Monday, March 14, 2011

Frittering away the day

Several years ago Texas Coop Power published an essay I wrote "On Learning to Putter." I originally called it "Learning to Putz," but the editors were afraid of the Yiddish implications of that word. Anyway, it's an art I never perfected. Today I think I came close. I really need to finish reading my mystery manuscript for the final time, but I found a thousand other things to do, some of them quite frivolous.
One that wasn't frivolous was taking the dog for his annual checkup. At almost eleven and an old man, he's still a handful in the car and on the leash. When I get there, I call and a technician comes out to get him--I simply don't need a broken hip! But he was pronounced in fine health, and when I reported my 19-year-old cat was also doing well, the lady vet said she thought she'd send her kids to my house--I must be doing things right. I'm always  relieved to have annual vet visits behind me.
Had an egg salad sandwich at Carshon's with a friend where we talked about everything but our books--proud of us--and had a good visit. The rest of the day went in straightening out phone bills--haven't quite gotten the cell phone one fixed yet, checking with the bank, calling Jordan about a menu for her porch party Sunday night, reading that new food magazine that came, paying some of my cousin's bills, reading emails--I'm on way too many lists. A biggie today though has been playing with Twitter. It always confused me, and I tended to post once every two weeks and then ignore it. But I'm following an on-line learning group and amazed at what I find. You can follow me at @JudyAlter. A big hurdle was changing my name from @JudyTexas--Krista Davis, the group leader, convinced me that if I want to be known as an author by my name, that's how I have to appear on Twitter. So far, I've made the change but left behind the hundred or so people who were following @JudyTexas. I've lined up a bunch of people to follow but don't know what to do about the followers--I suppose that's a lesson on down the road. I keep emailing the Twitter learning group and feel I'm probably the dunce of the class. (Special note to Brandon: I'm not following you because I can't understand your tweets and they show up on Facebook anyway--feel free to follow me:-)
Tonight I still want to go through that food magazine one more time, make a shopping list for Jordan's party, work some more on following people on Twitter--I think the truth is I've read that mystery so many times I'm burned out. Don't get me wrong--Skeleton in a Dead Space is a great story and you should all buy it when it launches August 29. It's just that I know it by heart now.
Sorry, I have to go tweet now.

No comments: