Coffee heat rising

Shopping

Publishing: Proceeding Apace. Decluttering: Ditto.

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 Holy mackerel! It’s been TWO DAYS since I last posted here. How two days passed in an hour and a half escapes me…  Just now I’m engaged in preparing and preposting two months’ worth of bookoids for the Publishing Empire. {heh…maybe that’s what I should’ve called the current enterprise!} That is a much larger job than it seems.

It entails creating covers for 16 books (plus boxed sets, which just now are on-the-side jobs); obtaining ISBNs for each one (a truly time-consuming nuisance: you’re doing well if you can get one ISBN registered in under ten minutes); reviewing, correcting, and updating copy for each book; and posting cover image and contents for each book to Amazon.

I’ve learned you can enhance efficiency and reduce distraction by doing all of these tasks for a bunch of books in one sitting (actually, it’s going to take about three or four days…), rather than breaking in to whatever you’re doing to jump through the endless hoops for one book at a time. And you can post the completed MS and cover art at Amazon and “save as draft.” If you’ve done every step but the last one (and done each step right…), all you have to do on the scheduled “publication” date is go back into your Amazon “bookshelf” and click “publish,” thereby saving yourself a lot of time-consuming hassle on that date, when you might want to be doing something else with your time.

So, here’s an OPINION POLL:

Which of these do you prefer: the one with the black Roberta Stuart byline, or the one with the red?

Draft cover Daniela 2 LO RES

Draft cover Daniela 3 LO RES

The question is, which “Roberta Stuart” byline would be most visible in an Amazon thumbnail? Black? or Red?

Demonstrate the POWER OF THE HIVE MIND and cast your vote for one or the t’other! Tell me in the comments to this post which one you think is more effective.

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You’ll recall the last time I visited these precincts, I was considering whether to get rid of the fancy Christofle silverware in favor of some stainless flatware that can go in the dishwasher. Well, my friends, the deed is done. And, after traipsing all over the Web and all over the city, I finally found a set that’s not too cheesy and not too expensive at…so obvious, why didn’t I think of it before this morning?…Williams-Sonoma!!

I did indeed go over to Sur la Table. Total wasted trip. The one set that looked like it might be OK when viewed online had all the heft of plastic. Just junk. And they way they had their flatware displayed — jammed upright into random containers — confirmed that the proprietors regarded the stuff as junk, too.

Revisit Crate and Barrel’s: unappealing, lightweight, not so very junky, but junk.

Across the city, driving driving driving… Arrived in another mall that hosts a Williams-Sonoma and a Pottery Barn. At the Williams-Sonoma, in addition to scoring a couple of tasty snacks, I found two sets that appealed. One — the coolest of them — had heavy handles that unfortunately were made of pewter: “hand-washing recommended.” Saleslady said that translates as “handwash, period.” Defeats the purpose. The other was this brushed steel retro design reminiscent of the set my ex- and I bought shortly after we were married, yea verily way back in 19 and ought-67. It was moderately weighty and not displeasing in appearance.

And marked down 20 percent.

Just in case, it was over to Pottery Barn to check out their wares.

Forthwith, BACK TO WILLIAMS-SONOMA. Pottery Barn had a couple of attractive designs but they were…oh yes. Silver plate. Purpose defeated again.

So I purchased the following:

P1030611

Not too awful, eh? These little gems can go straight into the dishwasher. And, although they’re not as elegant as a set of fine Christofle, they have a decent heft to them and they’re distinctive without being obtrusive.

Kind of interesting, this flatware safari. If I’d ordered the stuff online that appealed to me, from Sur la Table, I’d have been very unhappy and probably would have ended up traipsing to Scottsdale to return the junk. Overall, I went to five brick-&-mortar retailers plus an unknown number of online sellers before finding a design resembling what I wanted. And really…I don’t think I’m that picky! There’s nothing extraordinary about these pieces. Well…except insofar as they display a modicum (and I do mean modicum) of quality.

Think of that.

Enterprise Progress, Costco Progress

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So some of yesterday’s unholy tangles got straightened out today. We now have a username and pw that will get us into the sites on WestHost — turns out we were trying to get in through the wrong URL. Oops.

