Tag: rants

Button Sunday

Some Not Really Trivia:

In 1981, the United Nations voted to observe an International Day of Peace each year. The U.N. invited all Member States, organizations of the United Nations system, regional and non-governmental organizations, and individuals to commemorate the Day in an appropriate manner, including through education and public awareness, and to cooperate with the United Nations in establishing a global ceasefire.

During the first year of the observance, 1982, the date chosen was Tuesday, September 21, the opening day of the U.N. General Assembly. In subsequent years, the date varied because it was on the third Tuesday in September.

On September 7, 2001, the United Nations voted to designate a set day for the International Day of Peace, choosing September 21 of every year, and also voted to officially call for a 24-hour global cease fire on each International Day of Peace. The official Peace Bell ceremony to announce this decision was scheduled for Tuesday, September 11, 2001, at the U.N.

The Peace Bell ceremony did not take place until September 14 that year.

This year, at the Peace Bell ceremony which began the International Day of Peace at the U.N., homage was paid to late United Nations Messenger of Peace Luciano Pavarotti.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, by 2005, world military expenditure had reached an estimated $1.1 trillion per year.

The web site that provided information through 2006 regarding the International Day of Peace is no longer updated because of lack of financial support.

On September 21, 2007, one French soldier and 40 rebels were killed in Afghanistan by a suicide bomber.

The focus of this year’s International Day of Peace was Afghanistan. According to news reports, people gathered in Afghanistan’s cities to mark the occasion in numbers the U.N. had not seen in that country before…

…as occurred all over the world with vigils, prayer, meditation, demonstrations, moments of silence, and celebrations involving children, parents, teachers, artists, bloggers, and religious and civic leaders in schools, town halls, public places, work places, places of worship, and online.

If you didn’t know that September 21 was the International Day of Peace, there’s always next year–and every day.

My day out-sucked by hers

On Friday, my friend Lynne and I had a long conversation about the various stresses in our current lives. She had to go out of town Saturday for business, and this was her plan:

Arrive at her destination airport.
Take a cab to her hotel.
Check in.
Immediately take a long, hot bath.
Go to bed and watch TV until she fell asleep.
Sleep as long as she wanted to.

Nine-thirtiesh (p.m.), my phone rang. Lynne’s ride from the airport to her hotel took over an hour because of traffic. Upon her arrival, the totally booked hotel had no reservation in her name, and she’d failed to write down her confirmation number on the papers she had with her. Would I go to her office and find the confirmation number of her hotel reservation on her desk and call her with it so she could TAKE HER LONG, HOT BATH?

Of course I would. I WANTED her to have that bath and that good night’s sleep. She deserves it.

I went to her office building. (Note: Empty parking garages and skyscrapers are scary at night. I’m grateful life doesn’t come with a soundtrack.) I didn’t find her confirmation number and had to call her with that sad news. Her next move was to get a cab to another hotel. As I was about to leave, I heard something down the hall in the LOCKED suite that her office is in. My next move was to frantically call Tom.

Freaking ice maker.

In light of the fact that I think Lynne’s day went much worse than mine, I won’t provide further details of my Saturday except to say that Tom brought home a new coffeemaker. (And I will NEVER have an ice maker.)

The End.

My today’s grrrr moment

Years ago, my mother was having a problem with a certain retail giant who kept incorrectly charging her credit card for something she didn’t buy. This situation went on for months, and finally someone at the retail giant seemed to understand the problem and correct it. So imagine my mother’s fury a month later when she got her bill and the charge was back.

She jerked the phone book from the cabinet, looked up the number, dialed it (yeah, we still had rotary phones and used phone books in those days), and began an angry rant as soon as the phone was answered. She spoke for several minutes without letting the other person get a word in, detailing the entire history of the conflict and her determination to HAVE JUSTICE and even to close her account. When she finally stopped to take a breath, the voice on the other end of the phone said, “Ma’am, I’m so sorry, but you misdialed. This is Dr. Stewart’s office.”

I like to call that kind of event “being Julia Sugarbaker and finding out the microphone’s turned off.” I had such a moment today, when a post provoked me to write what I thought was a well-reasoned response, then before I could submit my comment, the post was removed. Now I’m just annoyed at myself for getting sucked in to another of those discussions in which no one’s mind is ever really changed anyway.

I have a novel to finish.

What fresh hell is this?

Imagine that it takes you–you, who do not have dial-up, but pay a monthly fortune for high-speed Internet access–about an hour to get online. That you read your e-mail. That you suddenly realize you’re offline when you try to respond to an e-mail. That you wait about half an hour, get online again, answer that e-mail and another one or two, then pull up LiveJournal. That you read comments to your posts. That you begin reading your friends’ posts. That you compose a comment, but when you hit send, you’re no longer online. You wait ten to fifteen minutes. Get back on LJ. Post that comment. Read another post. Try to answer. Guess what?

