Cagey

I have been thinking about Nicolas Cage a lot lately.  How can I not, when Yahoo has his mug shot on every page?  Was that even a mug shot?  I didn't even read the story.  Ug.  Stars are so grody to the max that I don't want to deal with their crap anymore.  What an odd guy Nick is, though.  In a good way, most of the time.  Or at least some of the time.  I like that he is into weird, dark, voodoo-y things and has various non-real hairdos.  I saw him speak at a Comic-Con with his son, Weston, about a comic the two of them worked on together (now defunct, I believe), and as ridiculous as self-indulgent as they were, it was sweet how supportive Nick was of his son's goth makeup.  But what really got me thinking of him was this:

I watched Valley Girl whilst on the tread last month, and I had no idea Nicolas Cage was, like, fer sure so tubular.  He had the cutest little gap in his teeth!  And such great hair!  I know the hair isn't his fault, but did he have to fix the gap?  And I loved that the valley girl's name was Julie, so he had to keep saying my name.  Sigh.

I'm reaching for blog ideas today because I really wanted to blog, but I woke up all late. On a totally unrelated note, anyone see Into the Wild Nerd Yonder in paperback in the stores yet?  Tomorrow I will try to blog about sending books to famous people and never hearing back from them. 

That's Entertainment

What have I been watching and listening to lately?  I'm glad you asked.  Here is my list of weekend viewing/hearing pleasures:

• Ghost Adventures - Duh.  Still watching.  Still following on Twitter.  Still kind of obsessed.  I want them to do a lockdown in my town.  Maybe I should pretend my house is haunted?
• Arthur - Not the noseless aardvark, but the lovable drunk, this time around played by Russell Brand.  Matt and I had a chance to see a movie yesterday, and while I considered Hanna, I went with Arthur.  I thought it was quite sweet and funny, and Russell Brand was totally charming.  I completely see what Katy Perry sees in him.  What he sees in her remains to be seen (besides her boobs, of course).
• Paul Van Dyk - This one's a listen.  I have been very uninspired musically for a while now (excluding Ke$ha, of course), and, I am slightly embarrassed to say, I picked up some Paul Van Dyk CDs from the library based on the fact that one of the Ghost Adventures guys recommended him.  Not to me personally.  Or was it?  Anyway, it's good music to work out to, and I'm happy to be in another genre besides morose, indie blah that is always what others seem to suggest (as was my previous life's genre).
• Game of Thrones - This new show started last night on HBO.  I have not read the books, and the show was fine for a first episode.  I wanted more magic, and the sex and boobs were everywhere.  All I could think was that these were actors pretending to have ridiculous sex.  So, not so sexy.  But I'll keep watching to see where it goes.  The show, not the sex.

Now I shall stare out my window at the snow-covered ground.  Happy Passover!

Career Discounts

Today I'm going to speak at my old junior high about being an author.  It's Career Day.  I'm not the featured speaker or anything (I wonder who is) but one of the many people who a small group will see based on a test they took.  I think.  I did this last year, and I asked the kids if any of them really wanted to be authors.  I think one said yes.  So this year, instead of taking a clinical approach, I'm going to give more of a personal talk about how I became an author, not about being an author in general.  I am also bringing along a Power Point, which may or may not allow some of the kids to fall asleep, but will at least be colorful.  Jeez.  I hope I'm more interesting while I speak today than I am right now blogging.  Hopefully the shower will wake up my face and brain.

In shopping spree news, I went to Kohl's yesterday with a 30% off coupon.  I realize Kohl's is not the coolest place to tout my shopping spree, but with the minimal amount of time I have to go shopping by myself and the boring items I needed (slippers, bras, sunglasses, shorts) it did just fine.  I even bought a shirt handmade by Lauren Conrad!  Um, not really.  But I did buy a cute shirt with her name on it.  When I was trying on my clothes, a woman in a dressing room nearby let out the biggest, loudest, longest fart ever.  I would have been mortified if it were me.  Luckily there were no children in the dressing room to hear it, or the laughter would have been non-stop.  I was all business with my time constraint, so I suppressed my own laughter.  I wonder if that person was embarrassed, or if they thought it was acceptable to do that in a fitting room.  Like, it's sort of acceptable to do in a bathroom (although still mortifying in public, if you ask me).  When I went to pay, the lady at the checkout was a dud.  You'd think she'd be all congratulatory that I got the 30% (Kohl's sends you a peel off surprise discount that can be 15, 20, or 30%).  No, she didn't care.  Nor could she hear anything I said.  Not because she was hard of hearing, but because she was just really boring.  If I worked at Kohl's, I would be all up in that 30% game.  Her loss.

Have a good weekend?

