Writing

About a month or so ago, I started writing something new. An idea that came to me one day, and that I spent a solid few days thinking about while I did all my normal things. I’m still not 100% sure how it’s going to turn out, but it’s a fairy tale; last I checked, that could mean anything between happy-ever-after and everyone-dies. I tend towards happy endings, but we’ll see.

I love the frantic pace of NaNo during November. It’s a great way to get in the habit of writing every day. But… it’s easier to not work that way. I can write 50 words, 500, or 1500 in one day. In an hour. In a week. Today, after almost two weeks of occasional staring at the screen hopelessly, I wrote 1200+ words that I’m pretty fond of in the space of two and a half hours. It feels fantastic.

I’d keep writing tonight, but there’s a grumpy cat threatening to be bitey if I don’t pay attention to her Right Now.

And by bitey I mean More Grumpy. Because she doesn’t actually bite me.

Santa Fe Fandango

After I finish this review, we’ll see if it’s suitable for use on LibraryThing and Goodreads…

The LibraryThing Early Reader description for Santa Fe Fandango by Elinor Groves is as follows:

Matti Glover is thrilled to learn that hot Hollywood heart-throb Antonio Reed is not only filming a movie in Santa Fe, but staying in the exclusive complex where she’s house-sitting. She rescues him from a busload of teenage girls, and grateful and intrigued, he asks her for a date.

Matti’s caught up in a Cinderella dream come true—until midnight hits and it’s pumpkin time. Any reader who ever cherished a secret crush on Robert, Justin, or Orlando will enjoy this romp through the fan’s ultimate fantasy.

Okay, granted, I requested a book that sounds like a silly young adult romance, but I’ll admit it: I absolutely adored Meg Cabot’s Teen Idol. I was hoping for a fluffy bit of ridiculous fun. I mean, even the cover looks appropriate for a twee little novel.

Matti, an artist, is house-sitting for a friend of hers in an exclusive Santa Fe community. Both she and her extremely flaming BFF (so Hollywood-stereotypical that it made me want to barf- I don’t know a single gay man who actually acts like that in real life) are obsessed with an up-and-coming actor named Antonio Reed.

When I say obsessed, I mean that she has cardboard stand-ups, posters, all two of his movies that she’s watched more than twenty times, and uses his image as a reference in countless drawings. She’s filled notebooks and canvases with his picture. She gets flustered and self-conscious thinking about him. She’s so goofy over this heartthrob that I honestly thought this girl was 17 and doing a family friend a favor, but noooo. She’s in her late twenties. My age.

…and then it turns out that Antonio is there. In Santa Fe. Staying in the same community. Matti sees him walking around, and has the presence of mind- despite her twitterpated response- to warn Antonio about an incoming horde of teenage girls. When she runs into him again at the only restaurant this place apparently has where movie stars are willing to eat, he asks her out, charmed by her lack of crazy-fan-antics.

In the meantime, Matti is constantly freaking out over how to not have frantic fan freakouts, because she (rightly) thinks that he doesn’t want to be romantically involved with someone who is only interested in the characters he played and his extremely attractive face.

And that, folks, is the entire conflict of the book. She tries to hide it, his bodyguard tries to convince him that she’s one of the nutcases, she gradually becomes less of a crazy fan, they fall in love and WHOA HOLY COW SURPRISE EXPLICIT SEX SCENE.

Turns out, not a young adult novel. This is an actual romance novel, fulfilling the expectations of the genre.

And then the book just… ends. He finds out she’s a crazy fan, decides he doesn’t care, and they live happily ever after. Within the last 5% of the book. Least interesting climax of all time.

However, as I read, I began to put pieces together. The end clinched it.

I was reading fanfiction. One of the fanfics written by a girl obsessed with an actor to the point that she writes fiction about the life of a real human being to give greater life to her fantasies about a hot guy. A piece of fiction meant to give the obsessed girl hope that the hot actor will fall in love with her despite the creepy things she’s written about him.

And the guy in question? Orlando Bloom. The character’s name is “Antonio Reed.” They are both English, the physical description matches, and their first big movie role was that of the hot, young, supporting character in an ensemble cast (Legolas in Lord of the Rings vs Will Scarlet in Robin Hood). That single role thrust the previously unknown young actor into a whirlwind of interviews and paparazzi. The more I read, the more obvious it became. The whole thing reads like the author’s fantasy about herself and Orlando Bloom. It was honestly a little sad by the time I finished.

If you can read it as just a light fantasy romance novel, it’s not terrible. It’s definitely not good, as the poor pacing clearly shows, but it could be worse. But if you’re a person who keeps accidentally finding the trainwrecks of fanfiction about celebrities… eesh.

Bugbears Are Cute

I’m not sure how it came up, but in a sleepy conversation last night, Simon mentioned that he’d recently learned that there is a real organism referred to colloquially as a bugbear. Bugbears, for the fantasy-loving among us, tend to look something like this:

But this real bug bear is something else.

Meet the tardigrade, hypsibius dujardini. Also known as a water bear or moss piglet, it’s a teeny animal with eight wee legs. Roly-poly and looking a lot like a microscopic bear, the bugbear is found pretty much everywhere, but most often on moss and lichen.

