Good Times

I know the economy's bad and peple look at you cross-eyed if you cough or sneeze, but there's still a lot of good things to celebrate. Today, for instance, one of my co-workers had a birthday. Actually, yesterday, another co-worker had a birthday, too. And although my hubby's birthday was a couple weeks ago, we're going to have cake and ice cream with the family tonight. That's a LOT of birthday cake and partying for one week. Last night my daughter's softball ended for the city team. That means another party is on the way. This also means I won't be chained to the softball field nightly and can write/critique/edit/and read more. I plan to start back on my Thursday 13 blogging, too. Yipee! A lot of my author and reader friends just returned from RT (Romantic Times book convention in Orlando) and are pumped on writing, reading, and life. A lot more are gearing up to go to Lori Foster's Readers' and Writers' event in Cincinnati this summer. I'm hoping to but not holding my breath - we'll see. Adam's still on American Idol even though it was a close call. Whew! I'm sooooo glad he's still the competition. I can't wait to see what he'll do each week. His entrance last week has got to be the sexiest entrance in Idol history. I had lunch with two good friends today. I still see a lot of books coming out weekly, so we're still reading and buying books. April was a really beautiful month in Florida and May's starting off pretty, too. I guess the Prozac's working (well, the Lexapro - I figured more people know what Prozac is). I wish I could go to SunFest to see David Cook live, but oh well... I have an edit to do (which means I'm being published) and I don't want to spend that much money - and I've been buying birthday cakes galore this week. :) Plus, I want to critique, blog hop, walk, and Twitter. Oh, and maybe catch a movie. I'm a movie-a-holic. Give me buttery popcorn, a big soda with lots of ice, a huge screen, and a dark theater and I'm in seventh heaven. entered in the drawing for the sequel to Truth, Justice and the Vampire Way - "Blessed Be". You'll also want to see what Amarinda Jones, Anika Hamilton, Anny Cook, Barbara Huffert, Brynn Paulin, Bronwyn Green, Dakota Rebel, Kelly Kirch, Molly Daniels, Sandra Cox, Regina Carlysle, and Cindy Spencer Pape are up to, so make sure to visit them also. :)

Swine flu

There's a lot of chatter about the swine flu. Some folks are getting paranoid and want to close our borders. Others are annoyed about the paranoia. Whatever you feel about it, one thing is certain: it's getting a lot of attention on Twitter, my local news, and even at my day job. Last evening I put in the hashtag #swineflu on Twitter and there were thousands of tweets just about the swine flu. What really boggled my mind was when I went away from Twitter for just a couple moments and I came back to more than 1,700 new tweets about the swine flu (maybe more that didn't use the hashtag). The evening before, my local news reported about the swine flu, also. They said it's pointless to close our borders to Mexico because there were already cases in the US. This morning, my HR department at the day job went to the CDC website and pulled off the tally of swine flu cases reported in the US so far, and what precautions we should take - 20 cases in the US as of this a.m. HR told us to stay home if we think we have flu-like symptoms and to wash our hands a lot and to cough and sneeze against our arms (not our hands) if we have the need. A couple people are coughing now at the office and everyone else is giving them the evil eye. Should they go home and stay there? Maybe... I also went to the CDC website and they said to avoid crowds. That's hard if you have to go to work, or school, or if you need groceries. We still have to eat and we don't have Star Trek-type replicators yet. This reminds me of "The Stand" by Stephen King - my all-time favorite book, except that our government doesn't seem to be trying to hide this or call it something else. Or is it something else worse and they're calling it the swine flu? Um... (who's paranoid now?) What do you think? Should we all stay home and read e-books and tweet on Twitter? Isolate ourselves? My daughter won't be thrilled if I tell her we can't go to her softball tournament game tonight because of this. She might kill me before the flu can. Maybe I'm not taking this seriously enough. Am I too glib? Not that I like the flu, but is it really that bad? Even though I know The Stand by hard it's still tough to wrap my mind around people actually dying from the flu. I sure hope it's not the super flu. What would be so "super" about it? Stay safe and stay well.