A Junk Drawer Post

Here's the Audible cover.

YESTERDAY I listened to the first fifteen minutes of the in-production audio book of My Own Mr. Darcy. I'm so excited about it. This will be my first audio book. My narrator is Heidi Baker and she's quite talented. Every day or two, I'll be notified that a chapter has been uploaded for my review and I'll get to listen to someone else read my entire book. Fun and scary!

SPEAKING of narrators, wow, was that ever difficult. I'm really happy with my choice, but I had 35 auditions and several more messages from people who wanted to audition. It was fun, but it was also a little awful. These are real people wanting work. And many of them were so talented. In order to sort through the options, it gives you two choices--LIKE and DISLIKE. What? Every time I clicked the dislike, I felt terrible. These were people who had prepared and practiced and offered themselves up and I was supposed to hit dislike? I didn't dislike any of these people. And when we got it narrowed down to the final few, I was having to eliminate people that I LOVED. Maybe I'm being silly, but I found it really hard to reject people like that. I need to write faster and work with all of them.

DISHONESTY is a frustrating thing. My thirteen-year-old son bought a used iphone 4 from a local online ad on Monday. The guy said it was in great condition and had just been refurbished by Apple. Joe was excited and brought it home. He couldn't use it immediately because we had to get a sim card from our phone carrier, so he wasn't able to try it out until the next day. It was then that he discovered that it had several problems--volume buttons that didn't work, a menu button that was unresponsive, a battery life of about five minutes. Joe texted him several times to ask him questions and the man ignored him. I took him to the Apple store and after another monetary investment and nearly two hours of our time, Joe now owns a working phone. My husband texted the man who said something lame about the phone being sold "as is" and that we must have water damaged the phone (hmm, since we hadn't mentioned water damage, that was a little suspicious) and then said, "Don't say I'm dishonest unless you want to say it in person, BIG GUY." What a small man.

Bruce participated in a Chinese competition sponsored by The Confucius Institute. He had to share, in Mandarin, his hopes and dreams. He did awesome and WON!!! Yay!

It snowed this morning. My house is cold. I don't want to turn the heat on yet. Fall has NOT been long enough.

Savannah wrote a song for her sister, Veronica, about her mission to Seattle. It's a lovely song. The last line of the song is, "But all the little raindrops are watering her dreams." Oh my! Is that not the cutest thing ever? That line makes me happy every time I hear it.

Yesterday and today were "clean-the-double-oven" day. It's long overdue. They can't be cleaned at the same time and so it had to be spread over two days. That's four nasty racks that had to be scrubbed with steel wool. I've always thought Playtex gloves were ridiculous, but with both of my hands hurting from all the little steel wool cuts, I'm re-thinking my opinion. Somehow I need to make sure that nothing spills over in the oven so this doesn't have to be done very often. It's hard on my hands and makes my eyes hurt. Hopefully I won't have to do this again for at least a year. I'd prefer two.

The fall colors (before the snow covered them) have been beautiful. They seem especially vibrant this year. They make me wish I could paint.

This weekend is General Conference, which means it's one of my two favorite weekends of the year. I LOVE GENERAL CONFERENCE. I haven't decided whether to take on an organizing project while I watch or color pictures. I know which one would be more valuable, but I also know which one would be more fun. It's a hard choice.

If you're in the Orem, Utah area tomorrow evening, you should come to Barnes and Noble. Tomorrow night is Romance-a-palooza and I've been invited. I'll be signing copies of My Own Mr. Darcy and For What It's Worth. I'd love to see you!