I couldn’t attend BEA this year, but I was able to follow along thanks to the #BEA09 Twitter feed. It’s actually kind of interesting to follow along this way because you get a sense of the overall picture from a number of people, rather than just one person’s limited observations. Here’s what I got from Friday’s Twitter Feed (links embedded will be a mix of websites and links to Twitter feeds):

1) Chris Brogan seemed to hit a home run with his morning presentation on Trust Agents. People were still Twittering about it hours later (you can see his slides on his website)

2) Many people were excited to report Julie Andrews sightings.

3) Once those sightings died down, others were excited they got to meet Bob from Sesame Street.

4) Reports were that there wasn’t as much swag at BEA this year. Likely an indication of the effect of the economy on publishers.

5) But despite that, there was a lot of buzz on the #bea09 Twitter tag about Chronicle Books‘ tote bags, which were said to be awesome (and did look cool in the picture). They were designed by @nuzzles(Laura Bagnato) and http://www.jeffcanham.com/

6) Many mentions of two booths that had “booth girls” going around in either bikinis or nude bodysuits. Sourcebooks and the COOL-er Reader. I saw only one person speak positively of it, the other mentions were not impressed. I do think it was an odd choice, especially for Sourcebooks.

This Teleread article has a picture of the Cool-er booth.

7) Speaking of the COOL-er Reader, a lot of buzz about ppl checking this out, especially because of the bright look, lower price than Sony and Mac compatibility (though Sony is fully compatible w/ Mac thanks to Calibre). I saw more mention of this than I did of the BeBoook, though I did see one picture of the BeBook. I would like to see/use both of these so I can compare/contrast with the Sony and the Kindle. I’ve already had one person emailing for my thoughts on the BeBook. I can’t give any right now, sorry!

Pictures of the Cool-er Reader at the show in this Teleread article.

The Espresso Book Machine was another oft-mentioned exhibit on the Twitter Feed. Lots of positive mention of this.

9) Someone at the panel, Do Publishers Still Hold the Keys to the Kingdom, Authors Weigh In #pubkeys, apparently made the statement “no one wants ebooks for Christmas”. This is such an uniformed statement, I can’t even fully express my frustration with it. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

10) The BEAtweetUp with its personalized badges and amazing organizers was the not-to-be-missed event of BEA. It appeared to be THE social event of BEA. Kudos to the organizers, headed by Kat Meyer.

11) Most sought after author appeared to be Neil Gaiman @neilhimself I was so taken in with the Twitter buzz surrounding his appearance, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have been squeeing to get a sighting of him even though (I reluctantly admit for fear of lynching from fans) that I’ve never read his books.

12) The blogger signing booth sponsored by Firebrand and NetGalley seemed to be a huge success. Bloggers have fans! (but we already knew that).

Pictures in this article from Teleread.

13) Connectivity was difficult at Javits. Multiple, multiple complaints about being able to access wifi, whether on laptop or phone. This might have contributed to less people Twittering, but the #bea09 tag was still active. Presenters trying to stream video during their panels were unable to with provided wi-fi. Ouch.

14) People reported that attendance numbers might be down, but the floor was still busy and the positive energy was high. I have a suspicion that social media like Twitter has helped build this positive energy and caused people to be even more enthused to attend and network/exchange ideas than ever before.

15) For the win: HarperCollins gave out digital ARCs instead of paper ARCs. I have mad jealousy that I didn’t get to check this out, especially since Diana Peterfreund said her upcoming book, Rampant, was one of those dig-ARCs. Big props to HarperCollins for taking this step.

Anyone notice anything significant that I left out? I’m looking forward to watching the Twitter feed today (as much as is possible on a Saturday).

I’ve been wanting to write this post for awhile because, in the last month, my number of Twitter followers has tripled. It’s kind of weird and a little…puzzling because I’m fairly certain I’m 1) not that interesting and 2) more than a little inane. Maybe most of them are Twitter spammers. I did theorize that most of the people who “follow” don’t actually pay attention. That’s okay with me. I’ll still carry on the way I have been.

