Lookie! I found my birthday present to myself. :D



Also: Once again, Neil Gaiman has proven himself deserving of freshly-baked cookies. I read this and guffawed so much the better half put down his video game to find out what I was up to. From his blog this morning:

It was 5:45 in the morning. No-one had died, though, I was fairly certain of that. My cell-phone rang.

"Hello. This is Rose Trevino. I'm chair of the ALA Newbery Committee..." Oh. Newbery. Right. Cool. I may be an honors book or something. That would be nice, "and I have the voting members of the Newbery Committee here, and we want to tell you that your book..."

"THE GRAVEYARD BOOK," said fourteen loud voices, and I thought, I may be still asleep right now, but they probably don't do this, probably don't call people and sound so amazingly excited, for Honors books....

"...just won..."

"THE NEWBERY MEDAL" they chorused. They sounded really happy. I checked the hotel room because it seemed very likely that I was still fast asleep. It all looked reassuringly solid.

You are on a speakerphone with at least 14 teachers and librarians and suchlike great, wise and good people, I thought. Do not start swearing like you did when you got the Hugo.

I wonder if I'll find the time to sit down and finish The Graveyard Book--it seemed like much fun, so I hope so. I also wonder if this means we'll get more than a couple copies of The Graveyard Book into our store. But Borders Group is still flailing in altogether disturbing ways, so I doubt it. Instead I still have the awful feeling that we're gonna see the axe falling on a few local places before this mess is all over.

Cnn.com tells me the economic turnaround is predicted at around the end of the second quarter, though. So what's that--six months to limp along? And if we make it that far, we'll be good? We'll see.

But I won't stop applying around. A full forty hours at minimum wage would net me more than "full time" at Borders. And with BGInc nixing any bonuses or raises this year (but giving ex-CEO George Jones $2.1 million to go away), I'd be stupid to not just take a rinky-dink job that's closer to home and make do with it.