September

September might be my favorite month. I've always loved Fall, and I always loved going back to school. It wasn't so much the school part that I loved, I guess, but all the accoutrements. New notebooks and notebook paper and pencils and erasers. I still have a cardboard pencil box that I had in gradeschool, maybe 2nd or 3rd grade. I loved getting my school supplies and putting them in the box, putting paper in the notebooks, getting everything ready for the first day back.

After weeks of temperatures in the high 90's and low 100's, it's cooled off, and last night it almost felt like Fall. When I got home tonight I opened the windows and turned off the air conditioner. Bob may want it on again tonight when we go to bed, but for now, I'm enjoying the breeze through the windows, and Dinah seems to be enjoying it, too. She spends a lot of her time now between the drapes and the sliding glass door in the back, just watching. So now she can smell the outdoors, too, as well as watch.

I've been struggling for awhile with notetaking at work. I tried to move completely over to digital, with the iPhone, and iCal, etc., on the computer, but it's really not possible to take notes on the iPhone. Sometimes I would take my laptop to meetings, but I think that's distracting to the other party, and, again, not really conducive to taking notes.

So I'd been using a spiral notebook, pretty much a page a day, making lists of the projects I'm in charge of, staffing requirements, things like that. But a couple of times lately I've wanted to refer to a calendar, and the iPhone calendar wasn't really what I wanted. So I bought a datebook, just a month on a two-page spread one, so that I could have a calendar in front of me when we're making scheduling decisions. But then I end up carrying the spiral notebook and the calendar, and it was getting kind of cumbersome.

So I decided to go back to a day planner. I'm definitely not abandoning the iPhone, far from it, but I'm conceding that sometimes, paper and pen are just better. I still have a beautiful leather Franklin Planner binder that I got a few years ago. I went to look at their fillers, though, and didn't find anything that I wanted. I used to use the "Blooms" fillers, but they changed them and they're incredibly ugly now. And I need a certain layout that few of their fillers were using. So I looked around some more, and ended up buying a Day Timer filler. I haven't used them for years, but so far it's working out well.

I couldn't find any 2010 fillers in town, so I bought one that starts in January 2011, and also some undated month pages, and I've been using them, but this morning I went ahead and ordered a July 2010-June 2011 filler from Amazon. It was discounted a little bit (not much) since half the year is over, but I decided it was worth it just to save aggravation.

What I found with the spiral notebook/calendar system was that it was hard to find specific things when I was looking for them. With the Day Timer (or Franklin Planner, or any other system), there's a place for appointments, a place for phone calls, a "to do" list, and a page for notes (I use the two page per day system). It's heavy to carry around, but honestly, it makes me happy, so I'll deal with that.

It feels a little like buying new school supplies, and that makes me happy, too.

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A matter of perception

This was an interesting article about the value of ebooks and why readers are so up in arms about their cost. The initial reason is probably that when Amazon came out with the Kindle, one of the big draws was that they said that most ebooks would be $9.99. As ereaders gain in popularity, publishing companies are scrambling to figure out the market, and trying to find the correct price point.

There are a lot of discussions on the Amazon message boards about Kindle book pricing, and a lot of anger, even going so far as to start boycotts against any book with a price higher than $12.99. I don't claim to understand all of the ramifications, but apparently part of the problem is that Amazon discounts the physical books, but isn't allowed to discount the ebooks, so you will quite often see an ebook at a higher price than the physical book which, when you think about it, makes no sense at all.

You run into instances like this:

"Don't Kill the Messenger" is a trade paperback originally priced at $15.00. Amazon discounts it to $10.20, but the ebook edition is $12.99. I wanted to read it, but I just couldn't justify it at that price, so I put it on the waiting list at the library.

When you buy a book, the main thing that you should be buying is the content, but of course, when you consider a physical book, a lot of the appeal is the packaging. I kind of like separating the content from the packaging--I have often seen a book that I would like to read, but I'm turned off by the font, or the paper, or something else, and don't buy it. I don't have those constraints with an ebook--they all look the same, so it's just the content that's important.

I used to want to own the books I read, but over the last few years I've gotten away from that. Part of it is expense--I seldom re-read a book, so it doesn't really make a lot of sense to buy them if I can get them at the library. The other consideration is space. I have a LOT of books. I've been slowly getting rid of some of them, either selling them (either at Half Price Books or online at Amazon or Half.com) or donating them to the library.