But that said, I think it’s important, if you follow me (or are thinking about it) that you know a few things.

1) I don’t autofollow (and hey, Twitter is getting rid of that feature anyway, but even so, I don’t follow automatically). In fact, if you look, I don’t follow a lot of people. It goes up and down depending on what I feel I can keep up with. I usually end up following someone because either someone else has recommended them or because they’ve replied to me on Twitter and I’ve decided I want to see what they’re saying at other times as well.

2) Not following you doesn’t mean I’m not interested in what you have to say, only that I can’t keep up with very many people. Don’t take it personally, please. Which leads to…

3) I think one of the best ways to manage your Twitter experience is to be willing to unfollow. I go through and unfollow/follow every couple weeks. Again, don’t take it personally (though I will take it personally if you unfollow me. KIDDING!)

4) Twitter is not my work. I don’t get paid to Twitter (or blog). If you read my blog, you know it’s a mish-mash of everything. My Twitter is even worse than that. Please don’t follow me if you expect only convo about publishing, books or editing all the time. You won’t like me. Plus, I Twitter a lot. I like Twitter. I try not to Twitter the really banal stuff, but I have my moments. And did I mention I Twitter a lot? Yeah. You might want to think about that before you follow me. Especially if you don’t like hearing about toddler vomit.

5) If you reply to me, I will try to reply back. I think I do pretty good at that. As long as there’s a response I can make. But there are times when I won’t respond back because I don’t have a response, am busy and away from Twitter, or just plain miss your reply. If you had a question and I didn’t answer, I probably missed it. Just ask me again, please! Also, I love it when people convo me on Twitter. It’s better than “speaking” into a vacuum. And I’ve found my Twitter followers are pretty funny people (who make good book recommendations!)

6) Just because I’m Twittering doesn’t mean I’m 1) not working or 2) at work. I know, seems contrary. But being online doesn’t mean I have to be working. I like to be online just for fun like everyone else. But also, if you see me Twittering, I’m just as likely to be doing so in between working on something. Either way, please don’t draw conclusions or make assumptions or have expectations about me based on whether I’m Twittering or not.

7) If I’m at a conference, I might Twitter workshops, etc from the conference. You might want to unfollow me during that time if it’s not of interest to you (and then follow again if you want). I don’t mind! I know what’s of interest to me is not of interest to everyone.

Last, please don’t query me on Twitter (or Facebook) unless we’re engaged in a conversation that would invite you to. I put my email address on my Twitter page so if you have a business-related question, you’re free to email me!

As announced on Twitter this morning, I’m super excited to tell you that Samhain is going to start offering our front and backlist in DRM-free EPUB format starting in May. We’ve got a good jump on this, we just need to give our over-worked formatter time to get it all together. Many of you know that I’m a big fan of standard formats, like EPUB, and also a huge believer in not using DRM. Samhain (and really, most epublishers that I know of) don’t use DRM and never have so for us the big announcement is really the addition of the new format, not the DRM-free.

Did you know that Samhain editors are on Twitter? www.twitter.com/samhainpub You’ll find most of the Samhain editors Twittering there, as well as our submissions coordinator. They Twitter about submissions, edits, editing, and life in general. Plus, we’re going to start doing some Twitter contests coming soon!

In the conversations from Twitter file: this past weekend I asked for recommendations for political thrillers and action adventure novels in the vein of Nelson Demille, Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum. I got some great recommendations (and am always happy for more if you have them). I started with two recs. One from agent Deidre Knight for The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano. I bought it and loaded it onto the Sony last night. And devoured it. It’s a totally compelling read. The author has a very readable narrative voice and I had to keep turning the pages to see where the story would go next. The main character is interesting, though not entirely likeable, but that actually works for the book because she’s not a perfect character, but an entirely real one with real flaws. I don’t regret spending the $10 for this book and I highly recommend it!

The other recommendation that I followed up on was James Rollins. I decided to go with Sandstorm, the first in his Sigma Force series. I read the first few chapters after I finished The Girl She Used to Be and enjoyed them. I’m looking forward to this evening when I can pick Sandstorm up and keep reading!

