25 Years

Today is my 25^th wedding anniversary. By coincidence, it’s also my husband’s. It’s like we planned it or something.

By tradition, 25 years of wedded bliss is celebrated as the “Silver Anniversary.” Neither one of us is very romantic — we have a much more practical bent plus we’re lazy. So very lazy. But this year I thought I’d try to surprise him with something different so I hopped online to find some ways to celebrate.

These are some of the ideas I found:

• Use sparkly silver glitter on flowers, cards, centerpieces, gift wrap, balloons, etc. Set the table with a paper silver tablecloth, rent china and crystal with a silver or chrome trim, use silver looking votive candles, place flowers in silver colored vases.

…. Or I could sprinkle glitter on the four-day-old pile of newspapers that has become our centerpiece. Maybe lighting them on fire would add a cozy, romantic touch.

• Toast one another with Champagne.

…. We already do this one. A lot. But mostly just when we toss another beer bottle in the trashcan, causing a lovely clinking sensation. Or is that when an angel gets its wings?

• Plan a picnic with paper silver-colored plates and cups.

…. Maybe, but neither one of us actually wants to go on a picnic in November in Colorado. But I’ll certainly consider planning one. The gift, I suppose, would be when I laid out the plans, saw his horrified face, then told him he didn’t have to go. Priceless.

• Purchase tickets for a movie, sports event, concert, theatre, etc. and wrap with a silver ribbon or place in a silver box.

…. We do this all the time. We tend to wrap them up in credit card receipts, though.

• Plan a trip to Silver Springs in Maryland or Florida, Silverstrand Beach in California or Ireland, or to a Silver Mine.

…. Or we could find everything on Netflix with Ron Silver, Sarah Silverman, Alicia Silverstone and Phil Silvers and have a marathon.

• Put together a CD with songs from the era of the marriage date.

…. Um … that’s pretty much all the music we have.

• Assemble a memory photo album with pictures highlighting 25 years together. Include the wedding, children, grandchildren, friends, trips taken together, homes lived in, etc. A nice addition is to include stories from children and friends.

…. Feeling smug about this one as we’ve been making photo albums for more than 25 years. We never look at them, however, because if you disturb the dust you sneeze for a month. (And really? People need to be told what to put in a photo album??)

• Create a poem, write it in silver ink, and display it in a silver colored frame.

…. I tried this one, but I’m not sure —

There once was a couple from Denver

Who loved to watch Netflix like “Ben Hur”

They secured a good date

But the mailman’s too late

And they couldn’t quite find a new vendor

• Put together a family quilt comprised of each square done by a family member or close friends.

…. Okay, just let me get started. Probably won’t take too long. I have a couple hours till dinner.

• Make a wish tree. You can use a big branch that you paint silver and decorate with silver ribbons, ornaments etc. Fill the branches with pictures of major events in your life, people who love and cherish you as well as tickets for a trip, travelers checks, gift certificates for different events and restaurants you could use on a trip, etc.

…. This one baffles me. What exactly would you be wishing for? That your life was different and didn’t have all these icky events and people who love you? That your anniversary was closer to Christmas so you wouldn’t have to haul yet another big tree into your house? That you could actually spend the travelers checks and gift certificates instead of impaling them on a dead branch in your living room? Pass.

None of these really speak to me as the best way to celebrate our 25 official years together.

Instead, I think I’ll find a shiny quarter — so simple, yet so symbolic — and we’ll flip it.

Heads does the laundry, tails cleans the kitchen.

Bonus photos!

This photo doesn’t do it justice, but see this enormous train and veil? It weighed at least 75 pounds and took 14 festively dressed Guatemalan children to wrestle it into place. But it segues nicely into the next photo, one of my favorites ….

That’s me and my dad trying to squeeze through the church doors without wrecking the dress or any of the Guatemalan children. Our hearts weren’t bursting with love for the photographer just then. It makes me laugh every time I remember it. I’m just glad the music was loud enough to cover our cursing.

What do you think makes for a worthy 25^th Anniversary celebration?

