OMG...I'm Done!

I apologize for being so lax as far as blogging is concerned, but my guess is that after tonight's entry, I may be going on an indefinite hiatus. After all, I'll be starting graduate school in two and a half weeks, and my prep for that - which includes learning PowerPoint and Excel, as well as buying school supplies - won't appeal to even stalwart readers. But I reserve the right to change my mind, and regardless, before signing off tonight, I'm going to share what I've been up to for the past week and a half.

Nearly three years ago a film crew came to my house to create a short film about my book obsession that kicked off Barnes and Noble's Book Obsessed online series. I wrote about the experience for AAR and included in my piece were photos of my study, which show every available bit of wall space taken up by bookcases, including the walk-in closet, similarly outfitted with floor to ceiling shelves (see photo second from bottom on right). As of today, the closet has been emptied of all books, all three bookcases (see the photo second from the top on the left) underneath the window have been removed, and an additional five shelves of two bookcases are now empty. It's the end of a major part of my life and the start of a new one, and in order to take my first steps on this new path I needed to reclaim the room.

My Study: Before (although there's no "after" for comparison)

After I left AAR, I rarely went into my study, using my laptop rather than my desktop in the den, kitchen, bedroom, living room, or at Starbucks. My study had become oppressive and a reminder of all the negativity of the final year at the site's helm. I vowed that before starting grad school on January 18th, I would be brutal in pruning my library, which included finishing my Kindle 3/Calibre project (in which I transferred my entire digital library, built up painstakingly over the past few years, after first organizing it via the Calibre program. Because I didn't want to get rid of any book I wanted a copy of - in digital or print format - I needed to take stock of everything.

On December 22nd, my daughter and I took seven brown grocery store bags to Half Price Books. By the day after Christmas, I'd already readied another 16 plastic grocery store bags, and on December 31st another 16 followed. At that point I thought I was done, but after actually taking stock of the remaining print books in preparation for organizing them in my library on far fewer shelves, I realized I was not finished. Right now another ten or so bags are ready to go, and I've reached my goal in organizing my print and digital libraries so that all of my DIK reads are accounted for either in print or on my Kindle. Ditto for all but one B+ read that got lost in the process. After locating a new copy on Amazon of Julie Moffett's The Thorn and the Thistle for a penny, plus shipping, I bought it.

I can't tell you what a tremendous slog this has been. I worked so hard yesterday and today in particular, only breaking to finish reading and reviewing a book for Publishers Weekly...and to almost finish a second book for the magazine as well (both reviews are due tomorrow). My back may be sore, but the sadness I started to experience after trading the first thirty or so bags has now morphed into a feeling of calm now that the work is done, and everything is so well organized. I feel as though my load is lighter, and can return to that room in the house without any remaining baggage.

I met my goal of finishing this weekend so that I'll have plenty of time to learn those two software programs I'll need for my two classes. A friend I met for a two-and-a-half hour cup of coffee (strangely enough, we had soup but no coffee) mid-week last week even offered some hands-on tutoring if I get stuck. I plan to give myself a full week, which will leave me with another week or so before classes start. With two more books to review by the day before the semester starts, I should have scheduled for all contingencies.

My guess is that I won't be doing much non-required reading for the foreseeable future, which also means a temporary end to my reviews for Amazon Vine. I plan to continue my PW reviews, but may have to cut back on books from two editors to one. I'll have a better idea after the semester starts and I get an idea of my workload, but it's doubtful that you all will find my course study terribly intriguing. I think it's going to be pretty dry stuff for the most part, but who knows? Either way, I'm ready, and waiting to start.

OMG...I'm Done!

Goodreads & Kindle 3 Update

I spent much of the past several days doing three things: reading; moving my book database from Shelfari to Goodreads; and working on my Kindle 3 library. I read three books and the review for the first of the three is excerpted here on my blog...the full review is at Amazon. My book database now resides in full at Goodreads and I'm slowly deleting all but my DIK's from Shelfari, after having removed the Facebook apps for Visual Shelf and IRead. And as of this evening, using the same tags I set up on Goodreads, I've re-organized more than 110 titles in my library and now have close to 300 of my 1,200 book collection on my Kindle all catagorized, thereby fulfilling my librarian complex.