The authorization code to free the Writers Plain & Simple domain name from WordPress came through some hours into the morning. With that in hand, I managed to find a LIVE HUMAN BEING (can you imagine????) at GoDaddy to complete the job.

These tergiversations occupied half the morning, but at least they resulted in getting something done, for a change.

Meanwhile, in the Bidness Enterprise Department…

a) The Scottsdale Business Association is considering an initiative to reach out to colleges and universities to collaborate on internships or apprenticeships for young people interested in careers in the various industries we represent. I reached a woman at Paradise Valley Community College who was delighted to hear from us. She’s now on our speaker’s list for next week!

b) A friend who’s an éminence grise in scholarly publishing gave me the name of a contact at a very prominent press (indeed!) who she thinks might be interested in the Informed Choices manuscript. So! Off that goes to him in the next day or two.

The morning’s productive time was leached away by a bunch of errands: had to deposit some checks in the credit union, and, while in that part of town, run by the Costco to pick up a minimal store of necessaries. Then, infuriatingly, I had to waste some more of my time sitting in line and screwing around with getting the car emission-tested.

I’m sure the state used to require these only every two years. And I’m equally sure that I killed a bunch of time in last summer’s heat on this same fool’s errand. My car is meticulously maintained and so has never failed an emissions test and is never likely to. Why can’t citizens simply present their maintenance records to demonstrate that their vehicles are unlikely to be contributing any more pollution than, say, the mines and smelters that distribute ozone and CO2 around the region?

Mercifully, this series of nuisances consumed far less time than expected.

Costco opens at 10 a.m., the credit union at 9. I figured if I could hit the CU at 9:30 I’d get to the Costco right at 10.

Arrived, however, at the credit union early: 9:15. No line inside: business conducted rapidly and efficiently.

Turned into the Costco parking lot at exactly 9:43 a.m. Almost 20 minutes before the store opened, but the gas pumps were open and the lines were short.

Parked right in front of the store about 10 minutes to the hour. Because of the 100-degree heat, employees were letting early birds in the door.

Shot into the store, grabbed the dog meat, grabbed the frozen dog veggies, grabbed some fresh fruit, grabbed the paper towels and toilet paper, grabbed a bottle of maple syrup, and charged the checkout line. Only one person in front of me, and he was halfway done.

Turned on the car’s ignition: 9:13 a.m.

Not freaking bad, eh? Filled up the car and got in and out of the Costco in under half an hour! Woo HOO!

Then it was off to the dreaded emissions test nuisance. Three cars were in line ahead of me, one already lashed up in the machinery. Figured to have to sit there in the heat with the air-conditioning off for about 15 minutes. Pisseth me off!

But no! When the car in the shed moved forward, the worker motioned the guy ahead of me and me to move into the shed!

There have been some changes made at that place! They now have a much faster, more efficient “test” — only took a couple of minutes to run that and fleece me for $20 — and they can do two cars at a time. So even though I resented having to pay twenty bucks for nothing, at least I got outta there fairly fast.

Now I have to pony up another $41 to register the damn car.

Glad I didn’t buy a new car. If I had, the bill would be more like $400.

Flew home, put away the Costco junk, flew down to AJ’s Amazingly Fancy Purveyor of Gourmet Items to pick up some stuff that can’t be had at Costco. All told, spent only about $180, less than a normal monthly Costco run.

Now I intend to stay out of Costco until this time next month, after the AMEX billing cycle closes.

The American Express bill this month was only $1400, despite the $214 for the new side mirrors and the $400+ for the tires. That means that absent the unplanned car bills, I probably came in about $315 under the $1100 budget. Could be a great deal worse.

Of course, that happened because I spent the better part of a week in the hospital and another week flat on my back in bed. But despite its unfortunate delivery, the message is that the more you stay out of Costco, the less you spend!

After another hour online and on the phone trying to get the domain name moved, I just could not face any more computer hassles! So once again the diet/cookbook didn’t get online. Tomorrow! Really!

Threw some potatoes and a slab of meat on the grill, fixed a salad, and had a decent meal. Then wrote another few grafs of the current Biker Babe installment.

