What do you mean, the stimulus payments aren't working?

Not very long ago, I mentioned to a friend that the only thing my stimulus payment would be stimulating was my bill-paying activities. Evidently I'm not the only one:

Consumers Lean on Rebate Checks for Bills and Gas

I don't understand why they sound so surprised, as I have been predicting this for months. Most people I know are behind on their bills, or have credit card debt they want to pay off, or both. Our culture already allows people to live far behind their means by racking up credit, so by the time this stimulus payment was even discussed, most people were past the point of being able to spend it on frivolous shopping.

TGIF

I am so glad it's Friday... and yet, at the same time, so disappointed.

I mentioned in a previous post that my brother-in-law and his family relocated to Denver over Memorial Day weekend. Unfortunately, the craziness didn't end there. Here are a few of the highlights of my week, much of which has to do with the in-laws:

* Tuesday night Michael and I drove down to his brother's new place to help them finish unloading the truck. I ended up spending most of the evening chasing around my two small nephews instead. I was doing a lot of running after them and scooping them up before they made it out the door, and as a result my thighs were so painfully sore the next day that I could barely squat or walk down stairs.

* Wednesday morning I drove down there again after dropping Michael off at work, and helped my sister-in-law return the Uhaul truck. Of course, that entire ordeal took fully two hours longer than I had planned, which meant that I didn't have enough time to get any work done before Panama's training appointment — after which I had to go immediately to pick Michael up from work.

* Stressed out from not getting enough work done Wednesday, I stayed up until 4:00 am to get some stuff done. This was actually the most productive time I've spent all week, but I'm now a little sleep deprived as a result.

* Thursday I was supposed to have all day to work, but in the afternoon the owner of the barn where Panama is stabled called me with some concerning news: Panama appeared to have a mild case of colic. He's okay now, but I didn't get much work done Thursday either because I spent so much time at the barn with Panama.

* Today I took Michael to work so that I could borrow the car to go to Panama's farrier appointment. Unfortunately, an issue with my in-laws required that I move my appointment up, pick Michael up early in the afternoon, and then tag along while Michael helped his brother take care of the issue. Thus, another workday hijacked...

I still have a ton of work that I should be doing tonight or tomorrow, but nevertheless I am glad it is Friday. Hopefully we can find a happy medium with the in-laws in the coming weeks. I really like them, but I still need to be able to get my work done each day!

Lots of science fiction story ideas here!

I ran across this article the other day about a spacecraft that just landed on Mars. As I was reading it, I started thinking about how many starters there are here for a good science fiction story or novel. Since I already have more story ideas than I can use, I thought I'd pass these on to someone else who can use them.

Things to take note of:

* NASA doesn't know the fate of one of the failed soft-landing missions. The article says they lost contact with it before it landed. A whole lot of what-ifs to play with there!

* It only took the spacecraft 10 months to reach Mars. I don't know about you, but that's a considerably shorter span of time than I would have thought. Definitely a feasible amount of travel time for astronauts or even colonists.

* In 2002, water — one of the supposed building blocks of life — was discovered below the surface of Mars in the form of ice. Life on Mars? All kinds of great story ideas there! Someone with a good imagination could find a way to do that in a way that hasn't been done before.

* Phoenix, the spacecraft that just landed, carries with it a DVD with a "library of science fiction and art, as well as the names of more than 250,000 people." The DVD is designed to withstand deterioration, presumably in the hopes that someone — or something — will find it someday. If some type of life form finds this DVD, I wonder what assumptions they'll draw about us as a people?

All kinds of fun you could have with this story!

My crazy Memorial Day weekend

I mentioned before that I had deadlines that would have me working over Memorial Day weekend. Unfortunately, work wasn't the only thing that made my holiday weekend un-holiday-like: My brother-in-law relocated to Denver this weekend to take a new job at Michael's company. We knew it would make our weekend busy, but we didn't expect that it would make it quite this crazy and stressful.

My brother-in-law was supposed to leave Saturday night and get in on Sunday, but loading the truck took longer than expected. In the end he didn't leave until late Sunday night. Then it took longer to make the trip than usual because he couldn't drive the truck more than 55 or 60 miles per hour. To top it off, the trailer that was pulling their second car blew several tires, and they had to wait for more than an hour for a Uhaul mechanic to come rescue them.

Because neither my brother-in-law and his wife had slept Sunday night, Michael and I drove out about three hours to meet them. We took turns driving so that they could get some rest. Unfortunately, we didn't arrive at my brother-in-law's new home until about 10:30 last night. We unloaded about half the truck into the garage, stacking boxes haphazardly, until we could reach their bed and a couple of blankets. Even so, it was 12:30 by the time Michael and I left — and since both Michael and his brother had to get up early this morning, neither of them got much sleep last night, either.

What did you do over the holiday weekend?

Holiday weekend? What holiday weekend?

I keep remembering with a start that this weekend is Memorial Day weekend. For the first time in several years, we don't have any plans to go on vacation or do something holiday weekend-ish.

It's just as well, too, as I'll probably be working. I have a couple of deadlines set for tomorrow-ish, and I'll be scrambling to finish those up (I hope) by the end of today. Even if I do succeed in that, however, I still have some other work that I've neglected for the sake of these deadlines, so I anticipate playing a little catch-up this weekend.

Even more notable, since I've been thinking of next week as a full week, I've also been planning it as a full week: Although I don't have anything due on Monday, I do have several projects that I told clients I'd have finished by Tuesday or Wednesday. Whoops...

What about you? Are you taking Memorial Day weekend off to do something fun, or — like me — are you stuck working through the holiday weekend?

Tornadoes in Colorado today

I've been rather unproductive today because I've been watching the sky so much (not to mention repeatedly putting the car cover back on my car because of the strong winds): There has been a tornado watch in our area all afternoon.

The threat of tornadoes isn't all that common in Denver, so I've been fretting about how to get two big dogs down our narrow, steep basement steps — neither dog has ever gone down them. At the same time, I'd have to also get two cats downstairs — the difficult part there being keeping them down there, since the door is upstairs.

The wind was really bad earlier, and as a result I watched the sky quite a bit, but then it died down. More recently, the sky has grown dark, and the wind has picked up again. Needless to say, I haven't gotten much writing done since it did.

Northeastern Colorado did see some tornado damage today. I had to fight back tears when I read the quote from the guy who said he lost his dog and cats, mainly because that has been my biggest fear all day.

Another self-published novel success story

It's really too bad self-publishing has such a bad rap in the industry. Generally people assume a book is self-published because it wasn't good enough to get picked up by a traditional publisher, but really there's a lot more to it than that. Many of the books that do get picked up are crap, just marketable crap. And there are plenty of reasons why good authors choose to self-publish — for the better royalties, for example, or to avoid giving up rights to, and control over, their work.

With all this in mind, I really get a kick out of hearing self-publishing success stories — such as this one, from NPR, about a self-published Christian novel that has made a number of bestseller lists.

Of course, it definitely helps that Christian fiction is a hot genre right now, not to mention that there's lots of community networking opportunities there (which can help sell books). Although in William P. Young's case, the marketability of the book was inadvertent, it just goes to show that self-publishing success requires as much business sense as writing skill!