Ebooks don't take up any physical space, so it's easy to have a library of hundreds of books that will fit in the palm of your hand. I enjoy reading on my iPhone; I know a lot of people don't, they think the screen is too small, but I actually enjoy it a lot. I download a lot of free samples of books, but I really do think long and hard before I spend the money on one. At $.99 or $1.99 it's not a big deal, even $6.39 isn't bad, but when it gets up over $9.99, I definitely have second thoughts.

The article I referenced above made me think, and I believe the author made a lot of good points. I don't buy $4.00 cups of coffee, but I will buy a couple of lunches on the weekends while I'm out running errands; I don't have a problem spending $10 on lunch, so why do I have a problem spending $10 for an ebook? I think it's the issue of necessity. No, I don't have to eat out--and seldom do, anymore--but I do have to eat. I don't generally need a new book. I have a lot of books that I haven't read yet, so I could read one of those, or I could put the book on the hold list at the library and wait a couple of weeks.

Spending ten dollars or more on an ebook seems frivolous, extravagant. Which is why I've been so pleased to do the Swagbucks thing and earn a few Amazon gift cards. I still think a long time before I buy a $9.99 ebook, but at least when I do buy one, the price is coming out of a gift card, and not going onto a credit card.

A lot of Anne Tyler books came out in ebook form in the last month or so, and I bought my favorite, of course, Ladder of Years. I paid $9.99 for it, using a gift card; I noticed it on the Amazon homepage yesterday, and I thought the pricing was pretty funny:

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Swagbucks

I've tried a few online money making opportunities, but most of the time they're a lot of work for very little return, or require you to spend money up front that you will probably never recoup. I thankfully never got involved in any of those. I've been using Swagbucks for about a month, and have managed to acquire $30 worth of Amazon gift cards. They have a lot of other prizes that you can trade your points in for, but so far I've only been interested in the Amazon cards. When I tried to trade in points for another one last night, I got a message that you were only allowed to get 5 of the same prize in the same calendar month, so after the first I can get 2 more. Or I might save up my points for an iTunes gift card this time.

The way it works is, you go to the Swagbucks homepage to do your searching, rather than using Google or some other search engine. Just doing this normally, you'll randomly win some "swagbucks," usually 7 or 8, or sometimes as many as 50. There are also surveys that you can do; I seldom qualify for them, but if you do, they pay 50-200 "bucks" upon completion.

There are also special offers and "tasks" that you can perform. The special offers are the usual--Netflix, book clubs, credit card offers, insurance quotes, etc.--they pay very well, but I would only do those if it was actually something I was interested in. If I wasn't already a member of Netflix, I could sign up and get 850 Swagbucks, which would be almost enough for 2 $5 Amazon gift cards. The tasks (listed under "Special Offers/Wall 1") are mostly search-related, i.e., they give you a search term and you copy and paste what you believe is the most relevant search result, or you're choosing categories for a list of items.

I'm pretty good at the search ones, but not so great at the categorization; still, if I spend an hour or so at it over the weekend, I can end up with another hundred points or so. Voting in the Daily Poll gets you one point, as does visiting the survey page, even if there aren't any surveys for you to fill out. One thing I almost missed--on the Survey page, there's a section for Profiles, asking you questions on everything from automobiles to snack foods. The profiles are worth 50-100 points each. They take quite awhile to fill out, but they reward you fairly well.

On one hand, it seems kind of silly. After all, $5 isn't that much. But it's kind of hard for me to spend $9.99 or more for a Kindle ebook; $25 in gift card currency makes me feel rich! Swagbucks doesn't cost anything to use, you don't have to give them a credit card, there is really no downside that I can see.

Following any of the links in this post will get to you my referral page, and if you sign up, Swagbucks will give me the same amount of bucks that you win, up to a certain level. Pyramid marketing is where the money is!

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Whodunit

I read this article at Crazy Aunt Purl this morning, and was going to comment on it, but comments are off, so I thought I'd just write my own blog post instead. She talks about wanting to know the ending of a movie before she sees it, and about books, she says:

I flip to the last page in a particularly engaging mystery book. Yep, you heard me. I like to know how it ends because then I can go back and enjoy the unraveling of the story. After all, it's fiction, it's fantasy. Maybe it's because in real life I never know what will happen next. Or maybe I'm just wound too tightly. It doesn't bother me one bit but Lord it seems to freak other people out. The idea of the surprise ending is sacrosanct.

I'm going to mention some spoilers of my own, so you might not want to read this if you haven't seen The Phantom Menace, or read John Harvey's "Cold in Hand," Elizabeth George's "With No One as Witness," or the Harry Potter series.

