100 queries out just to get a few answers. . Well, even literary types deserve a Christmas break. I found a really strange blog yesterday. You can find it by googling . There are plenty of writing blogs and mine seems quite tame and even a little prim without profanity and huge amounts of strum and drang, just a modicum of sucking it up all the time. So be it. http://www.theoldhag.com/

Now a quote lady of leisure unquote

Grapeshot

Out to Pasture

Tomorrow is my last half-day at work. Seems incredible. All that code. All those meetings. So many conversions, implementations, integrations, hours, days, years, so many colleagues, so many late nights, all nights, trashed holidays, beepers beeping, phones ringing, emails pinging, users demanding. Nevermore.
One more paycheck. That is what's really scary.

Another scary thing is that I have been writing nigh on to 13 years now and don't have much to show for it except 5 novels, a few essays, short stories, poems, and what have you. Of those novels, only one is published. Many of the poems are published. Nothing else. Nada. Niente. Rien. Garnichts. Not jack shit. How much sucking it up is that? Muy. Sehr Viel. Beaucoup. Hell, I should have been a linguist.

Another novel half-finished, languishing through the holidays. Ideas for more. I gotta break out of this rut. Gotta geta new life. La vie nouveau, like Beaujolais, fresh and new.

Today, using my company's copy machine for the last time, a nice benefit soon to be gone, I made five copies of my short story to send off to the MWA anthology contest. The topic is "the burden of the badge." I have a sheriff with some burdens, not the usual ones, really. A skinny sensitive southern sheriff, playing off the stereotypes. This was a fun story to write, and I hope it gets to see the light of day somewhere. It's a story only I could have written. Is that a good thing?

No more agents reporting in on Promiscuous Mode. I have stuff from 12 months ago still out for World of Mirrors. I need to put in some serious time writing and promoting. Sales and marketing....yuck!

Tomorrow I'll take the beef rib bones and make beef barley soup. Think I'll bop out to the web and find a recipe. Cooking mistakes can be dumped into the garbage with only a pang.

Writing an unsaleabe novel. Guess it could be dumpe down the sink. Big time pangs! As in anguish. But why not make a curry out of that ragout? Spice it up a little. Everything looks good with chopped parsley on it. Maybe a bit of chopped cilantro? Some bacon bits?

Thursday we drive to NYC and pick up a very small visitor who will be with us for a week, then said visitor gets escorted back home. I won't be writing much before Jan. 10th. However, I will be blogging along with the breeze.

With nose to the wind,

Grapeshot

Whatever

So Christmas came and went in a flurry of cooking, wrapping, baking, shopping and people. It's more fun with little kids, and we will have that pleasure in a few days.

We had a traditional meal for our family and guests Prime Rib of Beef with horseradish sauce, Yorkshire pudding, a vegetable medley, salad, and cranberry upside down cake for desert. Everyone went crazy over the cake which was actually quite simple to make.

http://www.recipegoldmine.com/cakeupside/cakeupside34.html

I made shrimp toasts as appetizers, which kept folks satisfied until the Yorkshire pudding came out of the oven. The shrimp appetizer is from the old Sunset cookbook I found at a garage sale. Think it dates to the 70's. Pre-cuisinart.

The rains came and we watched movies today. We loved something we found on demand Cable. Schultze Gets the Blues. A German movie, small and just right.

Today in the rain I only ventured out to share the vegetable scraps and some stale bread with the Scottish Highland Cattle. Old mama was particularly fond of the large leek tops I gave her. The old baby didn't come up to the fence to eat, but stayed back chomping on some hay. The new baby ate from my hand for the first time. When I left, I noticed the formerly shy one chase the old baby away from the hay, so there seems to be a bit of bad blood in the little pasture. The new young bull rubbed noses with old mama. They seem completely mis-matched romantically, but who am I to judge?

Tomorrow is my last full day of work. No editors or agents letters in the mail. Maybe tomorrow. Have to send my short story in.

Holiday Cheer,

Grapeshot

Rejection comes in many modes

Yesterday, besides Christmas cards, the mail had a rejection for Promiscuous Mode. This was a personalized letter, which I always appreciate, no matter how terse. The agent said he liked the plot and he liked the character, but he wasn't so keen on the writing.