Writerless

My aunt noted how I don't blog as much about writing as I used to.  That is because I haven't really been writing.  I know some writers write all the time, write several books at a time, would die if they were not writing.  I am not like that.  In fact, before I quit my job, I pretty much wrote only during the summers (except for the first half of Get Well Soon, which I wrote on a train to and from work).  Perhaps it is my natural writer way to need a break in between books, to refresh my brain and give all my ideas time to simmer.  I have an outline for my next novel (the book after the GWS sequel), and I have another idea that is really taking shape and would be something very different for me.  But I have pretty much put off all writing until I hear back from my editor, Liz, about GWS II.  And this is where the halt became official.  Normally, I hear back from Liz relatively soon after I send her my manuscript.  She'll write up a letter with overall suggested changes and ideas, as well as send me the manuscript printed out with her handwritten notes all over it.  This book, however, has been with Liz for four months.  She assured me a while back it was because she had a stack of books on lists that came before mine that needed to be tended to and it had nothing to do with what's inside my book.  Still, a girl can get a complex (and you know I'm that girl).  I emailed Liz today hoping to get an ETA, just a little hello and to touch base.  I'm terrified that the reply will say, "I've been working for months on your book and had to completely red pen every single page!"  No, I'm not actually afraid of that.  First of all, Liz and I have worked together on three books already, and she is wonderfully delicate in her ways.  I also feel like we work together so well, and I have a very strong sense of my writing and know this was a very well done book.  What will be interesting to see, and what I think I'm most afraid of, is what happens when I get it back.  Have I lost my mojo, or did I need this time, as I normally had when I was working, to cool off from the last book?  And somehow magically Liz knew this?  Or at least her schedule did.

Totally unrelated: I have been reading Twitter more (yet not tweeting more) because I'm now following the Ghost Adventures guys.  I finally get it!  Twitter, I mean.  It's like I know what these guys are doing at all times!  It's rather comforting.  See, these are the types of odd obsessions I need to curb before I can begin to write again.  I'm taking full advantage of my waiting period.  Now if you will excuse me, I have to see what Zak had for breakfast.

Nerd Release!

Happy Nerd Release Day!  Today the paperback edition Into the Wild Nerd Yonder is (hopefully) out in book stores!  Please do me a favor.  If you see it in a store, make sure it's facing out to give it a little extra attention.  I think I will follow my own request and go to the Borders in town to harass them about my book.  If anyone does see it in a store, let me know!  Here's the cutie cover again:

 

I slept like crap last night.  Actually, since crap just sits there, I probably didn't sleep like crap.  See?  I'm so tired, I'm personifying poo. 

Good Dreams, Bad Dreams

I had a weird weekend of dreams.  I think part of it had to do with the fact that I stopped eating dessert last week and then started again during the weekend.  Maybe the sugar messed with my brain.  Or it could have been "Black Swan," which I found completely embarrassing and ridiculous, not as compelling as everyone said, and also a little gross.  I feel like the movie was right on the border of being total trash and "art."  Did other people feel that way?  Because the thing was loaded up with awards nominations. 

Last night I had a really good dream.  I don't remember why or how I got there, but I was going to perform as a sort of high wire swing act in a theater.  It was going to be really physically complicated and dangerous, but in my dream I knew that I mastered it in three weeks.  My next door neighbor told me that everyone came from hours away just to see my performance.  I never actually got to the performing piece of the dream, but my analysis is very positive.  Like, I knew I was capable of this really tough feat, and I wasn't phased by it.  Right?  I used to be all into dream analysis, but I dream so often and remember them so much that I gave up.  Waking myself up in the middle of the night to write down what I just dreamt and then not being able to fall back asleep wasn't my idea of a good time.  I'm already doing that to myself with peeing. 

Random Loves of the Week

I just checked my blog stats, and my two most read blog posts of all time (which have been read literally ten times as much as my other posts) are:
More Covers for Your Covering Pleasure (1,323 page views), about the hilarious book covers I found in my library (If you like that post, you can also check out the "Julie's Most Awesome Book Covers" label on the side of my blog)
AND
Why I Heart Ke$ha (1,055)
Isn't that wacky?  I wonder who is reading my Ke$ha post.  Nobody is commenting on it, yet it continues to get read.  I kind of love that.

What else do I love this week?  Ghost Adventures.  I know, I blabbed about it last weekend, but I have been watching it non-stop since.  I can't get enough!  I adore Zak, the big dude who is possibly the most sincere man I have ever watched on TV.  He doesn't care that he is afraid of snakes and heights and evil dolls.  And he gets all excited about the paranormal stuff they find.  His arms are ginormous, as is his heart.  I'm just guessing.

The next love is a family love.  Matt and I are very different thinkers, meaning we are not a couple who can finish each others sentences.  Occasionally that upsets me, but mostly I think it's great that we have very different brains to contribute to life.  Here is one occasion where we were definitely in sync (I keep wanting to type "n sync," which neither of us ever were).  Matt likes to find little videos for Romy to watch on YouTube, and she expects this from him.  Recently he pulled up this:

Not only does Romy now refer to herself often as Paul Simon (she did this previously with Michael Jackson because she liked to wear only one mitten), but yesterday I put on a CD of "Me and Julio," and Romy, no exaggeration, had me keep the song on repeat for over an hour and a half.  The funny thing is that I always envisioned dancing with my kid, when I had a kid, to this song.  So that's the in sync part.

Speaking of being in sync (um, not really), we're going to get our taxes done today.  I am never this late in the tax doing, but it somehow got away from us.  We like our accountant, so it's never a bad time.  Except for the scary ending.

It's supposed to be in the 80s here on Sunday, and I'm meeting up with some of my best friends.  Should be a great weekend!  Hope yours is, too!