Repeat this several times a day. Add to it that you go offline every time you’re trying to research something for what you’re writing, every time you try to read the news, look at a Google map, fact check something, follow a link from someone’s post, read a friend’s blog, upload a photo, download a document…

Imagine that this goes on every day for twenty-two days. That you’ve reported trouble with your cable modem numerous times. That you’ve replaced your modem. Replaced your wireless router. Dealt with crating the dogs so the cable guys can come in and out of your house. Found that it’s never fixed after they leave. Closed the gate so Rex can’t escape because no one understands that the SAME GATE THAT HAD TO BE OPENED WHEN YOU GOT HERE HAS TO BE CLOSED WHEN YOU LEAVE.

Called the cable company again, knowing that each call is an investment of at least 15 minutes just to get a live voice on the line. Realized that even though the live voice will be polite and helpful, you will be a raging bitch because YOU’RE JUST SO TIRED OF THIS.

While it’s going on, AT&T calls you almost daily and tries to seduce you into switching to their DSL plan. But you realize that the phone lines into your house are old old old, often have static, and your phone has a tendency to stop working. Do you really want to make that change? Will AT&T really be any better than Time Warner Roadrunner Comcast or whoever they are today?

When you call the cable company–AGAIN–to ask them that question, they give you a full month’s credit on your “high speed Internet access” (ha!) and modem rental. And you’d like to be grateful, but all you really want is to be able to be online for more than a few minutes at a time without drama.

Try to work on two novels when you’re this frustrated. Let me know how that works out for you.

ARGH

It’s not easy to write and research, not to mention answer TJB’s reader mail and comment on your LJs, when the cable modem has been going out at least once an hour since last night.

Sometimes technology is an evil thing. Although it has spared you all from my rambling posts or posts full of pictures that make your dial-up sputter and freeze. =)

Bad business

After a discussion that followed my post about the three-unit town home being built in my neighborhood, I decided to check out the condos on Westheimer (one of Montrose’s main streets a few blocks from me) that were mentioned in the comments. Tim and I drove by there last night and saw lights in only three of the units. I noted how creepy it would be to live in a nearly-empty building.

Today, I went by and took photos of it. Then I came home and Googled “Tremont Tower.” Damn! It’s the stuff of soap operas, with corruption and scandal including shoddy building practices, dead and injured construction workers, grieving parents, fake business names to avoid penalties, financially devastated consumers, and insufficient, inefficient, and inadequate investigations of the alleged guilty parties. Only about ten of the seventy-something units have been sold, and apparently some of them are uninhabitable because of mold (which the builder says is not there). Added to all that is some people’s contention that the building is haunted. No wonder I shudder every time I drive by it: bad energy. Well, that and the ugly red/orange faux stucco.

see early stage urban blight here

If humility is a virtue…

I have a lot of writing to do, and I sense that soon I’ll be like Gregalicious with nubs for fingers and little time to post. A writer must always negotiate for time because, sad to say, VERY FEW people understand how time-consuming writing can be. It’s amazing some of the things people expect you to do because they just don’t get that you HAVE A JOB, even if you’re your own boss and you’re not making boatloads of money. (It’s even more amazing how money is the single most important standard a lot of people have for defining what is work. Whatever.) There are always hurt feelings from unanswered phone calls and e-mails, postponed and missed meetings–enh, it’s a hazard of the profession. I do my best, and that’s all I can do.

There are a lot of things I don’t do when I go into full-on writing mode. I watch even less TV (though that hardly seems possible). I see no clients. I stop reading as much news, because it agitates me and keeps me in this world when I need to be getting lost in whatever world I’m creating. I confine my book-reading time to little fragments, mostly in bed before I fall asleep.

When I do take breaks, I feel like I should be doing something constructive. Like this.

Yeah. That’d be Christmas presents I’ve been buying for the past five months and started wrapping on Friday. I’m determined that I’ll do this a little at a time while I’m writing these novels. That way, by the time Thanksgiving comes, I’ll not only have turned in two manuscripts, but I’ll be FINISHED with my Christmas stuff. I dare to dream that I could have a relatively stress-free December. We’ll see.

Another thing I cut out is reading most of the blogs that I enjoy. It’s for the best. Friday, one of those blogs linked me to someone who linked me to someone who’s an aspiring writer. We’ll call him A.W. Oh, the things A.W. had to say about the evil of people who’ve been published. Did you know that published authors have HUGE egos and must “know someone” because nearly everything being published is CRAP, unlike his own original, brilliant, and imaginative manuscripts? The ones he’s never finished? Never submitted? Never let anyone rip to shreds?

Maybe A.W. is a great writer. If so, I hope he has what it takes to persist until he gets published, because then maybe he will learn humility. It’s a virtue the world will gladly help an author achieve. Here are a few examples off the top of my head.

how we keep it real