The Twitter pitch (twitch) post is still going strong. I’m going to pull some of the favorites and highlight them in a blog post this week.

Last, unrelated to publishing but relevant, I’m going to be traveling a lot in the month of April. We just decided (today) to road trip to my parents’ in North Dakota for Easter. We’ll leave early next week and won’t come back until the following Wednesday. I’ll have a day to pack and regroup before I head to WRW retreat and from there to RT for a week! I’m a little tired just thinking of it but excited because we’ve never gotten to spend a holiday with them since we’ve been married (or since Brianna was born) because of the distance and work schedules. So yay!

ETA: The first thing to say is that a pitch isn’t necessarily about selling your book to an agent/editor. Time to move out of that mindset! Read on…

Here’s another one to file under conversations from Twitter. This came up this past weekend in a conversation about Blood and Chocolate by Annette Kurtis Clause. It’s a great book and I highly recommend it. Someone (@lihsa, follow the link for her article on it) on Twitter asked for a review/description and the challenge was on. 140 character review for a book? It’s the “elevator pitch” at its most refined!

Now, it’s been a few years since I read Blood and Chocolate so even though it’s one of the books I recommend often when someone asks for paranormal YA, I still had to stop and think how to refine it in an interesting way. Years after I’d read it. Hard!

I came up with: teenage female werewolf struggles to find acceptance in a world that doesn’t know about the supernatural. Moody, dark and emotional.

I don’t think it’s the best review/pitch but it does start to refine the ideas. I could make it punchier, ramp up the hook, really get someone interested. Let’s see…

Rebelling against her society. Searching for love. Desperate for a chance. Can this teen wolf reconcile what she is with who she wants to be?

Hmm, I’m not sure. I’m actually over by one character but I figure if I delete a space, I’ll be okay. What do you think? Better? It took me 15 minutes of fiddling to come up with that versus the first one, which I just popped off the top of my head.

But what I’m getting at is that it’s important to be able for authors to refine your book to its purest hook. The conflict, the angst, the info that’s going to make a reader, editor or agent want to pick it up to read, go find an excerpt, request a full or keep reading your query letter.

TV does this with what they call log lines. A one sentence hook meant to engage the viewer and get them to watch the show. Something that will easily fit in the TV guide or, for many of us now, on the guide channel. There’s no second chances when the viewer has only that guide to look at and base their decision off of. So the log line has to be good enough to convince the viewer to turn the channel right then and there, without a bunch of extranneous detail or someone saying “oh wait, that didn’t quite hook you? Well let me tell you just a little more”. The log line is it. The same should be considered true of the elevator pitch or, for purposes of my blog post, the Twitch (Twitter pitch. Ha! I’m funny).

At Samhain, we do something similar with each of our books’ blurbs, but we call it a tagline. If you go over to the website, the tagline is what you see on this page. Something to pique the interest of readers browsing our website, to entice them to click through to the book’s blurb and then excerpt.

I remember being at a conference a few years back and someone at our lunch table asking another author there about the book she wrote. I remember it was a historical but that’s all I remember because she spent the next 15 minutes talking, in depth, about the plot of her book and all the details. Ouch. Those are the times that I have to really struggle to pay attention. It’s harder if it happens during a pitch session because, let’s be honest, it’s hard for any of us to be talked to for 8 to 10 minutes without drifting off and thinking about lunch (unless you’re at lunch, in which case you’re thinking about your post-lunch nap and how much you’d like one). But I can be hooked by a plot refined down to its most interesting conflicts and ideas. Something that either makes me want to ask questions and find out more, or go buy the book and find out more.

In other words, the elevator pitch isn’t just for elevators. It’s for pitch sessions, query letters, the bar, NOT the bathroom, the bookstore, standing in line at the grocery store…well you get the idea. You’re selling your book. To whoever is your audience. Maybe it’s a reader, maybe it’s your dream agent. But the only way to sell it is to get them interested.