The Zen of Stupidity

Normally I’d waste this space with my self-described hilarious blog antics but I’ve decided to try something different this time. I’m going to waste this space with a hilarious story about my extreme stupidity.

Lest you worry about my self-esteem, rest assured I am intact. Gorged and oozing, in fact, with self-esteem. I shouldn’t be, but there it is. One of life’s many mysteries.

I did something recently that is quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, as long as we agree to overlook the 10^th grade perm and the red pleather coat I begged my mother to buy me. (That’s when I learned that despite its delightfully shiny redness, pleather coats consistently fail to keep the Wyoming chill from blowing right through a skinny girl. At least I was smart enough not to complain to my mother who was itching to launch a well-deserved told you so.)

The perm and the coat don’t rise to the top of my Stupidity Scale, though, because I didn’t know any better. But I do know that hard drives crash and one should obsessively back up all computer data.

Duh. I know that. Third graders know that. Heck, even the squirrel on my deck knows that. Why else would he be twitching his tail in that holier-than-thou manner?

Do you see where this is going?

Did I obsessively back up all my files? No. No, I did not. Most of them, but not all of them. I have — and use — an FTP site … I have a million little USB drives … I email things to myself.

I know better, but I’ve never — in the 20+ years I’ve been computing — had a computer problem. I became complacent.

Here’s a weird karmic twist to the tale, befitting a BeckyLand story. My husband recently bought me an external hard drive so I could start using Time Machine which automatically backs up stuff every eighteen seconds. If the Broncos would have played at 2:00 instead of 11:00 that fateful Sunday, then I might have dodged a bullet. We would have set it up in the morning instead of waiting until after the game.

Guess when it crashed.

The stages of grief whooshed through my psyche at warp speed, so I was fairly calm by Monday morning. Waiting to talk to the Geniuses at the Apple Store was nerve-racking, until they told me it was hopeless and sent me home with a new computer for free. (Note to self: Apple Care ROCKS!) They even gave me my old hard drive and the name of a local data recovery place, Datatech Labs.

I visited them on Monday to tell them my sad story, one I’m sure they’ve heard a million times. Clearly, these are people who’ve been extensively trained in grief counseling. They spoke softly. They made no sudden movements. They even offered butterscotch candy and hugs …. Wait. I might be thinking of my grandmother. But they were very soothing. Never once did they mock or jeer or snicker behind my back.

My new best friend, Stephan, took my broken and battered hard drive into his softly cupped palms and carried it lovingly to the clean room to check it out. When he came out, he was smiling. “Looks like we can recover all the data.”

But then the bad news. $300 to repair the hard drive enough that they can get the data, then another $1700 to recover it. But only if they recover it. No recovery charge if they can’t get it.

[Despite the cost — and my ultimate decision not to pay for the recovery — if you ever find yourself in a similar pickle, you’d do well to call Datatech. They come highly recommended and they won’t mock you. They’d probably even give you a hug if you looked like you needed one.]

I’m not really into self-flagellation, but I do think I need to be punished. If you simply throw money at a problem, then you won’t really learn anything, right? That might be how Wall Street works, but we’re better than that, kids.

Realistically, nobody died, the sun keeps coming up every day, and I didn’t lose anything irreplaceable. I am much more fortunate than others. Everything I lost I can recreate, should I accept that challenge. It will be time-consuming, but not impossible. Some of the stuff I’ll probably never need again. As I tried to list everything I knew I lost, I’m sure I didn’t remember half of it. It was there because I had the space for it. So it seems like a good time for a purge.

Less like a tragic house fire, and more like a healthy, ruthless cleaning of my closets.

But the lesson is important … back up obsessively in several different ways because thumb drives can fail, large external drives can fail, software can fail. And always — always — blame the Broncos.

How do you back up your work?

Going Rouge

This was in my Publisher’s Lunch newsletter yesterday. (If you don’t already subscribe, you should. Tons of interesting publishing insider info.)