While going through my old blog to catch any stragglers to add to the Goodreads database, I came across my original entries deciding on Shelfari as opposed to Goodreads. Now I remember it had to do with the rating systems; on Goodreads the one star rating is for books I don't like, the two star rating is for okay books, and the three other ratings are for levels of like. At the time that bothered me. Now...not so much. Does it really matter how much I dislike a book if indeed I dislike it? I'll continue to maintain a personal book database on my computer and will grade books on my blog, but I'm satisfied with letting other Goodreads users know which books I found okay, liked, liked a lot, or loved, and using the "didn't like" option for books I grade C-, D, or F.

I plan to review the other two books before reading anything else, and will probably spend an hour or so a day working on my Kindle library using Calibre. It's pretty phenomenal and I hope it can withstand the size of my library. But right now I'm watching Bill Maher and deleting books from Shelfari.

Goodreads & Kindle 3 Update

Kindle

My first generation Kindle is as basic as basic can get. Yesterday I realized the memory is completely used up, which explains why I'd been unable to download, so I began to move items over to my SD card. Then I sat back and began to think about how difficult it is for me to find things now that I have more than a thousand items on the device, and said to myself, "I think it's time to upgrade." The decision made itself once LinnieGayl explained that Kindle 3 offers a folders option, which means I can create alphabetical folders and/or book type folders to make it easier to find what I want. I called my local Super Target this morning and they said they had both Kindle 3's in stock, so I decided that's where I'd get my flu shot. Alas, they lied. They had neither in stock and the only store that might was near downtown and it's Friday and getting close to rush hour. Best Buy had none in stock either.

I'd worked out what to do instead by the time I got home: I'd order Kindle 3 from Amazon and in the interim would use Calibre to change the meta tags and clean up my library. Then I realized I could get a month free of Amazon Prime, and overnight shipping for $4 an item, an ordered the Kindle 3 wifi and a cover to be delivered tomorrow.

Of course, the decision to order the wifi-only versus the 3G version took me many agonizing hours of dithering, and it was only on a call with Myretta Robens that I realized my 3G phone is always with me - if I need to order a book when I'm not at home or at an AT&T hotspot (which includes all Starbucks), I can always rely on the phone. Besides, the $50 difference between the 3G and wifi-only will pay for several books. My mom's cheapness always vies with my dad's "spend it while you got it" nature, so a decision like this does not come easy to me.

Now that I've got my new Kindle coming, I will work on a few Calibre meta-tag changes, then will do the rest slowly over time, as I learn how best to use the folders. One thing I know for certain...LinnieGayl's use of a TBR folder is one I am appropriating for myself.

But for now, I'm going to spend the next hour or so doing some final clean-up work on my Goodreads library as compared to Visual Bookshelf.

This project is likely to consume me for awhile; luckily my husband knows when I get into something like this I hyper-focus and hunker down. I work tomorrow night and Sunday afternoon, and have to squeeze in a very short book to review for PW for mid-day Monday, but since it is super short, I can handle it.

See you when I come up for air.

Kindle

So How's My Week Now?

On Wednesday I blogged about how crummy my week was. I thought I'd give you an update on whether things have improved, gotten even worse, or stayed the same.

On being put on the defensive by someone deflecting off themselves...that one remains as is, but having Rose Fox at PW (one of my editors) use my Monday blog as part of her Genreville Blog at PW mitigated that to some extent. Another blog picked up the entry as well, but IMHO missed the jumping-off point, so I left a comment.

Next up...the pool. They've finished the work as a result of my constant nagging and nudging. But in the process they burned out tue motor and seem to have forgotten promises made about paying for mistakes. We are in negotiations...that my husband is a lawyer should work in our favor and I hope they live up to their word...and the email we have as proof.

Perhaps most important was straightening out the mess revolving around my daughter's college fund. Yesterday afternoon, on a conference call with both ends, I learned that the amount of money unaccounted for had been transferred incorrectly due to a numerical transposition. The problem is being rectified and all the money and funds will be in the right place by Monday afternoon. When I asked my husband what would have happened had I not been such a nudge as to actually hint at malfeasance, his answer was, "Probably nothing." Given that the money had been "lost" for six weeks, yet found in fewer than five business days after I got involved, I tend to believe him.