Now most agents like the writing, don't like the plot and may or may not like the character. Whatchagonnado? This was not a crushing blow, as I always figured this agent wouldn't go for it, but I had an entree via a conference, so why not give it a try? After the holidays, I can send out a jillion queries.

Someone, somewhere is going to like this book. I just know it. It's funny and sad and scary and has lots of good characters. There's a cat who is kidnapped. My character has to decide between her husband and her boyfriend. A few odd geeks in the IT department. A murderous blonde. Some chick lit. A soupcon of technology. Lots of conflict. An exciting ending on a river of rapids. Jobs outsourced to Asia.

What more could anyone want? In a novel, that is.


Grapeshot,
who still has the holiday spirit.

Ho Ho Ho

Until Monday, I was the curmudgeon of Christmas present, grimacing at the post-1960 Christmas songs on the radio, bah-humbuging the mall shoppers, and dreading the office party, which is in any event an innocuous affair with no booze, mediocre food and subdued merriment. Grapeshot is a closet grinch.

Then out of the blue someone who hasn’t even been terribly friendly lately, came into my office and gave me a nice and very thoughtful “retirement” present. Completely unexpected. I was so touched, and on the way home I found myself humming and singing along on the radio to some of THAT MUSIC. Admiring the lights. Letting scads of cars coming out of the shopping center into my lane. I made a special effort to get to my writing group so we would have a quorum.

The next day dawned on my “retirement” party. I’ve been here 8+ years and everyone who reads this blog knows I’m not a big fan or corporate America, but my co-workers in this corporation are great people. They work hard and they are team players, nice and even funny. And I was again touched by their generosity and their presence at my party. We reminisced and some of the best and funniest memories are things that were pretty horrible at the time. Year 2000 comes to mind. Doing a (hostile) system conversion in Atlanta does, too. Somehow, that turned into a great winter and the people I worked with made it so.

The holiday party was same-old, same-old, but knowing it was the last one made it special. My special meatloaf disappeared. The recipe was from Cook's Illustrated and it was a pain in the butt to make and I burnt my fingers doing something stupid in the kitchen. I was still in such a good mood that I didn't complain, well, not too much, and soldiered on with the cooking.

The company holiday brunch today was nice. They didn’t run out of ham like last year. Why do I even remember those little insignificant woes? The company president thanked everyone. That doesn’t always happen. He thanked IT heartily. What a note to leave on! Zowie!

Folks who work in offices get shortchanged. A few years ago, when the book A Day in the Life of the USA (or many America, I can't remember) came out, THERE WAS NOT A SINGLE PHOTO OF ANYONE WORKING IN AN OFFICE. Who is sucking it up in the New York subway and bus strike? The people trying to get into (and out of ) Manhattan. The office workers, mostly.

I’ll really miss my colleagues. Be nice to the people you work with. Be nice to everyone. Just imagine, for an instant, what the world would be like it we were all nice to each other. What kind of a world would that be? A different one, that’s for sure. What would become of the novelists with no conflict? On second thought, never mind.

Grapeshot, who has Christmas spirit in abundance.

Weird even among the geeks

Wednesday is the department office holiday party. My last one. I always used to wear a red sweater and green velvet slacks but the slacks became too small and were hauled off to the used clothing sale and the sweater got moth holes. So it goes. There are five years of pictures of me in that outfit.

Our department (IT) has a feast, no, it's actually a pig out, and I always manage to bring something that no one likes. One year it was asparagus vinaigrette, another year it was sophisticated date cookies that weren't too sweet. Actually, a Russian colleague raved about them, but he was the only one. A few years ago I brought a meat loaf, served cold and that was actually a big hit, at least people ate it. We do not have culinary sophisticates in our department, but mostly meat and potatoes types.

Another year I brought a sandwich loaf, one of those complicated things where you slice an unsliced load cross-wise and put in fillings of tuna, ham salad, whatever, and then frost the whole business with cream cheese. It was immense and hard to slice. Don't know what I was thinking about. People stayed away in droves.