OR Books Goes Rogue with Initial Release

The direct-sale start-up OR Books, founded by John Oakes and Colin Robinson, announced their inaugural title yesterday–which just happens to share some striking similarities with another prominent forthcoming release. OR Books is issuing GOING ROUGE: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare on November 17, the same day when HarperCollins publishes GOING ROGUE: An American Life by Sarah Palin. Comprising essays assembled by Nation editors Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, it promises “progressive perspectives on Sarah Palin’s political career” by writers including Naomi Klein, Jane Mayer, Katha Pollitt, Jim Hightower, Christopher Hayes, Gloria Steinem, Joe Conason, and Tom Frank.

Harper had no comment on the OR Books cover, so we asked Ned Himmelrich, head of the intellectual property department at law firm Gordon Feinblatt, for an assessment of whether the cheeky new cover crosses legal lines. “Although the first instinct is to believe that the “Nightmare” book has to be infringing” the publishers “may have found a seam in Palin’s protection.” He added: “Titles of books cannot be protected as trademarks (a clear rule); trademark protection does not accrue until the mark is used (no sales yet); both books would be “in use” on the first day (Palin cannot claim first use); “Trade dress” does not exist unless the graphics are inherently distinctive (doubtful) or well recognized (too soon); and the “Nightmare” title may even be a valid parody (a good defense). Each of these theories has a countervailing argument, but on each, the legal arguments might be a nightmare for Palin.”

I thought it was extremely clever of the editors of Going Rogue. What do you think?

Changed My Mind

I decided not to move my blog so just ignore the indecisive blogger waving her arms like a madwoman behind the curtain there. It wasn’t because it was too difficult … well, it might have been, but I didn’t get that far. I’m starting up a new enterprise which you’ll hear about in due course and I thought it would make sense to move this blog to practice with all the bells and whistles at the new place.

Not so much.

So I’ll just wait and start up the new one in the new place.

Curious about my traffic while I wasn’t posting, I checked my stats. Imagine my surprise that I get just as many readers when I post as when I don’t. About 100/day.

What might that mean?

One Moment, Please …

Just a heads up to all my loyal readers. And to you not-so-loyal ones, too.

I’m switching this blog over from wordpress.com to wordpress.org for a variety of reasons I won’t bore you with today. I have absolutely no clue as to how to accomplish this lofty goal, however, so I might be floating around the bloggy heavens for ten minutes or ten days.

I hope it’s closer to ten minutes, but that’s probably not quite realistic as I’m going to eat lunch now. I don’t work through my lunch. I sometimes lunch through my work, but never the reverse.

I guess all I can do is guarantee I’ll see ya’ll somewhere on the flip side. For those of you who subscribe or visit BeckyLand on an RSS feed, if there is anything you need to do to continue your daily fix of The Becky, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Wish me luck!

Proofreading

Raise your hand if you think proofreading is a dying art.

Actual headlines …

• Man Kills Self Before Shooting Wife and Daughter … that is one talented murderer

• Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says  … Good thing they called in an expert.

• Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers … that’ll stop ‘em

• Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over … very noble of him

• Miners Refuse to Work after Death … rest in peace

• Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant … well, if Scared Straight doesn’t work, then they are just about out of options

• War Dims Hope for Peace … such Negative Nellies

• If Strike Isn’t Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile … yes, I think that might be correct

• Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures … those crazy global warming nutjobs are at it again

• Enfield (London) Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide … or was it Colonel Mustard?

• Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges … must be some kind of Super Duct Tape – and it comes in designer colors. Sweet!

• New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group … weren’t they fat enough?

• Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft … if he dealt it, then he should!

• Kids Make Nutritious Snacks … do they taste like chicken?

• Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half … they are strict there!

• Hospitals are sued by 7 Foot Doctors … because the ceilings were too low?

• Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead … Wait. What?

Got any more good ones?

Wordnesday

Increase your vocabulary using Urban Dictionary.

• Mascary — when a person wears a scary amount of mascara. “Although Melanie thought her mascara application was flawless, her eyelashes really looked like scary spiderlegs.”

