I Will Give Up My Books When They Pry Them From My Cold Dead Hands...

Last week, Amazon unveiled its new e-Book to a lot of hoopla. The Kindle is supposed to do to books what the iPod did to music. The biggest difference I see is that music has made a natural progression toward the digital world, books largely have not. Sure, we do a lot of reading online now, but not for escapism. You just can’t curl up with a warm computer screen. Well, you can, but it isn’t very enjoyable.

Call me a Luddite if you want, but I am no technological neophyte. I love my iPod. I love my laptop. I will love it when we all travel around in flying cars and jet packs in the not-to-distant future. But I will NEVER give up my books.

Why am I so down on e-Books? It’s not so much what they are, but what they aren’t. They aren’t books.

I love the smell of books, new and old. I love the way the pages feel when I turn them – especially the feeling of accomplishment I get when I turn the last page. I love getting lost in a good book – forgetting my surroundings and setting my imagination free.

I even enjoy the peripheral things associated with books. I love buying books at the bookstore or going to the library to borrow them. I love the way you can curl back the cover on a paperback. I love the way hardbacks look on the bookshelf.

You don’t need power to read a book – trust me, I’ve spent many blackouts reading books by flashlight; not to mention those nights when I was a kid and stayed up way past my bedtime reading under the covers. The Kindle has up to 30 hours of power on a single charge, but you don’t need to charge a book at all. And you don’t need a user guide to work one. Any two-year-old knows how to use a book.

If I really like a book, I enjoy picking it up again and re-reading it cover to cover, or just the best parts. And if I really love it, I will loan it out to a friend or family member. You can’t do that with e-Books. They’re proprietary, which means their licensing is more restrictive than iTunes. You can’t download a book and copy it onto a CD for future storage because you might want to pass it along to a friend. Even if you figured out a way to do it, under the licensing for the Kindle, that would be called piracy – stealing. That just rubs me the wrong way. If I buy a book, it’s my book. I should be allowed to do with it whatever I want. Even loan it to my friend.

Sure there are advantages to e-Books, namely that they don’t require paper. Plus, they are cheaper than a new hardback. There is also the advantage that you can store dozens and dozens of books in one unit at the same time. Imagine the benefit for college students who don’t have to lug around gigantic textbooks.

But that isn’t reading for pleasure. Until they figure out a way to replicate the sheer joy of reading a book, I’ll stick with paper.

Beethoven's Birthday

Only 20 more shopping days until Beethoven's birthday.

You've been given fair warning!

I have a lot of suggestions for those who have left their Beethoven's birthday shopping until the last minute. Musical gifts are always appropriate, of course, as well as products to keep that coiffe looking its best. But it's a good idea to steer clear of clothing gifts as it's difficult to find cravats and long coats outside of a costume shop this time of year.

Seriously, though -- the man was pretty intense. Anything that helps with relaxation is a great idea.

Let me be the first to wish you a Happy Beethoven's Birthday. [HINT: It's December 16th!]

Get Your Adverbs Here

You had to know that I would post this.

The funniest thing is, the improper use of adverbs is and was a real pet peeve of mine. I'm not sure if Schoolhouse Rock had anything to do with it.

But my younger siblings will attest that I drove them crazy when they were kids, correcting their grammar at every turn. Any time they used an adjective and left the "LY" off when an adverb was required, I would jump in like some insane English teacher and add it for them. For some reason, I think they've forgiven me.

Giving Thanks

Hands down, this Thanksgiving was a whole lot better than last year’s. After all, no one had to call the cops or social services at any point during this year’s festivities. That has to be considered a bonus.

So, with that in mind, here are a few things for which I’m thankful this year.

Relative Reconnections: My brother-in-law is bringing my niece for a visit after Christmas. We haven’t seen her in a year; Mom had worried she might never see her granddaughter again. So this is a huge thing.

Extra Credit: I’ve spent the last four years digging out of the credit crunch caused by getting a pink slip. It’s nice to finally reach the point where banks want to give me the joy of being in debt again. I don’t think so. But it’s nice for them to try.

NetFlix and YouTube: The Hollywood writer’s strike is looking like it will last far too long, which means no new TV shows pretty quickly. Old movies and great strike videos on YouTube are the some of the few ways to get some much needed laughs in the weeks and months ahead without The Daily Show. [If you want to know why the writers are striking and why you should support them against the blood-sucking studio moguls, check out the great blog at http://unitedhollywood.blogspot.com/.]

Warm Puppy Doggies: Miss Brontë reminds me that nothing else matters but good food, good company and lots of love. Plus it doesn’t hurt if someone is willing to rub your back and scratch you behind the ears.

Great Family and Friends: I have wonderful people who love me, put up with my occasional wackiness and even laugh at my jokes.

Pottery Passion: There’s nothing better than having an obsession – you could even call it an addiction – that benefits aforementioned family and friends. Everyone should have the sort of enthusiasm for something that has a positive side effect, like built-in Christmas gifts.

Now all I need to do is make it through the holidays without any drama.

History

Past blog posts can be found at http://www.myspace.com/laurashafer

Just When You Think it Can’t Get any Worse...

May you live in interesting times.

That’s supposedly an ancient Chinese proverb and curse, essentially saying that when things are truly interesting, you’d better hold onto your seatbelt because it’s going to be a bumpy night. Yeah, it’s time to bring out all the clichés. Like, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” Or my personal favorite, “It’s always darkest just before you open the fridge.”