And, much like their Dungeons & Dragons namesake, the bugbears are hardcore.

So hardcore.

Extreme heat or cold that would kill a human? No problem. Expelling all water from their bodies? Hey, they can survive a decade like that! A dose of radiation a thousand times higher than a dose lethal to humans? Bugbear don’t care. Several were taken into space- space- and exposed to the vacuum and solar radiation. Not only did many survive the ten days outside of the pressurized atmosphere, several were still able to successfully reproduce.

These little dudes will rock your world.

And they’re kinda cute.

Trying New Products

Simon likes lemonade quite a bit. I buy the quart containers of lemon juice at Woodman’s and make up our own lemonade to save money (and sugar- our way is at least a half cup less sugar per gallon).

Last time we stopped at Woodman’s there was a new brand, one I hadn’t seen before. Same ingredients (lemon juice! preservatives!), and about .50 cheaper per bottle. Worth trying, right?

It tastes the same, but it’s weirdly clear. Simon’s taken to calling it our hose-water lemonade, because it looks like slightly dirty water. We’re tempted to drop a bit of food coloring in to make ourselves feel better…

Shipping

I’ve had an odd and somewhat interesting series of exchanges with a shipping company.

Amazon started using a new shipping company fairly recently; either it began sometime after we moved or this company just didn’t service our previous area. They must be cheaper than USPS, FedEx, or UPS, because most of my Amazon packages in the past six months have been brought by this company.

The first package brought by Ensenda was listed for delivery on a Monday, but the only tracking information provided said that it had been listed for pick up by the shipper. Sunday morning at 7:30am our doorbell rang, and I groggily grabbed a robe and went to the door. Not a single person was in sight, but the package listed for Monday was sitting outside the side door. I chalked it up as just one of those oddities, and didn’t worry.

The next package was listed for delivery on a Thursday. Mildly worried that the delivery would come early and be left outside, I made sure to not have any errands to run the day before. This time the tracking had the package bouncing all over the metro area. Checked in at random places, then those check-ins erased, replaced by others. It was bizarre. There was a loud banging at the front door about two minutes after Simon left for work on Thursday morning, and again, by the time I got to the door the package was leaning on the door and the driver was in his vehicle, moving away. His vehicle wasn’t a delivery truck, either. It was just a car, totally unmarked in any way, but piled with boxes in the back. Weird. And this package had been left at the front door, so if I hadn’t been home (or if I’d been sleeping with the bedroom door shut, or in the laundry room) I would have no idea that it was there. We live in a relatively safe neighborhood, but I’m not going to pretend that a package sitting two feet from the sidewalk isn’t going to be stolen. (There is a reason that I move boxes to next to mailboxes if I find them outside.)

The next one had the same issue as the first- a day early, no tracking to indicate that it would be arriving early, and I was out of cat food, so I had no choice but to run to the store. When I arrived back home after being gone for less than twenty minutes, my package was sitting outside the side door.

This time, when I saw that my package was coming via Ensenda, my heart sank a little. The order went in on Friday night, and since it included a game that wasn’t set to release until the 31st, I thought it would probably ship Monday or Tuesday and arrive between Wednesday and Saturday. I got the order confirmation, and then on Monday afternoon I got the email saying that it had shipped, set to arrive on Wednesday the 1st. I checked the tracking. At that time, all it said was that it was listed for pickup by shipper. Last night, after tracking didn’t update at all over the entire day, I posted on Facebook and Twitter.  Almost immediately I was contacted (via Twitter) by an Ensenda rep. They asked for my tracking number so as to check into it.

I pulled up the tracking number to send it along, and found that literally five minutes before the tracking had changed. Where it previously said that it was listed for pickup on Monday, it now said it had been picked up by the shipper on Monday and was delivered to a nearby depot. I sent along the tracking information, along with a brief overview of the other issues I’ve had, and got an email today saying that my package is out for delivery and did I want to have to sign for it?

Yes. Yes, I do. I sign for all my UPS and FedEx packages. USPS leaves boxes inside, so I’m not as concerned. Why is a signature not the default? I was told that the driver has been informed of my desire to sign for the package.

It’s weird. I feel a little bad complaining about the company when I have actually received all my packages. And the customer relations person responded quickly and politely. When I do a little digging, though, it looks like many, many people have the exact problems I do, and many of them have lost their packages because of the way that this company works. And having good customer service when people complain isn’t the same as having good service overall. If the tracking was consistent, if they didn’t continue leaving packages in full view and easy reach of the street, if they required signatures- all those would be massive improvements.

And having the delivery person in an unmarked vehicle still weirds me out.

EDIT:
Hahahaha. Not only did the delivery guy not get a signature, he also failed to knock. Lucky I had the blinds up. I watched the (still unmarked) car stop, a guy in jeans and a hoodie get out with a box, walk up to my building, and then walk away without the package.

Spectacular.

Oh, and the tracking isn’t updated either. I think I hate this company.

EDIT 2:
I have been informed by their customer service that a supervisor will be following up with the driver. I think I’m still going to contact Amazon and see if there is any way for me to never have my packages sent via Ensenda again.