Go Canada!

I can vouch that the onus of marketing has fallen to the author. You're expected to organize that shit and sell the hell out of your book and market it any way you can.

I did get one publisher to cover my travel expenses to Chicago to promote Lost in the Grooves, but otherwise the most I've gotten are some postcards to promote the book.

Fortunately, Kim's a genius at that shit so the first two books had lots of marketing oomph. And the 33 book is part of a series and had a built in fan base so it just sort of continues to sell as people discover it or figure out that it's a good size for a xmas stocking.

ION, serious weather!

(That's a photograph, not a painting or a digitally mocked up image. Montana.)

Dude, I'm fine if they put the money toward a future payment--as long as they don't mark all of it for escrow!

Yeah, I can confirm what brenda said. Any unmarked extra payments I send in go to escrow. If we want to pay on the principal it has to be specified.

And we did that same sort of thing with our property taxes. The first couple of years we were still paying on the empty land property tax, which was nice. Then the nice assessor man came out and complimented our house and I was all, "Thank you!" and the SO was all, "Uh, you don't want him to like your house!" So yeah, the taxes went up and we knew that was coming. So we paid the taxes, because we knew we didn't have enough in the escrow account. But then the mortgage company paid the taxes again, and spread out the amount over the upcoming escrow payments. Oh. We didn't know they'd do that. Fortunately, each of us only paid 6 months worth so I was able to contact the bank so they didn't pay again until the year was up. But then we had this whole deal where we had to pay a bunch of extra in the middle of the year to make the escrow amount normal again.

I was all hmph. See if I'm ever proactive again.

So we paid the taxes, because we knew we didn't have enough in the escrow account. But then the mortgage company paid the taxes again, and spread out the amount over the upcoming escrow payments. Oh. We didn't know they'd do that.

That happened to me too. I had to apply to the county for a refund of what I'd paid, and my monthly payments went up (way up, since by the next year the taxes had increased as well) to make up the shortfall. Ugh.

But it looks like my taxes this year have actually gone down by nearly a grand. That plus the shortfall being over should mean relief this upcoming year, thank dog.

Yeah, my monthly payments went up. But they were getting ready to go up again, because we were going to have to pay double escrow (last year's property taxes plus this upcoming year's) after having also paid the property tax itself. So we just paid escrow up in a lump sum, because it was easier than having to juggle the monthly payments. That was a good call, because we could afford to do it then, but probably couldn't now.

It was all stuff we legitimately needed to pay, but the way we did it we could have made it much easier on ourselves. Oh, well.

Ugh. I imagine it's more a case of them not paying attention to something that isn't a problem at this exact moment, though, right?

They've been reorganizing since I was hired. So basically they kept saying, "Well, we don't know where the position will be yet, so we're not going to make a decision about it yet."

Two years ago, they announced the permanent position and I applied for it, and then they pulled it back because they didn't want to commit. There's all sorts of internal politicking about my slot and the program I manage.

And they're STILL doing that. Even though the position I'm in turns into a pumpkin on Feb 3.

I really hate this. I love the subject matter and the far-less-stressful environment, but the politics and the bureaucracy and the bullshit are making me Very Cranky.

Consuela - my company has been on the reorg a year plan for the last couple. Last year, the reorg put my group without any management. Who knows what the new reorg is going to do to us.

Welcome to the Federal Government! In a state of permanent rearrangement! And hiring freezes!