Speaking of all this, it’s 7:30 p.m. and there’s still bookkeeping and bill-paying to do. And so, to work. Interminably to work…

 

Spending Frenzy!!

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Two of my dearest friends invited me to join them on a shopping expedition to our favorite vendor of pain-free footwear, the Shoe Mill, a now venerable joint in the studenty heart of Tempe. We first chowed down at the House of Tricks, probably the best restaurant in town, IMHO — certainly in Tempe, if not the entire Valley.

Then it was off to the expensive environs of our target.

P1030497
(Click on the image for a decent view.)

I’m afraid I went completely berserk — must’ve been the wine. Or maybe the exotic dessert…  Five hundred dollars later:I love me a red shoe…especially if it’s a strappy sandal! Those things are SO LIGHT they feel like they’re made of styrofoam. You have never seen a pair of shoes that is so comfortable and so…almost unnoticeable.

They’re made by Romika, a brand I never heard of but will certainly look for again. Then we came up with this somewhat dressier number, created by Brako:

P1030501I’ve been searching for a pair of decent shoes in this color. They were originally presented to us in bright orange, which really DID look awesome. But I’d already decided to get the red sandals, and I couldn’t imagine what I could wear orange shoes with. These will go with almost everything. And they’re also extremely comfortable.

And of course we couldn’t get out the Shoe Mill without another pair of Naots:

P1030510Why stop at orange when you can have purple and red in the bargain?

The last pair of Naots I bought — which admittedly are a conservative black — have been on my feet almost every single day for the past two years and are only just beginning to show some wear. They’re so comfortable yet at the same time so good looking I wear them almost everywhere, from church and business meetings to the Costco.

So I spent a lot. But I have it: the once-a-month limit on the Costco junkets is saving so much in the monthly budget that I actually was able to cover the horrifying water-heater bill without having to raid emergency savings(!). So the $5000 in backup savings is still sitting there.

This spring has been so temperate — almost the end of May and I haven’t had to turn on the air conditioner! — that power bills will hit a historic low. Soooo…that means this month I probably can pay for the shoe extravaganza out of cash flow. If not, the raid on the credit-union savings account will be minimal.

And so, to work…

Is Costco Shopping an Addiction?

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She took my silver spurs, a dollar and a dime,
And left me cravin’ for
More summer wine…

Something weird is going on here. Yesterday I ran up to the Costco to pick up a month’s supply of dog meat and other Beloved Costco Necessaries. This is normally a $300 to $350 venture.

But…in spite of buying two pairs of  camis ($20 + 10% sales tax) and a lifetime supply of electric toothbrush heads ($30 + etc.), and a bottle of wine ($9 + etc. + some other gouge), I only spent $202!

If I took the camis back this afternoon, we could claim I spent only $180.

But I’m not gunna. They fit and the new version, lacking the formerly much desired and now redundant shelf bra, is very comfortable. And the colors…mmmm-mmm! Summer wine!

The set of 8 electric toothbrush thingies will last me about a year. So that ain’t goin’ back, either.

Two hundred dollah and out the door! That is ay-mazing.

What’s most ay-mazing, though, is the realization that nothing in the place called out to me to take it home!

Costco is normally Impulse Buy Hell for me. But as I strolled up and down the aisle, I didn’t see a single thing that I absolutely positively just HAD to have because the next time I get there it’ll be gone, ohhh eeek!

Odd.

Each month since I started the “go there only once a month” scheme, the tab has dropped by fifty to a hundred dollars.

First it was four hundred. Then three hundred. Now two hundred?!? And no craving for more summer wine????

Seriously: I wonder if returning regularly to a place like Costco — a huge, bazaar-like place whose aisles are lined with temptations — somehow keeps you coming back for more, and if you stay away from it, maybe the desire for more goes away. And if that’s so…

Does that or does that not define an addiction?

 

Spring Doldrums?

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You’d think springtime would burst on the scene with enthusiasm, activity, and all sorts of busy shenanigans, wouldn’t you? And normally it would: by now I’d have herbs and flowers planted (okay, a couple of those ARE in, but not a whole yardful) and I’d be full of schemes and projects. But so far, despite all the beautiful weather, I’ve done almost nothing and I feel no inclination to do much more than almost nothing. What the heck???

