Music stuff

Heya. Couple of things. First of all, I have to make every one of my fabulous friends, many of whom I know love chick lit, read Jennifer Weiner's blog about PREP and Melissa Bank's new book. Now, I haven't read either of them, but I gotta say -- I agree with Jennifer. Once you're on her blog, click around, read a few more things, and you'll see how compartmentalized this whole chick lit/women's fiction thing can be, even as I know, from working in the industry, that it's one of the genres that's still very successful around the world. Anyway, that's my two cents.

Next, I should mention... I'm a lurker. I lurk, and I lurk, and I lurk... and occassionally I post a comment, but mostly, I like to watch. I mean, read. So when I tell you I've been checking a fellow CoH player's blog with my usual roundup of Meg Cabot, Go Fug Yourself, Dancing Brave, and Pamie, among others, you'll know what I mean. I have an addiction to the internet, y'all. So, this morning, postponing getting started on work, I check out all the usual suspects, and find a little note to me on the bottom of Hang Time's blog. So, hell yeah, I'm picking up the baton and running with it. Here goes:

Total volume of music on my computer:

Loads. Split up between two computers, actually. My one at work, which I still run Windows Media Player on, has over 3 gigs of music. At home, where I upgraded to iTunes after winning a iPod mini, it's probably closer to 4 or 5. And I'm only about halfway through my CD collection. Can't really throw the rest on there until I get an external hard drive, since I need to have room for my writing too.

The last CD I bought:

I went all out with a Borders' "buy three, get one free" CD offer a little while ago, and picked up the Garden State soundtrack, the Ray soundtrack, Green Day's American Idiot, and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb by U2. Last song I bought (as in actually paid for rather than using a "free song" bottlecap from a Pepsi) was the new Coldplay single.

Song playing right now:

Last song I heard on my iPod this morning was "Young Ned of the Hill" by
The Fenians. If I hit play on my work computer here, I get "When I Fall" by Barenaked Ladies.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

1. "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy soundtrack.
   
2. "Couldn't Have Come at a Better Time" by the Fenians, who I heard live this weekend, and their new bass player's version of this song gives me chills, and makes me want to listen to it LOUD, with my eyes closed.
   
3. "San Dimas High School Football Rules" by The Ataris. Because I do so love me some Bill and Ted references.
   
4. Anything by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. I know that's a bit of a cop out, and I should pick one song, but it's hard! They're all good. But fine, ok, if I have to: "Save My Soul"
   
5. and for a little randomness "Blow, Gabriel, Blow" by Cole Porter, from the "De-Lovely" soundtrack, as perfromed by Jonathan Price.
   

Hey Hang Time, aren't you glad you know more now about the wackiness that is me?

Five People To Whom I'm Passing The Baton:

They're not all bloggers, but I'll accept emails.

• Yi Shun
  
• Maureen (for your new website!)
  
• Anja
  
• Bloom
  
• Heather, because I'm feeling terribly guilty for not responding yet to your last email.
  

And... go!

Fung Wah bus of Fun. Wah!

Sitting on the exciting Fung Wah bus on the way back from Boston to New York. Not as exciting or refreshing as sitting on the dock of the bay might be, but it gets us where we're going. Anja and I had a great time in Massachusetts with Kelly and her family, who are "wicked awesome," as they say up here. They invited us back for a pig roast - yes, a pig roast - in July, and we're seriously considering it. Just had such a blast hanging with Kelly, and if I'm going to spent a couple of hours every weekend to get out of the city, why not switch it up a bit sometimes, and head up here instead of the Shore? Something to think about...

The festival - or as Anja and I were singing all weekend, "the festival, the festival, the King's festival?" - was a lot of fun. Great music, first of all. We caught both of The Fenians' sets, then saw The Prodigals today, ran into Sean McCabe and the latest incarnation of The McCabes, and had a lot of fun dancing to... well, ok, for a new band (for us, at least) headed by a guy named Ashley MacIsaac from Canada. He had a yummy guitarist, too - Anja and I expect a scintillating update from Kelly tomorrow. If you know what I mean...

And did I mention the new McCabes? Not so bad either - I'll have to check out their next New York gig - since I already told Sean I heard their "new sound," I suppose I should back up my lie with a post-dated version of the truth.

Poor Terry, though. He so thought he might be getting some from either Anja or Kelly, and it just wasn't going to happen. Me, he'd just hug and ask when I was going to make his cousin famous by selling his book. Sigh. Not that I want his attention, but it's nice to be wanted.

At least I have my online porn co-author. Oh, excuse me... I mean "erotica.". Either way, my little CoH gal is quite happy. Now if only I could say the same, for the same reasons. Everything except for that's pretty darn super. Wicked good, even.

Back to work!

Sixteen days! That's an awful lot of time to go between blogs. Though, when I consider that those past 16 days have been super busy at work, and I was kept running and jumping from meeting to meeting to cocktail party to meeting... I don't feel quite so bad about it. Though I may have lost some of your sympathy with the whole "cocktail party" thing. But I swear, it was work related! All...(counts) 5, no 6 of 'em!

But I'm finally back to a normal schedule again at the office, and getting back to plowing through the paperwork that has piled up. I've got a nice stack of submissions to read, and offers to deal with, and just when I was really excited about this novel that I'm working on, and thought I might be able to get an auction going, so I turned down a nice pre-emtive offer thinking I could get a better deal with a lot of bids... well, now I don't have a lot of bids. Just one. And it's a third of the pre-empt I had before. Sigh. It's a crap shoot. And I can balance it with a very nice offer I got in another territory for another book, but I can't exactly say that to the author, can I? "Hi, sorry, I had a really nice offer for you, but I thought I could get an even better one, but I didn't, so here's 4,000 euros, but it's ok, cause I got $10,000 for someone else in France."

Yeah, that's not going to work. I have to go make some calls, see if I can fix this. More later.