All this is to circle back around to what Twitter can do for your pitch. Twitter is currently the largest social media platform behind only Facebook and MySpace. But I believe it’s more open than Facebook or MySpace. Unless you have your Twitter account marked as private, anyone can read your Twitter page. Even those not “following” you. And you may end up with people following your Twitters that you might not have had the opportunity to communicate with/to anywhere else. But Twitter only allows you to type 140 characters (that’s spaces, letters and punctuation). It teaches you to refine your thoughts to the purest level and type only what you need to get the thought out there. And it’s because of those limitations that Twitter can help you refine your pitch. You only have 140 characters and you have a new book releasing, a new writing project in the works, etc (**please read side note at end of this post) and you want to tell people about it. How do you do that in 140 characters or less? You take your elevator pitch (you have one, right?) and you pare it down even further. No, it’s not easy, but once you do it, you can use it everywhere. Book promo, pens, websites, business cards, social media and in person.

Okay, you got it? So let’s hear your Twitch! If you don’t belong to Twitter and want to make sure you’re not going over the 140 character, open Notepad or something similar and let it do the count for you. If enough people leave their Twitter pitches in the comments, I’ll pull a few out and highlight their books/websites/blogs next week in a separate blog post. Ready, get set, Twitch!

**side note: please don’t query editors/agents on Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace. It’s really not the appropriate place because most of us use social media as a mix of work, pleasure and goofing off, and we’d prefer to get business related proposals that follow our submissions guidelines at our submissions email address.

Confession: I’m completely exhausted and only the thought of failing out only the second week of the Friday Confessional kept me doing it. Brianna has the flu and was up all night last night throwing up. After the second time (and second bedding change) I slept with her, nearly got barfed on the third time (and third bedding change) but after that she figured it out and managed to tell me with enough time I could get the bucket under her. I don’t either of us slept more than an hour straight at any given time. I’m just a little groggy. She had a spurt of energy for a few hours this morning but has since collapsed back to the couch and is now upstairs sound asleep. Poor thing.

I was going to post about how I think seeing other people vomit is the grossest thing ever (I’m a sympathetic puker). I worked as a nurse’s aid to put myself through college. I could deal with anything, any bodily function. Just not puke. I once discovered a body after the person had been dead for three days in the Arizona summer heat. No one but me was able to enter the apartment without a mask. I’ve dissected a number of cadavers. I can handle disgusting things. But vomit gets me. I was going to post all that and then realize there’s one thing that gets me more than vomit: maggots. I can’t handle them, not to think about, not to look at on TV, nothing. Ew ew ew ew. Now you know my weaknesses. Vomit and maggots.

Moving on!

Quick question. I’ve been using a new Firefox addon called Zemanta to help add links to my content. Some things you see (like Zemanta) are linked for me by them, just by clicking on something on my dashboard. The program will also add related content links of my choosing to the bottom of the post, have you noticed them? It does other things, but so far those are the two most useful. Oh, the “Reblog this” that you see at the bottom of the post also comes from that. What do you think? Useful or intrusive?

For Readers:

I’m sure everyone has seen this, but just in case:Harlequin is giving away 16 free books as part of their anniversary celebration. This is very cool. There’s something for everyone! You can also download them via Stanza (also very cool).

Leah (Madame Butterfly) has a rant about DRM and why one publisher has lost her business because of it. I’m not a fan of DRM from the publisher side, and Leah’s post illustrates why.

An interesting blogpost on the Kindle, what it is and how it might affect trends.

SciFiGuy lists the February 2009 paranormal, fantasy and urban fantasy releases.

Agent Nathan Bransford asked: will you ever buy mostly ebooks? Only 10% of the almost 1000 respondents said absolutely yes. I wish I knew the demographic breakdown of people voting. That would be interesting!

Twilight fans will enjoy this: Twilight done by bunnies (in 30 seconds) via Katiebabs

For Kindle owners. MakeUseOf.com tells you how to read feeds on your Kindle device for free.