Yesterday as I was running around unproductively, I realized the allergies were so bad one of my eyes was swelling up, and both eyes were running.

You come to Arizona to find out what your allergies are — this is a very allergenic region because, in their effort to make the desert look like Ohio, immigrants have brought so many allergenic species into the state: they plant rye grass every winter and cultivate bermudagrass all summer, and there are so many damn mulberry trees their babes sprout as weeds. And pine forests, which still blanket northern Arizona even though they’re dying off as the climate warms, emit extremely allergenic pollen en gigantic masse, which floats down off the rim and plagues the Valley’s sensitive souls for weeks. Springtime, the only pretty ringtime, is not the only allergy season in Arizona, but it’s the most significant.

This is the worst allergy season I’ve ever seen in the 53 years I’ve lived here. And it’s not just me, for a change: everybody else is whining, too.

Respiratory allergies make you feel sleepy, without benefit of drugs. Add Benadryl or one of the other antihistamines, and you can breathe but you can’t stay awake. I’ve been taking a Benadryl knockoff at night and then a Sudafed knockoff in the morning. The stuff in Benadryl puts me into a stupor, and Sudafed wires me to the teeth. The hope is, then, that I’ll be able to breathe well enough to sleep at night but also walk around in a non-Zombified state during the daytime. Ugh.

Don’t know whether it was the allergies alone or the effect of the not-altogether-benign drugs that caused me to reach a deep nadir of non-enthusiasm yesterday. Except for one annoying task, the entire day came to exactly naught.

I needed to get my driver’s license renewed, a bureaucratic hoop-jump that is inflicted more often on older people because of the presumption that if you’re over 65, you must be incompetent (never mind that highest accident rates in this country occur among people aged 35 to 54). The state, in its Republicanized (hah!) cost-cutting campaign, has shut all the ADOT offices in the central city, except for one that’s in an area where I wouldn’t get out of my car on a bet. All the others are off in the far-flung suburbs.

One is in north central Scottsdale, not too very far from yesterday morning’s business networking meeting. So after breakfast, I made my way up to that site.

The license renewal process is a ludicrous joke, because they don’t give you any kind of test that proves your driving skills. They make you peer into a pair of binoculars, read a line of numbers, and ask you whether you can see lights flashing to the left and to the right. Then they make you stand around and twiddle your thumbs until they can photograph you and then they make you sit around and twiddle your thumbs until they can manufacture a license, which now they don’t even give you but mail to the address you provided (presumably to short-cut people giving fake addresses). This process can take upwards of two hours.

The lady in front of me, who looked to be about 28 or 30, could not read the numbers. Instead of telling her to go get her eyes examined, the test administrator had her guess again until she got enough figures right to pass.

You sense the pointlessness of this already, don’t you?

Well, to make it feel like less of a waste of time, I decided that afterward I’d visit the Nordstrom’s Rack, seeking more of the extremely cool tops they sell. The best-stocked of these stores is in a shopping center so close to that ADOT office you could walk across the street to it.

Ah, yes. Pointlessness.

The Rack had exactly Nothing. None of the spectacularly cute Bobeau tops were to be found. Neither was anything else anyone would want to wear. I tried on a pair of tights…ugh! The ones I bought from Amazon fit better and were better quality. Eventually I found one, count it, (1), top that looked like it would be cool with jeans but as I was walking to the dressing room thought do i really WANT to stand in line to get a stupid don’t-you-dare-steal-this number tag to try on a top that’s no better than something i could get at Costco, where i can return things hassle-free???????

Rejecto!

Okay. There’s a Michael’s next door to that store. Looked for a knitting book with instructions on how to knit on several double-ended needles: $48. Uh huh. For $75 I can get real, live, knitting LADIES to teach me how to do that. For free, I can learn how to do it from YouTube.

But I did want some new silk flowers, since Luz was devastated that I moved the gigantic container of fake flowers out of the bathroom into the office, to hide an overloaded electrical outlet that became visible when I got rid of a stereo cabinet. Wanted some fake roses in the reddish-to-orange shades, which would look nice in the bathroom. Checked Michael’s extensive collection of phony foliage: just awful. The fake roses, in particular, were poorly made, their edges actually FRAYED(!) and the petals wrinkled and funny-looking.

