I'm so bad. But we all love the badies right? Who wants to be the good guy working away to save the world when you could be the evil mastermind mucking up the good guys plans to begin with...you know, and generally not blogging...

Well I'm blaming this leave of absence (haha, see I learned something in college! $116,000-yeah that's how much I spent for four years at TU, thank you financial aide office-officially well spent!) on the fact that I am now working nearly full time! 40-ish hours a week! And who knew it was so dang exhausting? I'm ready to go back to my 25-hour-a-week days where I got plenty of writing and reading done, not didn't home with my legs quaking and not from joy...or walking around in 3 inch heels all day.

But I did have a bit of fun today. Totally had another old guy come in the store to buy a naughty book. The strapping lad of oh, maybe seventy, picked up this lovely little gem all about bondage. And in the ballsy of all ballsy moves, he walked right out of the store without a bag! All the young whipper snappers who come in to the store embarrassed about buying a Playboy obviously need to take a page from this veteran pervs book! If you're gonna buy dirty be proud about it! Hold your head up high as you're walking out with your smut!

Oh, and in totally unrelated news-and because I'm random like that-I found this awesome article from the ladies at Not Your Mother's Bookclub while doing my obligatory daily Google shuffle. It answers a lot of questions that I had about the process of book making after the idealistic making of the deal. Everything from who has to read the manuscript (in short, everyone) to the trying decision of what goes into the decision of whether it will be printed into a hardback/cloth, or a paperback. Very interesting stuff. I just wish they'd reveal who the editor was who participated in the interview. She works with YA which is the genre I writey-do in.

Here are the YA books I've read so far this summer:
The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer (HIGHLY RECOMMEND! This book follows the incidents that took place in Life as We Knew It but can be read without reading LaWKi first. I got five people at work addicted and hand sold all the copies we had in store...waiting for new shipment now.)

Wings by Aprilynne Pike: This was a very interesting story. It's not often I say that I've never read anything like this, but I've never read anything like this. Loved the mix of fantasy and reality in this number.

Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz (HIGHLY RECOMMEND! I've been a fan of Stolarz since Blue is for Nightmares and this book just proves that she is improving even more as a writer. I couldn't put this down! I was left guessing the entire time! Great mix of paranormal and who-done-it-ism! And ended realistically which doesn't happen often in YA so extra kudos. The second book comes out in November. Her book Project 17 just released in paperback and I'm picking that up Wednesday.)

City of Glass by Cassandra Clare: The last part of the Mortal Instruments trilogy. Very enjoyable read and her diction is so lush and smooth that it almost sounds like poetry even when she's writing grotesque descriptions. Yummy yummy yummy.

And of course!
Being Nikki by the fab-u-lous Meg Cabot: Follows the first book Airhead as the main characters gets used to life in the spotlight. This book REALLY picks up the series and gave it a good direction to follow. The last chapters had me squirming and giggling and VERY eager to read more!!! notice the extra exclamation points! Definitely a good beach read.

I know I've read more but can't remember sadly...good thing I graduated because my memory is starting to go. Speaking of which, I've gotta go. My guitar is glaring at me for ignoring it for two days...(I can totally almost play "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz....you know...if "almost play" translated to mean I can play all the chords but my fingers still suck so I have to stop and reposition them each time...because apparently typing an 100,000+ word novel and countless numbers papers is not sufficient enough exercise to make your fingers un-sucky.)

Lots of Love,
Casey

H.A.K.A.S.

P.S. White chocolate Lindor balls are the shiz!

Things are getting scary and it's all the economy's fault. Alright so I've never been a fan of economics. I took macro in high school and then again my sophomore year in college and barely scrapped by with a C in both semesters (though in my defense the sophomore year one wasn't really my fault as my professor barely spoke English and now the advisors won't even let Arts and Science majors enroll in her class, which would have, you know, been really good to know two years ago...) but I think all the complaining I did about supply-demand charts and fiscal policy have come back to bite me. As an English major there are pretty much two fields open to me in the future aka, two months from now when I graduate. Anything involving books-since I can obviously read them-and education.

According to a Reuters list I read, these are industries that shouldn't be hurt too badly by the recession but in the past week I've had proof suggesting otherwise. The first came in my small group communications class where I learned that my prof's position will be frozen. Aka, won't be there next semester. Which means that he won't have a job (on the other hand we will have a freakishly green U. What's having teachers and getting an education-you know, that thing we're paying $20,000+ a year for, in comparison to unnaturally green grass?)