This year I am going to make meatloaf again, this time from Cook's Illustrated. Recipe calls for ground sirloin and ground chuck, and the supermarket meat was labeled only by fat content, so the nice butcher man came out and said the sirloin was the low fat and the chuck the medium fat. The best ground beef I ever had was made from the scraps of a prime rib roast and the fat percentage would have been "deadly," but was it ever fantastic.

We always have a "Yankee Swap" with a limit of $10.00, although some people bring booze that I'm sure costs more. Maybe they are "re-gifting." The biggest gift hits are always the booze with lottery tickets a close second. To me the tickets, which may render you nada, are kind of a tacky gift. Again, I usually strike out with gifts as well as food. This year I brought small books with lots of photographs at the MFA gift shop, and a guide to Boston for the new guy. I think they're kind of cool, but what do I know? They sure ain't lottery tickets.

Today, still in baking mode, I made some chocolate pecan bars with a shortbread bottom that are incredibly decadent and likewise delicious, even better if possible than the cranberry bars from yesterday. Easy to believe that people gain 5 pounds over the holidays. I probably gained five pounds this weekend just on the cookies.

Worked out today on the treadmill and lifting weights, but I don't think anything would make up for those chocolate bars. Also made Mexican Wedding cakes, my mother's recipe, and something called "little cherry cookies," which are butter cookies rolled in pecans with a tiny piece of marachino cherry on top. They look very festive and have a hint of citrus. Oh yeah, the chocolate pecan bars have some grated orange rind that add a ferocious amount of complexity.

Tonight's dinner was spicy Mexican shrimp (in adobo sauce) from the Wall Street Journal. Zowie, it was so hot we had to keep the Kleenex box on the table. A keeper. Served with plain rice. Put some of the adobo sauce on last nights yucko chicken to schlep to work for lunch tomorrow.

There will be a farewell party for me at work on Tuesday. The traditional supermarket cake with napkins and forks swiped from the cafeteria. I am going to indulge in BSP (blatant self-promotion) and take some of my books (The Shadow Warriors) to sell. What the hell? It's the thought that counts.

Now I have got to go do more research on FBI raids. I don't think I'll email the FBI and ask how they conduct their raids. I emailed the ATF asking about moonshine stills in North Georgia and they didn't answer.

We bought the tree (deeply discounted) yesterday and Significant Other decorated it very nicely with the cats looking on with interest. We use the real lead tinsel and the kitties mustn't eat it. The tree looks magnificent with ornaments dating from last year and going back all the way to the turn of the previous century. I love my old Victorian Santa, so skinny and weird.

Grapeshot
Weird but not skinny, esp. after the cookie eating frenzy.

Ansel Adams

The Ansel Adams exhibit at the MFA in Boston will end soon, so hie yourself up Huntington Avenue and take a look at his photos. What blew me away was the depth of focus. Details in the distance and details up close. And Yosemite in all seasons, plus some really cool photos of the Southwest and the little Penitente churches on the high road to Taos. Adams climbed around Yosemite lugging pounds and pounds of heavy camera equipment. His patience and creativity are truly awesome. The American west with the big sky, endless vistas and clouds is a photographer's dream. I do miss it still.

Artists of an age always find each other, and Adams found other photographers (Steichen) and he found Georgia O'Keefe and it must have been fun to hike around and photograph the world.

I found a really cool food blog today, that you should know about. This woman is a wonderful writer and has a nice sense of humor. But don't take my word, see for yourself.
http://www.murrayhill5.net/blog/inmykitchenblog/

Significant Other and I had a modest lunch of soup, wine and dessert at the museum cafe. I watched an interesting couple all through lunch. He seemed like an Ansel Adams type, a gentleman no longer young with a large turned up nose and innocent blue eyes. Dorky black sneakers. Hey, all old guys wear them. His partner (I think they were married) was a Georgia O'Keefe lookalike. Dark hair and didn't look dyed. Jeans and boots. Neither of them stylish, but interesting. She paid the bill. He had such an interesting face, so childlike somehow, but not in a dumb way, but a little wonderous. So unusual to see someone looking wondrous. I wondered (not the same thing at all) if they had just seen the exhibit and maybe he was a photographer just blown away by the photos. I make up little stories about people and I wonder (again that word) if any of them are ever close to the mark. Probably not. Doesn't matter.

