Monday, October 10, 2016

A Collection of Unrelated Things

Mr. Snarky has a cold, and I'm sure I'll get it soon. I can already feel my lungs working harder than usual, so probably I already have it and just haven't started sneezing yet. I don't know. There's a slim chance I'll avoid it, and since colds usually lead to at least a month of bad breathing for me, I'm clinging to that slim chance. I'll be heading to bed early tonight. I've been washing my hands like crazy, drinking lots of fluids, and sucking on zinc lozenges (yeah, I know, the data is so-so, but I think they help fend off and/or shorten colds, and I don't care if that's a placebo effect or something else, I'll take it).

I'd be in bed now, but it is my turn to do the dishes, and I decided to try to get the dishwasher to do most of them. So I loaded it up, started it, and am waiting for it to finish so I can load it up again. How did we get to a place where we often make two dishwasher loads of dishes in a day? (I can answer that, for today at least: Petunia has recently switched her lunch preference to left over Annie's peace pasta, and I made a batch tonight for this week's lunches. That, plus the bowl from the waffles we had for dinner will fill up half the bottom rack. The bowl didn't fit in the first run because of the blender I used to make smoothies to go with the waffles. And then there's all the lunch tupperware that can go on the top.)

So anyhow, I'm waiting for my dishwasher to finish and thought I'd write a post. Not about politics, because although I can't stop reading and retweeting about this election, it would probably be healthier for me to ignore it more than I am. Or at least turn my attention to the gazillion ballot initiatives, local races, and the like. I will apparently have a really long ballot to vote and would be smart to vote by mail. But the kids like coming to the polls with me, and I like letting them feel involved in the electoral process... so I don't know. I need to decide soon if I'm going to request a mail ballot. Maybe I will, and then the kids and I can drop it off at the polls on election day, as a sort of compromise.

Instead of politics, I give you a collection of unrelated things.

1. I got the dress that Leota sent me and it is awesome. One of these days, I'll get someone to take some pictures of me in this dress and in the two dresses I bought at Nordstroms and then I'll share them in one of my weird headless fashion show posts. I took a risk on the perfect wrap, even though wrap styles usually end up requiring a tank top to remain decent on me... and this risk paid off. From their size chart, I reckoned I would be a 1L, so that is what I ordered and it fits perfectly, and the wrap stays in place and doesn't flash obscene amounts of cleavage. Like I said, it is awesome. 

2. I've been making a push on book marketing over the last couple of weeks. I'm frustrated with Facebook, but they remain the ad option that works best for actually moving books. I'm frustrated with Amazon, but they remain the overwhelming lion's share of my sales. So I thought I'd ask you guys for new ideas. If you buy books and sometimes by books from indie publishers/small presses (i.e., presses that can't afford a NYT Book Review ad or the like): where should I be advertising? I'm particularly curious to know how Kobo readers and iBooks fans find their new reads, because while I'm starting to figure out some things about the Amazon algorithm, Kobo and iBooks sales are essentially nice surprises at this point. I have no idea what I do, if anything, that drives more sales on those platforms.

3. One of the nice things about Mr. Snarky is that he is open to essentially any genre of music and is always exploring and looking for interesting new things. Then he shows them to me during Friday Night Beers, and so I get to pretend I know about interesting musical genres, too.

Here is one of his recent favorite things, a genre called electro-tango:


There's electro-swing, too, and I find it mesmerizing to watch the videos that use old movie dance sequences:


But probably my favorite electro-swing video is an ad from Germany:


That seems a happy note to end on. And I suspect my dishwasher is done, anyway. 

6 comments:

  1. So when you have large bowls, there's no way around just having them take up all that room? I'm a total dishwasher loading novice and keep trying to figure out the perfect way to load where I can get everything in there, but still have clean dishes. We pretty much handwash almost all the time though, since it takes 3 days to fill the dishwasher and by then we're out of everything we need, so I'm not getting the experience of repetition.

    I'm intrigued by the Leota dresses. I can't remember the last time I wore a dress casually but I remain in search of the perfect wrap dress and these are so pretty!

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    1. Depends on your dishwasher. In ours, we can put little things under the big things and everything still gets clean. But tonight, there were just too many big things.

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  2. I'll put measuring cups, ramekins, etc. under large bowls, but sometimes I just can't squeeze in one more glass without putting them so close together that they might hit and crack during washing.

    I'm also on the verge of a cold, and I have the same maybe-zinc-is-a-placebo-but-Zicam-does-make-me-feel-better-so-whatever approach. I need to get some Zicam.

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  3. I mostly buy books on kobo - but I'm afraid my way of discovering new reads is boring, it's mostly Goodreads word-of-mouth.

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  4. Love the electric swing!

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  5. One of the things we do weekly in homeschooling is Performance of the Week, where we pick a music genre to study for the month and each week, look at a different group that represents the musical style. Often, we do typical things (classical music or rock music in different time periods), but we've also expanded into some odd genres I know nothing about. I might need to add electro-swing to our list! And that video using old dance music is eerily awesome!

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