In the Kitchen:
If you’ve ever had any questions about using your bread machine, you must read this post, Bread Machine Basics. I stumbled across it Googling for something and it’s an amazing source of answers for all your bread machine questions!

What do you get when you combine a pound of bacon and two pounds of sausage (besides a non-kosher heart attack?): the bacon explosion. This horrified and fascinated me so much I had to share it. via Tastespotting

How to make Skittles Vodka from tipnut.com You know you want to. Heck, I KNOW *I* want to.

For the Crafty:

Lisa begins a series of bag making for beginners. The first post is about sewing terms. Part two is choosing fabric and interfacing. I’m really excited about this series because when I sew, purses are one of my favorite things to make. I actually thought about making something and donating it to the Brenda Novak auction but that hasn’t solidified in my head.

How to make an old cupboard door into a serving tray. I love their finished product.

For Authors:

Epublishing and traditional publishing compared by an author published with both.

Agent Rachelle Gardner did some posts on the “elevator pitch”.

Agent Jessica Faust discusses the form rejection letter. It’s a fantastic post and she lists many of the reasons we use a form letter at Samhain.

Author Ilona Andrews is doing a series of one paragraph critiques. It’s interesting to see how she tears down and rebuilds each paragraph. The first one is here and she does a terrific job of relating POV to camera angle.

Anyone who’s seen my workshop on epublishing or read the articles I’ve written has heard me talk about Yog’s Law. Agent Jennifer Jackson takes this time to remind you: money flows toward the author.

For everyone:

Domino, Wondertime, Country Home and Realms of Fantasy magazines will all be shutting down or have shut down. Ouch.

Interested in politics or what President Obama has been up to? Follow the new White House blog. It’s been interesting for me, to get updates on what’s going on. I like it.

Agent Rachelle Gardner wrote a post about Twitter. She doesn’t want you to use Twitter to try and do business with her. I feel similarly. I wish I had written this post. I almost reposted the entire thing here. I might still. I like Twitter, but it’s not where I conduct business. Like Rachelle, I rarely discuss business related things there and anyone hoping for brilliance from me on Twitter is going to be sadly disappointed.

SuperBowl Sunday is this weekend (I can’t believe it’s going to be February already!) and whether you’re staying at home with just your family, having a big bash or attending one, you must check out these two posts full of delicious-looking dishes to make. The first is from Cathy at Noble Pig and oh man, did this post make me hungry! I think I’m going to try a few of those. The second is from Pioneer Woman *insert fangrrl squee* who also has a post full of dish ideas. Both posts have photos, and I dare you to go look and not drool.

Something fun: Karen Scott posts the best complaint letter ever. Ewww is all I have to say!

Picture of the week:

I’m going to give you a couple. This one, because I saw it last week and immediately marked it to use for today. The emotion of the moment is so beautiful. via Huffington Post

Then this one from Paperback Writer’s blog because, hello, who doesn’t love a picture of a cute puppy?

And from Brianna’s photos this week. This elephant is no bigger than a tennis ball but the perspective on this one makes it look much bigger. I love this picture.

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This is my brain on politics. I know you guys are used to some radio silence from me, but I’ve been having a hard time coming up with blog topics that aren’t politically related. For real, I’m consumed by this election, reading political blogs, Twittering politics and generally driving my husband insane with the latest “you know what happened today in the campaign?” every night when he comes home. Possibly he might want to start working weekends so he doesn’t have to hear me talk about politics all weekend.

Anyway, if you had any inkling of following me on Twitter, or are following me on Twitter, please be aware that I’m pretty open about my political views there. Twitter is the one place that’s not really remotely work-related. I talk so little about editing or work, you might as well not even follow me if you’re hoping for some juicy editing gossip or tidbit from me there. Occasionally, while I’m editing, I might make an off-the-cuff remark, but I’ll bet I’ve made less than five of those (of my 1100 updates). On the other hand, I’ll bet a good third to half of my Twitters have been politically inclined. So for real, especially if you’re a Republican, don’t follow me on Twitter unless you’re just that interested in what I’m having for lunch or other totally random and boring facts. For that reason, I’ve also made my Twitters private, so you have to be following me to read them. Because I wasn’t comfortable not knowing given how mouthy I am. It’s the one problem of being in a position where I can’t always say what I want. But I can assure you, I will NEVER use Twitter to spout off about inappropriate things having to do with my job. I am, after all, still capable of discretion.

Two things I’ve been thinking about this week are apologies and admitting when you’re wrong, or when the other person is right. Since Josh is a Republican, and I’m a Democrat, when we watched the debate together last night (or have watched interviews with candidates) we’re even more careful than normal, I think, to listen as objectively as possible, and give the other candidate props when it’s warranted or agree when our respective candidate has flubbed in some way.

I appreciate that about him, and I hope he does about me, the ability to apologize, admit when you’re wrong or when we’ve messed up, and move on. I also appreciate when he concedes I have a valid point in an argument, and I know he appreciates it when I do the same. It’s frustrating to debate someone or disagree with someone, have them never be able to say “you’re right” or “you make a good point”. I think it takes a balanced person to be able to do that. And if you watched the debate last night, you’ll know why that was on my mind.

But it also related to something else I was thinking on this week, about apologizing or admitting a wrong. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the people in my life who are able to say “I messed up, I shouldn’t have done that, I own that action/mistake/etc and I’ll work hard to be sure it doesn’t happen again.” Not only do I appreciate those people, but I find I admire them. It’s so hard to admit you were wrong or that you messed something up. It’s much easier to offer an excuse. But I also think the excuses can trip you up. I know for me, it’s often tempting to say “Oh, such and such happened and that’s why things got messed up”, shifting the blame to something or someone else (and there have been times I’ve done that, no matter how hard I try not to).

And okay, sometimes it IS necessary to offer that information, so the person understands where things went wrong so you can then say “this is what I’ve done to fix it, and what I’ve put in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” But for the most part, I think it’s okay, and best, to just say “I’m sorry, I messed this up.” No “but…it really wasn’t my fault, I didn’t meant to, if such-and-such hadn’t happened this wouldn’t have happened.” Just “I’m sorry, I messed up.” Try it, it’s both nerve wracking and freeing. Anyway, I was thinking about that this week, and no it’s not a pointed commentary at anything, so if you think you know exactly who/what/where I’m talking about, you’re wrong

Is that I love it. And I’ll spend all day Twittering any interesting thoughts that might cross my head (there aren’t that many. I’m blonde) so I have nothing I really want to blog about these days. I enjoy Twitter because the real time conversations with people I often wouldn’t normally interact with are fun. I have to admit I’m not so enthused about just following people to watch them Twitter, but not interacting. Not my thing. But clearly it is some people’s thing because there are people out there watching me Twitter who never comment. Kind of like blogging, I guess. Only I just think of Twitter as something that should be interactive.

In other news that I haven’t mentioned, last week when I picked up the dogs from boarding, they went to jump in the Explorer. Reese went first and he’s not as agile as Heath. He missed, and fell back. Unfortunately, Heath hadn’t waited and he got knocked back as Reese fell. Heath fell on his back leg and immediately started crying for a few minutes.

I took him to the vet the next morning and he was so tense/frightened that they couldn’t get a good read on him from manipulation tests. So they gave me some pain pills and anti-inflammatories and told me to keep an eye on it for a week. Well, a week has passed and it didn’t get noticeably better so I took him back for X-rays today. Unfortunately, sedation didn’t work on him. They gave him the full dose of sedation allowed and he was still so frightened that they couldn’t get his muscles relaxed enough for good X-rays. So yay us, there was an office visit we had to pay for that resulted in nothing.

The bad news is, he now has to be placed under anesthesia for the X-rays. Even worse news is, if it’s his cruciate ligament, as they fear, he’ll need surgery. Even worse news is, my vet doesn’t do that and they wanted to send us two hours away to a really, really, REALLY expensive orthopedic vet. Um, no. I’ll find someone in the area, thanks. I’ve already started researching my options and will take him to the new vet for X-rays and check of the area, in hopes that if he needs surgery, they can move him into surgery while under anesthesia from the X-rays. Still. Money. Ugh ugh ugh.