• Neighbornet — What you get when you connect to your neighbor’s wireless (or wired, for that matter) internet, with or without his or her knowledge. “Didja hear? Johnny connected his wireless ethernet card to his neighbor’s wireless network, and now he’s got neighbornet!”

Now, write them five times and use them in a sentence. Don’t you feel smarter already?

Getting Stupider

We played Trivial Pursuit on Family Game Night last week and I’ve come to the disturbing conclusion I’m getting stupider.

Granted, it’s trivia. Outdated trivia at that. “What city has the tallest building outside the U.S?”  Um, pretty sure it’s not Toronto anymore.

But some of it falls under the category Stuff I Used To Know. Like geography. And who won the first Super Bowl. And the name of Carole Lombard’s husband. I did, however, know Ms Lombard died in a plane crash, but no, she wasn’t married to Cary Grant.

My struggle for the answer reminded me of one of my favorite jokes…

An elderly couple goes to their friends’ house for dinner. After they finish eating, the men go in the living room to chat while the ladies go into the kitchen to clean up.

The first man says, “We went to a really good restaurant yesterday. I’d recommend it to anyone.”

The second man asks, “What’s the name of the restaurant?”

The first man thinks and thinks and finally says, “What’s that flower that has thorns and you give to someone you love?”

The second man says, “A rose?”

The first man says, “Yes, that’s it! A rose!” He turns his head toward the kitchen and says, “Rose? What’s the name of that restaurant we went to yesterday?”

Yeah. That’s me.

“Let’s see … Carole Lombard was in ‘My Man Godfrey’ and ‘Mr & Mrs Smith’ … married to William Powell, the Thin Man … he had that skinny moustache … so did this guy … “Hey, honey, who was that guy, in a bunch of movies, married to Carole Lombard?”

“You mean the answer to the question?”

“Yeah.”

“You mean the one for the wedge?”

“Yeah.”

“You mean Cary Grant?”

“Yeah. Cary Grant.”

“Is that your final answer?”

“Yeah.”

“Wrong. It was Clark Gable.”

“%$#%^&.”

So I was happy when I saw this article in Prevention Magazine. I’m going to start tricking my brain into making me smarter instead of dopier.

This is my favorite game so far …

You say out loud the color each word is printed in—not the word itself.

If I play it enough, I’m going to reward myself with a trip to Toronto to see the world’s tallest building. Then I’m going to watch The Thin Man starring Cary Grant.

What’s your favorite way to get smarter?

Book Trailers Tres

I’ve been thinking lately about book trailers and their effectiveness.

Book trailers are just like movie trailers. But for books. They’re little videos authors create to get you interested in buying their book.

I asked authors to send me links to their book trailers so I could post them and see what other people like or dislike about them.

I got a lot so I’ve broken them into uno, dos and tres blog posts. Would you take a look and tell me what you think of these?

Elizabeth Zelvin …

Betty Sullivan La Pierre …

Roger Hudson …

The Diva Takes the Cake …

If you’re an author with a book trailer tell me how you promote it.

If you’re an author without a book trailer tell me if you want one in the future.

If you’re a reader, what do you think about book trailers? Are they effective? Do any of these make you want to go out and buy the book? Would you ever seek out a book trailer? If so, how would you search?

Book Trailers Dos

I’ve been thinking lately about book trailers and their effectiveness.

Book trailers are just like movie trailers. But for books. They’re little videos authors create to get you interested in buying their book.

I asked authors to send me links to their book trailers so I could post them and see what other people like or dislike about them.

I got a lot so I’ve broken them into uno, dos and tres. Would you take a look and tell me what you think of these?

Clyde Ford …

Timothy Hallinan …

Julie Anne Peters …

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters …

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies …

If you’re an author with a book trailer tell me how you promote it.

If you’re an author without a book trailer tell me if you want one in the future.

If you’re a reader, what do you think about book trailers? Are they effective? Do any of these make you want to go out and buy the book? Would you ever seek out a book trailer? If so, how would you search?