August 2009
August 31, 2009 at 9:02 am
I have not met the person who planned the layout of the local Kroger, but I know he or she is an evil, evil person. Planted right in the middle of the aisle between the frozen meats and the dairy section at the back of the store stands this:
The Manager’s Special Bakery Markdown cart! It combines two of my most favorite things: deals and baked goods! Sadly, there is no easy way to avoid the bakery markdown cart. It sits at the end of the organic foods aisle, so I see it whenever I go to buy healthy Greek yogurt. It lies in wait next to the dairy freezer, so if I want to buy milk or cottage cheese or eggs, I have to walk within sight of it. And the Manager’s Special Bakery Markdown cart does not haunt the aisles alone! As you can see, the big, fat candy table lies just behind it, piled high with Kit Kats and Crunch bars, oh my!
I have not yet purchased anything off of the Manager’s Special [...]
August 28, 2009 at 9:29 am
On Twitter, every Friday is “Follow Friday” where users list the people they suggest you follow. I thought I’d make today Follow Friday on my blog and recommend some of the blogs I’ve started reading in the past few months.
The Intern
Even though I’ve written one book and I’m working on another, I still find the publishing industry to be inscrutable. The Intern is a hilarious blog written in the third person by an intern at a New York publishing house. It’s become one of my must reads, not only for the laughs, but for the insider’s insight into how the publishing industry really works.
Full Frontal Psychology
I have been a fan of Wray Herbert’s other blog, We’re Only Human for awhile, so I was happy to learn he writes regularly about the “quarks of the human mind” and how they affect our lives for this site too.
Stepcase Lifehack
I started reading Stepcase Lifehacks when I began freelancing full time. As their site say, lifehacks are “any hacks, tips and tricks that get things done quickly by automating, [...]
August 26, 2009 at 10:34 am
It has been seven weeks now since I stopped working for the man and started working for the woman. (That’s me!) My boss is pretty good, tough but fair, and she has cute hair, though she could dress up a bit more. Capris at the office? Really? I haven’t had to take money out of savings yet, but I haven’t paid my quarterly freelancer taxes either, so that might change. Last night I found a program called Outright which not only builds reports of my income and expenses, but also calculates my estimated taxes. Whee! It also integrates with FreshBooks, the program I use for invoicing, which makes it extra close to my bookkeeping heart. (Did you know “bookkeeping” is the only word in the English language to have three pairs of double letters in a row? I learned that from Encyclopedia Brown.)
I know many freelancers have accountants, and I think that is a wise decision. However, I’ve been paying my own self-employment taxes for years and haven’t been audited yet, so I prefer to [...]
August 25, 2009 at 9:23 am
My home office is a lovely place to work, with far more natural sunlight than my old office, but sometimes I like to get out of my apartment for reasons that do not involve imminent starvation. I have been testing some places around town, and my only real necessity is that they offer free wi-fi. Here is the rundown.
The Library
PROS: The downtown Indianapolis Library is beautiful, sunny and doing much better ever since they fixed those silly foundation problems. There is even a café on the first floor where you can buy sodas and yogurt parfaits and more. The tables lining the windows have outlets for my laptop and there are shades that automatically lower or rise depending on how sunny it is.
CONS: The downtown Indianapolis Library is also popular amongst homeless people and vagrants who have nothing else to do but roam the building. It’s also not as quiet as you’d think. Yesterday a woman had a 10-minute long cell phone conversation at the table behind me. Parking is also difficult to find because [...]
August 21, 2009 at 9:09 am
Here is the nose, one week after that knife fight I got into with a female, Mexican biker gang. It is looking much improved from how it did last Friday morning:
I’ve been keeping it coated in Polysporin and covered away from the sun. I think there will be a faint scar at first that will fade over the next few months. Nothing to cry over.
***
I also wanted to thank everyone who voted for me in the Blindy Awards hosted by Blog Indiana. I won best Hoosier Blog! Woot! Sadly, I was in transit to my 5K when the awards were announced and was not able to leap up and down and rub my victory in the losers’ faces, which is probably for the best.
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"What distinguishes us one from another is our dreams and what we do to make them come about." - Joseph Epstein