Ohhh…kayyyyy…. Well, there’s a Pier One in that shopping center. Walked over there. Yeah, they had their usual expensive fake flowers, and yes, some of them were MUCH better in quality. But none were roseoids. The only ones they had in the desired color range were similar to the ones I already have. Annoying.

Long as I was at the Pier One, I looked at some small area rugs, since I’d like one with an overall deep red effect for the former TV room, which looks pretty devastated without a rug in there but, since the doggy door is in there, is not going to get one of the pricey area rugs presently stashed out of puppy’s reach. Find one; unroll it on the floor. In among the reddish yarns, it has strips of BRIGHT GAWDAWFUL CHARTREUSE. The damn thing about puts your eye out.

Rejecto!

Over to the Cost Plus. Nope: Cost Plus/World Market has quit carrying that kind of thing altogether.

On the way back to the car, I revisit Michael’s, hoping that maybe, just maybe I overlooked something that would work.

Well, no. Rejecto.

Oh, god, how much of a waste of time was that morning?

As I was driving home, I remembered that as a young pup, I used to know how to make crêpe-paper flowers. It’s not very hard. The trick will be to find the crepe paper, which may not be so easy anymore, since most women go to paying work these days, rather than spending their days cleaning, cooking, repairing, gardening, babysitting, chauffeuring, representing hubby’s business interests at social events, entertaining clients and partners, and doing ladylike crafts. However, commenters at Martha Stewart’s how-to page provide leads to finding some of the stuff.

So that may be my next little project, if I ever get my act that much in gear.

However, a new paying editorial project just surfaced. So it’ll be awhile before we see any new paper flowers in the bathroom.

So, to work.

Buy “His,” Not “Her$”

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Okay, I know there are more important things to write about — like the U.S. Senate’s outrageous votes to sell or give away all federal lands other than national parks and monuments (presumably to their owners friends, the Koch Bros. & Co) — but for a nominally personal finance blog, this is too, too good to pass up.

Lautrec_woman_at_her_toilette_1889By now you must have heard that the cosmetics industry is marketing to men almost as fast and furiously as they always have to women. Most of the paints and creams sold to all and sundry are overpriced junk, but they’re nice junk, junk of the sort that makes you feel pampered and privileged, however briefly.

Well, it turns out that as with clothing, there’s a difference yet not a difference between his and hers. In the case of luxurious personal products, the difference happens to be price. Products that are essentially the same will cost, when sold to men, about 50% less than the fare for women.

Consider, for example, the goop that you smear around your eyes to reduce age-betraying puffiness. Half an ounce of  Ahava Dead Sea Osmoter Eye Concentrate, touted  by its marketer as some sort of miracle balm from the stagnant pond of salinity, will set a woman back $50. But if she stepped across the store to the men’s counter and bought the same stuff as Ahava Men’s Age Control All-in-One Eye Care, she would pay just $28 for it. For $5.14 an ounce, she can buy a deliciously pampering body scrub from L’Occitane, or for $2.33 an ounce she can get an equally ridiculous luxurious product over at Sephora: Blue Sea Kelp Body Scrub, by Anthony. Both smell great and smooth your skin to a finely polished sheen. Clinique for Men SPF 21 moisturizer: $7.65 an ounce; Estée Lauder SPF 15 “advanced protection anti-oxidant creme”: $29.41 an ounce.

Jim_BrochuHow to make this work for your family? Seek out products that are made by the same company — Clinique, Lab Series for Men, and Estée Lauder, for example. Although the perfume may different (with any luck, you may find a fragrance-free product), the supposedly “active” ingredients are similar or identical. Or simply experiment with a few men’s products — at those prices, ladies, you can afford it!

😉

Images:

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Woman at Her Toilette, 1889.
Actor Jim Brochu puts on his makeup. Opening night of  The Big Voice: God or Merman, by Steve Schalchlin and Jim Brochu. Photographer: Basykes. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.