I don't know if I've ever written about that topic before, but I'd be surprised if I haven't. While I'm reading a book I'll sometimes start to worry that the hero, the dog, the child, whatever, is going to die or be killed. I don't actually read the ending, but what I do do is kind of flip through the last pages and see if the dog, cat, hero, child, etc., is mentioned or, specifically, if they have dialog. If they do, then no worries, I can relax and enjoy the story.

The movie that I remember most clearly being shocked when the hero died is The Phantom Menace. I couldn't believe they killed Liam Neeson off! I was completely invested in that character and was completely stunned when he died. There are a couple of mystery books I can remember that killed off major characters very suddenly and surprisingly, one is the Elizabeth George's With No One as Witness, one of the "Thomas Lynley" mystery series. His wife was killed off, and she was pregnant. The relationship between Lynley and Helen was lovely, and I was looking forward to its unfolding. But she was murdered on her doorstep in a senseless killing.

I recently read a John Harvey book, "Cold in Hand," I believe it was. He was in the first months of a romantic relationship with a major character, another police officer, and she was killed in a shootout. That was another one that I just couldn't believe, I thought surely she would survive, but no. There again, I thought the domestic scenes were the most interesting, but I suppose I may be in the minority there. I don't know what the motivation of the writer was, but I found myself very disappointed.

I guess the other big one is the death of Professor Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series. I knew how that one was going to turn out before I read the book, so I wasn't surprised.

I don't necessarily want to know how all the books I read turn out, but I also don't really mind "spoilers." I don't want to know all the details, of course, but in general I read for the enjoyment of the story, not for the outcome. I read a lot of mysteries, but usually I don't actually care "whodunit." I don't generally try to figure out the mystery, I just read the book. Because it's a story. It isn't true, someone made it up, so they can make it be anything they like. So it doesn't really matter. It's the story that's important. At least that's my opinion.

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Non-attachment

I wouldn't say I had the most productive of weekends, but it wasn't bad. Friday night I met some friends for dinner, which was fun. I don't do that often, but I always enjoy it. Barb was in town for a wedding, so I met her and Patti and Nancy at Cheeseburger in Paradise and ate way too much, but had a great time.

I got home around 9:00, but since I'd had a drink at dinner (only one!), I was falling asleep by 10:00, so I went ahead and went to bed. I didn't have anything in particular to do on Saturday, which was good since it rained like the end of the world. It cleared off in the early afternoon and I went out and ran a few errands and had a late lunch at Chipotlé, then came home and ended up going upstairs and taking a nap, then reading in bed for most of the evening.

So of course I was wide awake, and stayed up way too late watching streaming movies on Netflix, which I love. I watched "Monsters, Inc." and "Up," neither of which I had seen. "Up" hit a little too close to home, and made me cry, but I loved both of them.

I didn't get to bed until about 2:30, which normally would have been fine, but I had agreed to participate in a study that a university is going on interactions in groups in Second Life. My timeslot was 9:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. this morning, which wasn't too bad, but I could definitely have stayed in bed a while longer. But I didn't, I got up, washed my face, and signed on.

I can't really talk about it since the study is ongoing, but there are details here. I see that the study has been closed for now, but they may open it up again in July. They were paying $5,000 Linden (the Second Life virtual currency), which equates to about $20, so it was fun and worthwhile. It was a Victorian mystery that you had to solve by teamwork with 5 or 6 other people, then answer some survey questions afterwards. I found it a little hard to get into at first, but it was fun once it got going.

After the SL stuff, I boxed up some books to take to Half Price Books to sell. I've been doing that about every weekend; it doesn't pay much, but it gets some stuff out of the house and gives me a little extra pocket money. Last week I did pretty well, and got $25.00; this week I only got $6. But I always figure it's $6 I didn't have yesterday, and it cleared some space on the bookshelves.

I always check Amazon to see if any of the books are worth anything, and if they appear to be, I'll list them for sale there since I can normally get LOTS more for them there than at Half Price. But there's the hassle of packing them up and mailing them, of course, so it probably all balances out. Unless I run across one that's worth quite a bit. If I can sell a book for $50 or so--and I have--then it's obviously worth the packaging and the trip to the post office.

I remember when Liora was talking about selling books and using the proceeds to buy her Kindle. At the time, I thought I would never sell my books, but I've gotten out of that mindset. I have books that are 20 or 30 years old, or older, that I'll never look at again. With the internet, I don't really need reference books, and I'm finding I'm less and less inclined to want to purchase fiction books that I won't re-read. And I'm trying to practice non-attachment. It's going pretty well so far.

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