Day: November 1, 2014

Nano Wrimothoasitheslnt

~ Margaret DTH ~ 9 Comments

That’s how you spell it, right?

It took me a very long time to figure out what that acronym meant. I’m significantly better with anagrams than acronyms. Not kidding. Like the WR in football, I keep wanting to call it a Right Wing. Since I know that’s wrong I continue to call those guys the WR, to my husband’s huge annoyance. He has definitely explained it to me many times but it just doesn’t stick. However, give me the daily jumble and I can see the words. They just manifest themselves to me without any effort. It’s probably thanks in part to special skills I learned a while ago at a very unique job. A job that was the inspiration for a story.

That job was working in a casino.

Nope. No Mahjong here, buster.

I was a supervisor, basically my company’s equivalent of a PitBoss. Anyway, that was a lifetime ago. Then I was run over by a truck, and invalided at my mom’s house. As a needing-to-do-something-creative-at-all-times kind of person, writing was the logical course of action. Frankly, I couldn’t do anything else. I wasn’t physically capable of it. I was in a lot of pain and needing to process what I had experienced.

No dice either.

I should probably clarify that I had recently started a new very regular type job at the time I was run over. But obviously, some of the stress reverberations from my time at the casino still needed working on, too. So it all came out. Almost dying gave me a goal. I want to publish a book.

I do need dis!!

The story transitioned from a diary of pain, to a fictionalized account of my life, to a totally fictional thriller type story set in a casino and one of the side characters gets hit by a bus. Reading those first drafts is painful. Literally full of pain, and it hurts to read. But it’s come a long way. I have an editor who has helped improve my writing by leaps and bounds. Now, like everybody else hoping to get the door slammed in their face, I’m preparing to start soliciting agents.

Which brings me to Woo Irn Man… errr Nano Wrimo

I think I want to participate. But writing this blog distracts me so much (in a good way). This blog gives me a purpose in a way that I really need right now while I’m dealing with the bad shit in my life. Do people do both? Maintain their blogs and write a story? Have you done it before, are you doing it now? Give me insight please!

Note about the bracelets: today the pictures link to their websites if you are interested in them. A quick note, neither Mah Jong nor dice games were offered at my casino, but I can’t find any Pai Gow jewelry to showcase.

11.1.14 no good

~ Margaret DTH ~ 9 Comments

So I was extremely excited to brag a little about my day yesterday. It was quiet at the shop until LINDA RONSTADT walked in! She bought some soaps, and a nightgown. She hadn’t signed the back of her credit card and I made a little joke like “How on earth are you going to prove who you are?” Or something. I swear it was smoother than that, though. Anyways, she has shopped with me before but it still gives me a mild heart attack. LINDA RONSTADT.

She’s my most famous customer, though one time Danielle Steele’s assistant phoned looking for a full length, zip up cashmere robe. Because, who doesn’t need one of those? And Adam Savage from Myth Busters bought slippers once, but on a day I was out. And my silly 20 year old employee didn’t recognize him. Twenty year olds, I swear.

But so, I was all “I can’t wait to blog about this! This is the most exciting thing to happen to me.” That is, until the gunshots on my corner this morning.

Yep. Gunshots on my corner. If you know SF I bet you can guess where I live. It’s not Hunter’s Point, go with your second guess. This is part of the heart break about SF. I live across the street from a church, and behind the church are the projects. But on my block there are million dollar homes.

Everybody swarmed outside with the arrival of the cops, medics, and fire engines. My side of the street basically 100% white, the other side of the street 100% black. It’s shocking this clear cut division of racial and economic lines. White people = million dollar homes, black people = projects. Like I said, it’s heart breaking.

The shooting happened in our corner store, the ambulance rolled a black man out on the stretcher and loaded him in. An air mask was strapped to his face, so he wasn’t dead at the moment. But we don’t know now.

What I don’t understand is this: how are any guns ever allowed in SF proper? No one should have guns here, there is zero reason except to shoot a fellow human. Self defense argument or not, that means the only reason anyone carries a gun in this city is to shoot another person. We don’t have deer, we don’t have skeet shooting, the closest shooting range is in San Bruno. Again, the only reason a person in SF has a gun is to shoot another person. So it stuns me that the NRA recently lobbied for guns to be allowed in the projects. And they were successful.

That’s it. I’ll get off my soap box now. Argue with me if you want, and I’ll know you are the kind of person who thinks it’s acceptable for a human being to shoot another human being. It’s as simple as that.

3:30 PM UPDATE: the shooting victim died and the suspect is still at large.

Today’s bangles are Paris by Maximal Art, Paris themed charm bracelet from Goodwill, and Hermes Tohu Bohu bangle.

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