Otherwise, Josh was sick this weekend, Brianna took her turn yesterday/today and I have been dosing with vitamins and Airborne for 5 days, trying to ward it off. It looks like it mostly worked. I got a mild “feeling crappy” type of thing, but nothing that I couldn’t work through, thank God. I’ve been editing some great books this week, but really busting butt to catch up from all my travels. I still am behind on emails and some paperwork.

Hey! Emerald City con in a few weeks!

I’m blogging over at Romancing the Blog today. I probably should have posted this earlier, but I’ve been trying to answer emails (also, I took my Twitter friends shopping with me to Walmart this morning. That was fun. And I also had to watch Act II of Dr. Horrible. Twice. There are some laugh out loud moments. Go watch. Act III is on the 19th and then it won’t be free to watch any longer after the 20th).

Anyway! You see why I keep getting distracted? So much going on.

My blog post. At RtB. Brown-Eyed Girl? I Thought Her Eyes Were Green! Go share in my brilliance. No really, go.

I’m feeling very angry-blogger today, and a little bitter about some things I’m noticing (like how people only want to talk about epublishing when it involves bad author/publisher behavior and drama. I know, it’s more fun that way) so instead of going off on a really ugly rant about that, I’m going to talk about nothing of any importance at all.

I’m on Twitter now! I’m hoping this will be easier for me for updating while I’m traveling (since I’ll be gone for the better portion of a month). You can follow it via my sidebar to the left. Or you can add me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/angelajames Or you can totally ignore my twitter. Though I can’t promise that I’m not going to link it to my blog at some point while I’m gone because again, easier to update then long blog entries.

About a week ago, I woke up and had really chapped lips. I realized I was dehydrated and not drinking enough water, so one of the things I did was cut all soda from my diet immediately, so I couldn’t use that as a replacement fluid. I’d have to drink water or juice. At the same time, since I was cutting soda, which is where I was getting most of my caffeine, I decided that the caffeine could go too. So for a week I’ve been without soda or caffeine. The first few days were hard. I was so tired! I don’t think I drank a lot of caffeine (no coffee or caffeinated tea, and maybe one or two sodas a day) but I still noticed it leaving my body. I have to admit, I do miss soda. I like Coke. And finding a caffeine free alternative at a restaurant can be kind of boring. Good thing I like club soda. We’ll see how long this lasts, but as my husband pointed out, I lead a fairly sedentary life and soda is empty calories–I refuse to drink diet because omg YUCK! He’s right, so it will probably be like quitting smoking. I just need to get used to doing without.

Last week while I was in the car, I heard a commercial announcing what the mega-millions jackpot was at. I think at the time it was 80-some million dollars. Immediately, I gave half of that to the government and was left thinking about what I’d do if I won the lottery and 40 million dollars. Now, first I should mention that I don’t even play the lottery, which makes it hard to win, but I still enjoy pondering the idea of it every so often. But seriously, I’m really boring because there wasn’t a lot I wanted to do with my winnings right off: Buy three or four really fun, expensive and cool cars for Josh and I. Yes, we need three or four. Fun cars for driving, one for Josh to race, and a big truck for hauling stuff and going off-road at the beach/getting through snow in the winter.

And if I had 40 million dollars, I wouldn’t have to worry about gas prices. Yes, I thought that. Sad.

We don’t have much debt, but I’d pay off our house and bills. I’d give some money to friends and family. And then… I don’t know! I wouldn’t want to quit my job but…now what do I do with the rest of that 40 million dollars? Hire a personal trainer to get rid of this unsightly bulge? Then I could drink soda again? Whee!

Okay, I’m sure I could find plenty of ways to spend it once it was burning a hole in my pocket. What would you buy?

Thus ends my totally random blog entry for the day. Make sure you hook up with me on Twitter!