Tonight, being in the middle of Christmas baking, I cooked a Campbell's soup recipe for dinner , and used white pepper instead of black and the whole thing was kind of yucky, although the ingredients were good. Pitched the recipe. Tomorrow is a spicy shrimp from the Journal. Who ever thought the Wall Street Journal would have such good recipes. I still make their potato pancakes. They are the best. Email me if you want the recipe. It is years old.

The cookies, bars actually, I made tonight were something I thought I had made last year. Wrong, but these are very good, rich, buttery and loaded with cranberries. I broke my old nutchopper two years ago and miss it terribly. Haven't found one to replace it. This was glass with a weird metal grinder that one fed a few nuts at a time into. Must really look again. Maybe on Ebay.

No news from editors, agents or anyone except in the Christmas cards which are a joy to get from old friends and neighbors.

I am having crazy dreams every night. Must be because in 10 days I am quitting my job. 5 1/2 more days of work. My office is bare, the files, both paper and electronic) are clean and organized, and most of my personal stuff is now home. I haven't written anything the last two weeks, although I have been researching what happens when the FBI raids an office. It ain't pretty folks. I'm already feeling so sorry for my characters who have to undergo this trauma. Every writer loves her characters. They're so real. Isn't that strange?

I think so.


Grapshot

Christmas Baking

I'm a little behind this year, as every year, and finally this evening I sorted thru all the cookie recipes to make a bill of materials (once a nerd, always a nerd) concentrating on butter, nuts, brown and powdered sugars, chocolate, dried fruits. The flour and sugar I bought weeks ago. Of course you use real butter? God, I hope so. I have my favorite recipes that I make every year and from time to time I try new ones.

So my gift to my blog readers this year is two decent cookie recipes. One is super simple and no-bake and the only catch is the cookies need to age at least a week, which will be no problem if I get cracking tomorrow.

The second recipe is to make with kids. It was my mother's original recipe, and the cookies are very crisp and tasty and can be frosted and decorated with a simple powdered sugar and milk frosting using various food colorings and holiday shapes. My favorite was Santa Claus iced in red and white with a chocolate frosting on his pack and his boots. My mom was the greatest.

Brandy Ball Cookies: this was also my mother's recipe.

3 cups finely crushed vanilla wafers
1 1/2 cups chopped nuts (walnuts are on special this week)
1/2 cup brandy (doesn't need to be the finest Cognac, either)
3 tablespoons white corn syrup

Crush vanilla wafers and mix with powdered sugar. Add corn syrup and brandy. Mix thoroughly then add chopped nuts. Roll into small balls.
Store in an airtight container for a week or longer.

Old Tyme Sugar Cookies
1/2 cup Crisco (get the new one without trans fats)
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. grated lemon rind
1/2 t. cinnamon or nutmeg
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 T orange juice
1 T. lemon juice
2 cups sifted four
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda



Blend Crisco, salt, lemon rind and cinnamon. Add sugar gradually and cream well. Add eggs and orange and lemon juice and mix. Sift flour with baking powder and soda. Add to creamed mixture blending well. Chill dough in refrigerator. Chill cookie sheets to keep cookies from spreading. Roll thin and cut with cookie cutters. Make in a moderate oven from 350 to 375 degrees F. for ten minutes. Watch carefully and don't get too brown. Don't roll out too much dough at a time. Makes about 8 dozen.

Vegging Out

Last night, after a hard day at work with not one but two crises, I didn't feel like reading, writing or arithmetic (in our house this means paying bills or looking at the budget), so I curled up on the sofa and actually turned on the television. Usually when I do this is it with a goal (How the Grinch Stole Christmas- the original cartoon of course), but sometimes I just look for something to watch.

Normally, there's nothing to watch, and I push that red off button. I saw a movie that looked interesting but I couldn't find the channel in the guide that comes with the newspaper, made a wild guess and got E! which I had never watched.

