But damned if I can figure out what it is…
Several quiet days here at the Funny Farm: no serious drama going on in the ’hood, no excitement to belly-ache about — at least, none that’s not going on in Washington, precincts that have become too tiresome to consider. 😉
A new client sent a paper he intends to deliver at a conference this week. Very interesting piece. The guy’s senior faculty in a decent university’s “Communications” program — that’s what we call “J-school” these days. And so he has something to say, and that something happens to be on a subject I enjoy reading about. So that was a day and a half of pleasurable reading for pay.
The flu continues to make its rounds here in Lovely Uptown Arizona. Friends and foes are dropping left and right. But so far I’ve managed to evade it, for reasons I do not understand. Either I’m one of the 10% to 30% who happen to be protected by this year’s flu shot, or the theory that keeping your hands scrupulously clean works.
If the latter is true, here’s the key: Get yourself a plastic box full of the harshest kitchen counter sanitizing wipes you can find in the store. Place it in the car, and also install a plastic bag or small waste basket for used wipes. Then: every single time you go anywhere and climb back into the car, pull out a wipe and rub it thoroughly over your hands; then wipe down the steering wheel and your car keys and key fob.
Et voilà! If you’ve picked up any bugs on your hands, that ought to kill off a fair number of them.
As soon as you get home, wash your hands well with soap and water. If you have to unpack groceries, be sure to wash your hands again after doing so — you can be sure any cashier or grocery clerk with a sore throat or a runny nose will have smeared bags and boxes and packages with germs.
This amounts to a fair amount of obsessive hand-scrubbing. But presumably after you’re back in the house, you can go about your business without removing any more skin from your paws.
In an office? I dunno. If you have to work in one of those accursed cubes, there’s not a helluva lot you can do to protect yourself. The guy next to you is coughing his viruses in the air, and since the boss is unlikely to let you sit in front of the computer with a gas mask on, you really can’t do much about that. But I think it’s still probably worth hiding a box of counter wipes in your desk and wiping your hands every time you have to leave the cube and move about the infected area. Which will be just about everyplace in an office or school.
Got kids? Forget it. Just get used to the fact that you’re gonna catch the flu. What doesn’t kill you makes you better.
Otherwise, rather little of any constructive import has been going on. I’ve not written a damn word on the noveloid in progress, nor have I updated the Plain & Simple Press Blog (b-a-a-a-ad human!).
No, that’s wrong: The Kid and I met at the Great Desert University the other day and applied for a DUNS number. That has so far not been forthcoming. Whenever (if ever) it gets here, we will then be able to get ourselves certified as a woman-owned small business, which will put us in a preferred category for certain federal contracts. We pledged to look for state contracts, too…but so far I have not managed to elevate myself off my derrière long enough to find out about that. I think probably it will be best to get that DUNS number before spending a lot more time on this effort.
Planning to go to the scribbler’s group this weekend. O’course, I made the same plan last month, but at the last minute did not feel well enough to take on the endless drive to the far west Valley. This month the presenter will be going on about using Word’s “Styles” function to format your manuscript. Well…I already know how to do that, thank you very much. But I do have a book MS in progress that I could play with during this workshop. Or just use some of the draft noveloid MS.
My idea for the nonfiction thing, which is essentially complete and will be easy to put together, is to market it in hard copy. But really. When you come right down to it: why? None of these books is making much money. In any given month, Funny about Money generates about 15 times as much income as all the P&S Press books combined. And it’s a fraction of the work. My plan right now is to “publish” bookoids for free through separate, dedicated websites. Then if anyone wants to buy the whole combined damnfool thing, they can download it for a modest fee from that site. Or for the same modest fee at Amazon.
This, of course, requires me to explain what I’m trying to do for the blogging empire’s website wrangler. And trying to make sense of that in writing? More work than I feel like doing just now.
Can you get spring fever in January?
