February 10th, 2015 Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

First, Happy 22^nd Birthday to my son’s girlfriend Alex and to my Uncle Phil. Hope you have a wonderful day.

Well, I survived another party at my house. We had twenty-nine people total, and other than a logistical parking nightmare, all went well. Thanks to my generous neighbors, Umang & Kunal, we managed – they housed all the overflow cars. Without them, we would have had a real issue.

At one point, my nephew and his girlfriend pulled in the driveway, and I kicked them out, telling them to go home and come with their mom. Normally parking at our house isn’t an issue, folks just park all over the lawn, but with the recent snowfall, that became out of the question. Now some of you would be horrified by this, but it’s not like my lawn is sod. Heck, if it weren’t for the crabgrass, there’d be very little green at all.

The Chinese food was a big hit, and clean-up was a breeze, because there were virtually no leftovers. I had a rip roaring time with my great niece, Isabelle. She kept calling me a monster and running away screaming, then she’d attack me with Dani’s bouquet of balloons. (In all fairness, I am “the tickle monster”.)

Four out of the eight people in our family whose birthdays fall between February 2^nd & February 15^th we in attendance, and we sang to all of them. From Left to Right are Aunt Mary (my father’s sister) 2/2, Dani Rose 2/4, Uncle Phil (my mother’s BiL) 2/10, & “Uncle” Lenny (Bec’s hubby) 2/2. The folks who were missing were Charlotte (cousin) 2/7, Alex (PJ’s gf) 2/10, Lys 2/15 & Christopher (nephew) 2/15. Up to a few years ago there was another birthday in that laundry list as well. Happy 92^nd birthday in Heaven Gram (2/13). We really know how to clump them together, don’t we?

Yesterday I was not good company to be around. I contacted Kobo to find out where I stood with the formatting issues with my books, only to find out they still have not been able to figure it out, and the made A Second Chance and Taking Chances LIVE on their site. I pitched a royal fit because the books were not ready to go live and some sweet person in Australia purchased one already.

I did a shout out on Facebook and Twitter yesterday in hopes of finding the person and asking them to contact me. When/If they contact me, I want to get their address so I can mail them a signed hard copy of the book. It makes me physically ill to think they purchased something which was sub-par, with my name on it.

I’m NOT a happy camper. So basically, instead of getting a $2 royalty payment from Kobo for selling my book, it is going to cost me roughly $20 to make this right (the cost of the book itself plus the cost of postage to Australia). I am MORE than willing to do this for my reader, it just fries my cookies that Kobo screwed up so badly. I have NO idea what is going on over there, and until they can assure me they have fixed the issue, I have put all my books on the “de-list” list. Argh!

Annie, my publisher, said something to me last night which made me wonder. She has zero, and I mean ZERO, problems loading books onto Kobo. Annie is working off of an older computer. I have Windows8 plus whatever they recently did with the last round of upgrades. I’m wondering if this is a compatibility issue and Kobo’s system can’t handle the newest software. If so, then I may have inadvertently unearthed a whole can of worms. I just hope they get it fixed and soon.

I have another dilemma. I’ve told you that, for reasons unknown, I have been waking up at 3:38 every morning for over two weeks now. On Friday night, I took a little blue pill – NO, NOT THAT LITTLE BLUE PILL – and it knocked me out until seven Saturday morning. For the first time in forever, I got a solid eight hours of sleep. However, when I woke up, I couldn’t move. I guess I slept the entire eight hours in one position, and when I woke, my back was in such spasms I couldn’t even take a full breath.

So here are my choices – get sleep, wake up in agonizing pain, and take a few hours to be even able to function, OR walk around in a sleepy dopey fog from lack of sleep every day. Experts say you really can’t “catch-up” on sleep, so taking the pill once a week won’t solve anything. Maybe my hubby was right, and I should just play 338 in the Pick 3, and then I’ll stop waking up at that time every day. For a buck, it may just be worth a try.

Okay, I have to boogie. I hope you have a great day, and happy writing!

Your Next Challenge is:

Use the following: Big, Orange, Platypus (you can blame Dani for this one)

You have ten minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count, and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.