It was something called the 50 cutest or greatest or most memorable child stars from movies and television, hosted by two of same, young ladies all grown up. There were scads of clips from a gazaillion shows I had never ever seen: Different Strokes, Malcolm in the Middle, and shows I had never even heard of, along with a few I had seen, like Roseanne, and movies, Home Alone and The Shining. The program also did "where are they now?" bits and kind of glossed over, but not totally the kids who had screwed up. Most were back on track. If they weren't it wasn't mentioned, but the gist of this is that I felt like I caught up on 20 years of sitcoms in one evening, hell, in two hours, and that this was actually entertaining and I hate to admit that I enjoyed the veg out time. It was just me and the cats, who of course were napping, just like Thisbe is doing now in front of my monitor and I can't see the last two lines I'm keying and have to push the cat hair out of the way which she doesn't seem to mind.

Last night I had a long complicated dream which will not be related here, but the weirdest part of it was that I took out my cell phone and instead of a keyboard there were rows of cherry tomatoes to push. Now what was that all about? We buy a box every week for lunches an salads and whatever. They were very big in Europe, like they had just discovered them, and my sister-in-law served them for lunch and we didn't, like, exclaim over them as we should have, because who knew? Later on I figurered it out from the menus and the displays in the food halls, but again, who knew?

The dream also contained within another dream about a garden and I realized that this is a garden I dream about often but never remembered. Very cool, except the dream is kind of sad because some years (in the dream) the plants don't all come up, some years they move around, like the squirrels have replanted them or something. Food for thought. And not cherry tomatoes either. Maybe I should tell my sister-in-law how to make cherry tomatoes provencal. Maybe I should eat breakfast. No tomatoes.

Aloha,

Grapeshot, who is still waiting to hear from a bunch of agents.

A bit of good news

An agent has finally asked for the first 100 pages of Promiscuous Mode, so maybe I will find something nice in my Christmas stocking. Grapeshot is always a very good girl.

The Beasts and the Fowls of the Earth

My short story, The Time of Green Leaves, is almost finished. The last obstacle was to get one scene out of a beaver's point of view and into a human's. I really liked writing from the critter's viewpoint, but I didn't think it would fly. Or swim.

Waiting for hear from agents. Always waiting. Nothing this week. I reworked the prologue for World of Mirrors and tackled the first chapter. As soon as I changed the main character's name and tweaked her backstory, the character changed completely, and started telling me stuff about her that I didn't know. This is going to be an interesting ride.

I looked at the first chapter of Festival Madness after a spell of lying fallow, and part of it pretty much sucked and needs a rewrite. O.K. I can do that.

Yesterday I wrote the annual Christmas letter, a missive I always swore I would never stoop to, but I did. It's short and newsy and not braggy, with a few photos and some seasonal clip art. Clip art makes everyone a designer. Before we had a computer, a scanner, a color printer and a digital camera, the Christmas letter would have been a huge amount of work. And now we put it together in an hour. Amazing.

Today the Scottish Highland Cattle got their weekly treat. I had celery, brussells sprouts, scallions, clementine peels, red leaf lettuce and cilantro. Old mama sure knows what her horns are for and how to use them. An alpha female, she likes to hog the food and gets bent out of shape when one of the others tries to get a few scraps. Won't let the baby eat either. I had to plough through a big snowbank, but hey, those cows are worth any effort.

The lake had a huge flock of geese last week, for two days, then nothing, and then the geese most mysteriously turned into sea gulls. Today at noon there was no avian life, and two hours later a really big flock of geese had arrived. I would love to see them all land on the lake at once.

The cat stares out the window, amazed at the snow. We've had cats that freaked out at the first snowfall and chased about the yard like crazy beasts. This cat is a calm thoughtful feline. She only eats catfood, nothing else, and has taught her housemate the same eating habits. We could leave fish, shrimp, chicken livers. . . absolutely anything out and these cats wouldn't deign to touch it. Wouldn't even sniff it. Oh, they do eat cat grass, and the young one has been known to enjoy a bit of baby's breath, but that's all. She enjoys the plant, not the small creature. Next week they will both enjoy the Christmas tree. A whole wealth of cat toys, just waiting to be batted across the floor. I love the old ornaments that have been in the family forever and hung on my great grandma's tree. Love the stuff my parents had. Love the old traditions, the carols, the old-fashioned Christmas, not the upside down fake tree that looks like it is made out of toilet brushes sprayed green. Oh oh. Grapeshot is losing the holiday spirit and becoming curmudgeonly. Time to say aloha.

Aloha

Grapeshot

Who's That Hiding Behind the Foster Grants

Grapeshot In Paris.

Throwing My Life Away

This month I’m training my “replacement” and cleaning out 8 years worth of files, and in some instances 20+ years of files. These tasks are long overdue, and my office is assuming that sterile efficient look as the piles of paper disappear and the bulletin boards are either emptied or reduced. My framed New Yorker cover of the shopping carts and the bar codes, from ages long ago will stay here, as will be 2005 calendar, and two plants. The other plants, a Christmas cactus and a second, unknown cactus, I rescued from certain death and now feel obliged to care for. The “other” cactus is truly amazing. All it wanted was some water and real sunlight and a bit of talking to, and it has rewarded me with a performance of growth and bloom that warms my prickly little heart. So of course, some things can’t be thrown away.

I’m still looking at the rattiest of loose leaf notebooks. “Holy Writ” is inked on the spine in my effort-to-be-neat printing. I began the notebook when I began my career in EDP, then MIS, then IS then IT, as a lowly but happy “programmer trainee,” way back in 1980. Twenty-five years in the trenches. The loose leaf contains gems of information of value to a COBOL programmer. Sixteen ways from Sunday to sort files, VSAM status codes, backups, restores, the stuff I could make those big machines do. One has a feeling of power, almost godliness, with the ability to make a big mother of a mainframe computer do one’s bidding. Days long gone. It was always more fun to be hands on, talking to the machine in its language, sometimes on the level of bits.

So it’s gonna be hard to toss this old grungy loose-leaf notebook, but I must. Sigh. Hard to throw away an important piece of your life, but we do it all the time. It can be as simple as a move or when you realize that another generation is standing where you once stood and it doesn’t seem that long ago. The natural order of people, places and things. Yet, hard.

So farewell, 1984 check digit routine. Still useful, but perhaps not to a fiction writer.

So this compendium of now antiquated knowledge must go, a large piece of life no longer lived, and I will suck it up and put it in the trash. Really. But I am going to be mega pissed if in twenty years old techies are selling this stuff on EBAY for big bucks. On the other hand, I saved a pretty cool little green tin that held Carter’s Little Liver Pills from my parent’s store of stuff that got moved 16 times and never tossed. I am going to be the one on EBAY selling a skid load of old computer books, and one little patent medicine tin.

Aloha

Grapeshot

Lower Than A Snake's Belly

At the end of this month I am retiring from corporate America to write and managing my writing career full time. I also have a number of projects that have been on the back burner for years: organizing 100+ years of family photos, getting rid of some of my parents’ “stuff,” cleaning out the storage space. You probably have many similar tasks that are postponed from year to year. And with good reason.

I also want to update and then redo my website. Big (fun) project. Have to keep the technical juices flowing, after all.

Besides the vanishing salary (no small consideration), there will be another issue that will be just about as bad, and that is the vanishing status. At work, I am a ‘go to’ person who figures out whether it can be done and then gets it done. Information Technology (IT) is not a pretty place, but we do projects, and most of the time we complete them (occasionally on time) and send them out into the world and then we do another one and so one. Yet again. For twenty-five years, through many IBM systems, Cullinet systems, weird packages that were a law unto themselves, supporting web and catalog software, Y2K and so on. Been there, done that, sat on a gazillion committees, went to enough meetings to spread your butt across a sofa, Installations, upgrades, conversations, integrations. I was there. This is ending in 10.5 workdays.

Mixed emotions? You bet. Scared? A little. Glad to say goodbye? That too.