As for the receipt I never received after buying some skin care items at a kiosk, it arrived in today's email.

The cocktail dress my daughter and I ordered for her online (and I was thrilled when she asked me to help pick it out at Modcloth.com, a store she likes that I think is pretty wonderful), which I previously mentioned in a tweet, arrived a day later than it should have, given that we paid for expedited shipping. The "what if" scenario of having to buy a new "fancy" dress at the last minute has been avoided, and her dress is at the tailor being altered for pick-up tomorrow afternoon.

My attempt to buy my discontinued BE blush turned into a debacle. Days after placing the order I realized I hadn't received the typical "we've sent your item[s]" in the mail, and when I re-searched the item via google, saw they'd removed it from inventory. Today they sent me final confirmation that what they had was "damaged" and could not be sent. I'd stopped believing in them days ago, though, and luckily found a jar on eBay and won the auction. I didn't pay close enough attention to a second auction, though, and lost a second jar by something like twenty cents. Even so, I've now got enough Heaven blush to last a few years, and thanks to Suzi, who commented on the original blog entry, found some interesting possible replacements at Aromaleigh and bought them at their discounted, "end of business" sale. If any of them work - or all of them do - I'm probably good for a decade.

Finally, something that has been on-going for months is my account with an online program for reviewers to receive books. One of my PW editors set up accounts for us a year or so ago, and while I could use it to track which books she'd assigned me and which reviews she'd received - to make sure nothing was lost - that part of the account I'd tried to use independent of my PW reviewer status didn't seem to work properly.

I've written here before how bizarre I find it that Amazon Vine doesn't make Kindle versions of the books we review available, and that I'd love to review more PW books off my Kindle rather than in print, and now that PW editor is setting up a pilot program to do just that. As a result, new accounts were established with the online program, and my involvement allowed me direct contact to somebody who could rectify the problem with my independent use of the larger program. I've now got five books I want to read and review available on my Kindle and plan to read them on vacation next week. On the flip side, though, the PW part of the equation isn't going quite as smoothly given anonymity requirements as well as the web-mail system PW is using. Right now that part of things is in limbo and I doubt it will be fixed before I leave on vacation.

All that remains left for me to buy before going on vacation - my daughter and I did a final Target run today (well, we also did a Bed, Bath & Beyond run for her college bedding), as well as a B&N run for her - is a pair of sturdy every-day shoes that fit my orthotics, which I plan to shop for tomorrow. Buying ugly shoes is never fun, but my feet are improved enough that I can at least wear normal dress sandals in the evening.

Much of today's better frame of mind is the result of going out last evening to a local restaurant/pub for drinks and dinner to celebrate the birthdays of two B&N friends. I had two Stellas, which is one more than I've ever had, and they managed to dull the pain of the then-two-day headache I'd been working on. That two-day headache turned into a three-day headache when I awoke with it this morning, but it was soon replaced by cramps. For some reason, cramps and 100 degree heat and humidity aren't a great mix for me, and I'm glad to be home from our afternoon of shopping.

Cleaning the house in preparation for our house-sitter, figuring out which luggage to pack, then packing is all that remains before we leave next week. All in all, the week ends better than it began, and is certainly improved from Wednesday. I can't really ask for more than that.

So How's My Week Now?

My Favorite New Commercial

Okay...I tend to skip most commercials. Just last night I told my husband about watching an oddly catchy ad before a movie my daughter and I went to see yesterday for a Kia, starring rapping hamsters. He could not believe I'd never seen the ad before, but generally when the TV is on, I'm either doing something else, or watching something I've TiVo'd. When I do the latter, I skip commercials entirely.

For some reason, though, last week a new ad for the Amazon Kindle came on TV and I watched it. I loved it. It points out the ease and simplicity of the device, illustrates that you can read content on your Kindle in bright sunlight - which cannot be done with backlit devices that shall remain nameless, and used the whimsical music of their first stop-motion ad. A simple, highly effective ad likely more effective now that they've cut the price to $189. Enjoy.

My Favorite New Commercial