How about a happy post for once?

Damn right! Here it comes.

In between getting bitched at by livid customers, and putting up with flakey employees who seem to catch every bug in Portland and then call in sick, some darn right cool things are happening.

The truth is: I only have one flakester employee whom I've cut down to one day a week hoping she'll get a clue and quit. And I've only had one wicked customer in the last few weeks. The old bag's complaint was lame too:

"I'm sick and tired of renting DVDs from your company, only to get home and have them skip in my player. Some of them are so filthy--it's disgusting. How do you expect to stay in business when no one can watch a DVD without it skipping? That's why I rent from Net-Flix now--their DVDs don't skip! I'm old and I have a bad leg and I walk all the way down here to rent movies. But not any more! I will never come back here again!"

THANK GOD! Can I get that in writing??

Oh, wait a second...wasn't this supposed to be a happy post?

Forgive...

I sent out my first query letter to a literary agent. This is a huge feat for me. You see, I'm a big fat wimp when it comes to rejection. It took me a long time to get up the nerve to write this query, much less send it out. But I feel pretty good about my novel, and I feel surprisingly good about the query. And I absolutely love the agent.

So sometime in the next few weeks I'll either get a rejection letter or, if the literary gods have stowed their tridents, I'll get signed. Oh to dream.

But what's life without dreams?

It's retail, that's what.