The second came yesterday when I got to work and found out that not one but two people from our store had been let go (Borders as a company let go of some 750 employees a few days ago.) This was very saddening and definitely didn't help in store morale because they were both employees that we cared about and were hard workers. Honestly I've never really thought about the recession. It always seemed so far away, trapped in bigger cities and newspaper headlines, but now reality and settling in and I can't help but be worried for my own future.

Things like these doesn't really register until they come close to you and you can see that these are real people who are trying to support their families. Times are hard and I can only send my love, thoughts, and prayers out to everyone who is touched by the recession. We as a nation have a lot of healing and learning to do but I have faith that we can do it. As they say in the Korean dramas I can't seem to get enough of. Aja Aja, fighting!

Alright so for a couple of hours now my computer has been freezing up on one website and one website only: Youtube. Unfortunately, that just so happens to be one of my biggest addictions! How will I live without my extensive favorites list? And my K-pop. Everyone knows my life isn't complete without watching people attempting to do the Wonder Girls 'Tell Me' dance until I'm blue in the face! (And secretly know the dance too!) The knock offs: Hulu, Crunchyroll, Daily Motion etc. aren't doing it for me and I'm starting to have withdrawal symptoms. Seriously! I've totally got the shakes (or maybe that was the shot of espresso I had just before close...)!

So, I've been reduced to watching actual TV and I've got to say it pretty much sucks. Except King of the Hill, of course. As a dweller of the sort of southwestern area I can attest that there are some people like that who live here. I had a prime example of such characters earlier today as I was at the register, checking people out.

At Borders we have to ask every customer if they have a Border's Rewards Card-it's free and there are no forms to fill out so why not, right?-Well I was doing as my job dictated and asked this shining gem of a customer if they would like a Rewards card when they said they didn't have one, and I received this gracious, unbelievably eloquent reply: "No, I ain't got no cable."

I kid you not!

What do CABLE and a REWARDS card have in common? Your guess is as good as mine but this is the type of thing I get on a fairly regular basis. Now, I won't say that ALL okies are like this. I mean, there are some of us out there who consider ourselves reasonably intelligent, and you know, able to recognize the difference between a customer savings card and a bundle of wires wrapped in a plastic protective coating that transmits information, but then occasionally you find the "I ain't got no cable" type too.

Note to self: Get the hell out of here as soon as humanly possible-aka after graduation on May 9th.

Casey


P.S. My independent study prof-the head of the English department here at TU-has deemed my manuscript "readable". This is a good thing right? He's reading the latest edit now. Crossing fingers...now!

Alright, so I've worked at a Borders store here in Tulsa for a little over and year and a half and I'll come right out and say it, the main reason I applied was the discount. I had flitted my life away in a retail job before(I'm a proud survivor of two and a half years at Old Navy thank you very much!) and after my cushy stint as a Resident Advisor at the freshman dorm resident hall at my college (Trust me, after two years of having psycho moms yelling at you for over charging her twenty cents for her baby socks, having a drunk frat bro in training lob a DVD of Jenna Jamison's finest work from the second floor landing during the Beer Olympics is nothing...true story) I wasn't too warm to the idea of trotting back into retail hell.

But it was books so it wasn't like I didn't spend all my time there anyway. Unfortunately I quickly discovered that those same moms who were yelling about their baby socks yelled about the coupon they left at home that you can't let her use anyway because it's against company policy and could get you fired. However, amongst the bowing and scraping, and the spit up on your favorite jeans from the genius mother who let her five year old drink an entire caramel mocha by herself, there come these shining gem moments. Today just so happened to have one of them.

So I was putting away some reshelves and trying not to laugh at the 80+ year old couple who were looking at Karma Sutra books, and you know, worrying that grandma there could break a hip or dislocate something vital if they were seriously thinking of trying page 55 of the Position of the Day book, when I happened to stumble upon Drink, Play, F@#k by Andrew Gottlieb.

Now I'm not going to lie. The title is what did it. As a cronic F-bomb dropper I just knew that this was something I needed to check out. Plus the inner annoyed employee (haha, inner...right...) in me was interested in anything parodying Eat, Love, Pray which we were practically slammed with about a year ago when it was featured on Oprah. And I was not disappointed in the least. I laughed out loud-scaring the guy nosing around the register, waiting for the right childless moment to come up and buy his Playboy. And the smile I gave when he was walking away, waving off my "Have a nice evening, sir!!!" was totally real. I couldn't put it down. So while I'm supposed to be finishing off Grotesque, and you know, studying for my Communications test tomorrow, I'm busy laughing along with Mr. Sullivan in his adventures in Ireland.

Well done, sir and I look forward to reading about Vegas next!