No one can say that my life has been boring this last month. In fact, it’s been so interesting, I keep wondering what will happen next. For the record, never, never, never tell anyone how well things are going for you. I think this must anger the gods.

It started with a friend’s unexpected death and quickly moved into influenza. Maybe one had something to do with the other. You tend to have compromised immunity when you’re feeling down, so I think I may have been susceptible to the myriad viruses floating around last month. But the flu left me with a terrible case of laryngitis; probably the worst I’ve ever had. I had absolutely no voice for 24 hours and it took about two weeks to speak without sounding like a frog. After four weeks, I’m starting to sound semi-normal, but I still can’t sing, which is pretty tough for me heading into the holidays.

You know how much you hate hearing "White Christmas" by the time December 24th rolls around? I’m the exact opposite. I’m one of those disgusting people who sings along with the Christmas carols in full voice, hoping maybe someone – even a stranger – will join in and we can harmonize on the choruses. Yes, it’s nauseating. I freely admit it. But Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. So I hum or sing along with the mall music and actually enjoy Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters be-bopping together on "Here Comes Santa Claus." The only exception to this love of Christmas music is "Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree." I hate that song with a passion. It should be outlawed and every copy destroyed, if possible. But I digress.

So about two weeks into my flu-induced haze, I got sick of being sick and decided to get some yard work done. It’s been unseasonably warm this autumn, so I still had roses in early November. (In fact, I still had roses until yesterday, when we had our first hard freeze.) After raking some leaves, I grabbed the garden clippers and attacked the rose bushes. As I was returning the clippers to the garage, I dropped them. They landed perfectly onto my left big toe, slicing through the nail and into the nail bed. It didn’t hurt a whole lot, but it bled something fierce.

After hearing dire warnings from my mother about the possibilities of ending up in the hospital with lockjaw, I broke down and went to the doctor for a tetanus shot. He also gave me a flu shot, which I think was a little like locking the barn door after the horse is stolen. But I guess there is always the possibility of contracting a second strain of flu this winter. What joy that would be! In any case, the doctor said the toe looked okay, but I could still lose the toenail or end up having it permanently damaged. Only time will tell if it heals properly. With my luck these days, I’m not counting on it.

Two days later, I started up the oven to make some fantastic chocolate chip cookies for the guys at work and the oven wouldn’t start. I called a service company to come and look at it and they said it would be $85 for a service call, plus it would take a week to get an appointment for the technician to look at the oven. When he finally did arrive, he looked at it for 10 seconds (literally) and said the oven’s processor was damaged and I’d need a new one. Hey, I work in tech for a living, so I new this was a fancy way of saying the computer interface for the oven was broken. It would be $300 to replace it. Pretty aggravating since I’m sure this is something they could have diagnosed over the phone. But then, that wouldn’t cost $85.

Well, Mommy and Daddy didn’t raise an idiot, so I decided to price brand new ovens. Sure enough, a new one only costs $450. So I went to Home Depot and looked at their lovely selection of appliances. It seemed like I’d finally caught a break because everything was on sale. I should have known there would be complications.

Now I have to backtrack, because in the middle of the oven debacle, I had another joyful incident. I made a deposit at the bank the previous Thursday and also withdrew some cash at the same time. The bank teller gave me the cash, the deposit slip and my driver license (which I’d used as I.D.) in a bank envelope. I slipped the envelope into my purse and went to the grocery store. Some light-fingered Louie managed to snag the envelope out of my purse. Not only was I out the cash (about $120), but also my license and the deposit slip, which had my account number on it. So this thief could easily put my account number on a counter withdrawal slip, go through the bank drive-through and use my own license to take all the cash out of my checking account. That account is tied to my savings account for overdraft protection, so potentially this person could steal all of my available cash. Yes, that thought woke me in the middle of the night and made it pretty hard to sleep. The next morning, I went straight to the bank and closed that account. Fortunately, I have a passport to use as I.D. so I can actually prove that I am really me. All this craziness meant that it would be a week or more without checks, a debit card and a credit card – until the new stuff would arrive in mail.

So here I was at Home Depot, ready to buy my oven, and I realized I really didn’t have a way to pay for it. I had the cash, but only temporary checks and my passport as I.D. To make a long story short, I was able to use my passport to secure a Home Depot credit card and they let me put the appliance on the credit card. Since it was a little unusual to be using a passport as I.D., the clerk had to make three phone calls before she was able to find someone who could complete the transaction successfully. A passport is a legally recognized government I.D., but for some reason, you can’t really use it as I.D. – unless you want to go to Canada.

It took another week to have the oven delivered and in the mean time, it was time for more excitement. I was on my way to work the next day and the clutch on my Subaru gave out. It’s the second clutch I’ve burned through since I bought the car eight years ago. That’s pretty rapid, but this is a notorious problem with standard transmission Subarus. After getting the car up on the rack, the mechanic found another problem, of course. “Your right front axle is about to fall off. I’m surprised you made it in here without a problem!” Two days and $900 later, I had my car back.

Between the illness, car problems, oven problems and bank problems, I’ve missed a lot of work these last few weeks. Maybe there really is a silver lining to all the dark clouds in my life lately. But for now, I’m looking forward to some less interesting times.