A not-even-midlist writer trying to find an agent/and or publisher for computer crime novels is about as low on the literary totem pole as you can get. Down there scrabbling around with the worms and the rodents. My status in this world in going to take a huge hit and I’m hoping my ego is strong enough to weather this. I will probably never make the money on writing I made in IT. No more being the “to go girl.” Sigh. Back to suburban housewife and aspiring writer.

But dammit, I want to sit and write and so I shall. No status? Suck it up. Prestige only a memory? Suck it up! Paycheck? Suck it up.

I'll be sitting at my computer, with my head in another world.

Aloha,


Grapeshot

Scarf It Down - - COCOA FUDGE

The opposite of Suck It Up. The recipe below tastes like one of those complicated things requiring a candy thermometer and major kitchen skills. It is simple and delicious.

Easiest-Ever Cocoa Fudge
3 2/3 cups confectioners' sugar (l pound box)1/2 cup Hershey's Cocoa (baking kind)1/4 cup milk1/2 cup butter (1 stick)1 tablespoon vanilla1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Microwave confectioners' sugar, cocoa, milk and butter on high (full power) until butter is melted, about 2 to 3 minutes; stir until smooth. Blend in vanilla and nuts. Spread into buttered 8-inch square pan; cool. Cut into squares.

How easy is that?

Grapeshot who is taking a day off from practically everything but eating.

Aloha

Jury Dutyfree

Up and out of the house even earlier than usual to be punctual for jury duty. Major traffic heading north creates major stress as I drive up Route 1 on the auto mile. This is the 3rd time I’ve been to the Courthouse, but I’ve never actually sat on a jury. Always dismissed.

After handing in the paperwork, I sit down in the large courtroom to wait. A judge comes in and gives our group of 24 or so a little pep talk, then we watch a movie about the jury system with do’s and don’ts. By now the woman a few seats down from me has applied a very odiferous hand cream at least three times. She had an old face and a young body which look wildly inappropriate for each other, and she is reading a cheapy looking magazine called Lifestyle.

The woman on the other side is reading a John Grisham novel. Very appropriate. I start reading something called “Bloody Mary” that is about a female cop with a smart mouth and an extremely creepy serial killer. The book takes place in Chicago, which I like and has the usual mystery minor characters like the side kick (on a diet) the weird mother and her even weirder boyfriend, a manic cat, the current boyfriend, the ex-husband, well, you know the drill. A nice little cookie-cutter book that is a suitable read while waiting to be empanelled. By now I even know the lingo.

Around 11:00, we are still sitting there and a) my neighbor applies another smelly load of hand cream and goes out for a smoke, and b) I am chugging through the lightweight novel at a fast clip and have already read two technical magazines and have a horrible fear of sitting there with nothing to read and c) my stomach is rumbling although I had a little piece of Stollen at 9:30. At the front of the room there’s a TV set with one channel and I have watched part of Ellen to keep from turning the pages so fast.

At 12:00, a man comes in and announces that we are all dismissed. 4th time called, yet to serve. I have a brief debate with my better self, and decide what the hell, I’ll just go back to work for a half-day. At work, there’s little to do and I clean out a file cabinet. There’s always that to do. I wonder if I could sneak a peak at my almost finished book which is getting exciting again. Better self wins this argument, too, and the book stays in the bag. What is with this better-self triumphing all day? Dunno.

Yesterday I got another rejection letter for Promiscuous Mode, and am happy that I already sent out new queries to all the agents I met at the writer’s conference earlier this month, because that rejection was the last of the prior set of queries. I have lots of ideas for the book I’m planning to rewrite, and hope I can finish Festival Madness before the enthusiasm for the rewrite dies. What I am mostly hoping is to publish something else before I drop dead. Even the short story would be a start. Still thinking about the ending. Thought of cute ending but don’t know if that will cut it. Hopeless judge of own writing, like most of us.

I am going to go home and cook the pork chops from Epicurious with the cranberry sauce. Sounded tasty. I couldn’t find pork (porc?) on any of the menus in France. Being autumn, one would expect to. Maybe they have some word for it not part of my vocabulary. That would not be the first time. Wonder what the French is for "Suck it up."

Alors,


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