You can't smell a Kindle

Recently, I went into one of my favorite local places in the world, a little second-hand book nook in Palmetto, geared up for a comforting eight-hour browse on a rainy afternoon.

This little place is hidden behind another shop that sells old tires and refrigerators and small appliances. You almost can't see it behind the graveyard of washing machines and old hot water heaters, and I found it quite by accident a year ago. It's sort of attached there as an afterthought.

I walked in, coffee in hand, ready to crawl around the stacks and sneeze in the dust and find a few hidden masterpieces. I wasn't surprised to see the lady behind the counter curled up and reading herself. Things are slow when it downpours.

What I was surprised to find, though, was that she was reading on a Kindle! Scouring an e-book in the middle of all of these stacks of forgotten treasures. Interesting juxtaposition.

The Kindle is a curious little gadget. It can download (for a fee) and hold about 1,500 books. The new version will even read to you, if you are so inclined. It plays MP3's in the background if you need tunes to read by.

There's even a Kindle app now for the pretentious iPhone. (iPhone, by the by, is going on the list of things I never want to hear again at the end of the year. 'Swine Flu' is also on it.)
I must admit, I just don't get the whole e-book thing. O.K., it's convenient and it's quick and it may even be a bit cheaper than actually paying for the physical book, and it saves trees, I'm certain. I've edited a few for clients.

But what happened to holding a book in your hands? Feeling the paper, smelling the ink? Cracking the spine? Call me kooky, but I love that visceral feel of a new book. And I love the dust and mold from an old book, too. I like to be in my quiet home office, surrounded by the noble look of shelves and shelves of books.

I also wonder what this slide in the industry will mean for our local book places. Do they have business slip off to the Kindle? Or are their still crazies like me who want to spend all day in their stores, drinking coffee and browsing and spending a small fortune on books I don't need but absolutely must have or I'll die?

I have yet to be published. But I am certain I want to see my work in the tangible, be able to walk into one of our local shops and see it displayed. I just don't think having it read on a Kindle would give me the same thrill. I know I'd have a tough time signing it.

My friend that runs the dusty old book nook that has become my second home had this to say, though: "The story's the same, no matter where you read it." Good point.

Welcome back, Java!

Boy, I miss food.

You see, my doctor took it all away when I came down with bad stomach problems last year. Seems my penchant for ridiculously hot Buffalo wings with a French fried chaser has left some holes in my digestive tract. Sigh.

I’m on the world’s worst bland diet, like plain rice, saltines and apple juice. And while he has slowly allowed me to let some things back into my culinary repertoire, all the good stuff is still a no-no. Like anything spicy, fried, fatty, breaded, rich, covered in cream sauce, doused in chocolate, caffeine-laden, or, God forbid, having any alcohol content.

You know, all the things that make life worth living.

The worst thing was no more coffee. I sat bolt upright up on the table for that little announcement. Are you kidding me? No coffee?! I’m a writer, for Pete’s sake, and a third shift paramedic. A nightcrawler by all description. He could have just taken away, oh, I don’t know … oxygen maybe.

I tried to be good. But it’s so very hard.

So I actually got up and danced a jig this week when I got reluctant permission from the doc to enjoy one 8 oz cup of java per day. Look out world. The problem is, I have been deprived from that smooth, silky, wonderful goodness for so long that now all coffee tastes just plain ordinary to me.

The mission begins. I’m on the hunt for Tampa Bay’s best local cup of coffee (NOT Starbucks or D&Ds). I’m talking all the little book nooks, cafes, diners and roach coaches. Even your Aunt Edna’s living room. Bring it on!

So, fellow local shop-a-holics, pepper me with your suggestions! I’m taking a coffee tour of this great area no holds barred and taking no prisoners.

Whether the doc likes it or not.

There's no place like home

Ah, summer. Backyard barbecues, Clearwater Beach traffic, ten-minute afternoon thunderstorms, and the dreaded family vacation.

The kids will be out of school soon and itching for something to do. So upon us once again are the months when families plan a trip to one locale or another, cram three weeks’ worth of activities into seven days, blow their entire savings, and come home needing a vacation from their vacation.

The last one we took brought us clear to Tennessee, with dreams of mountains and lakes and cabins. One look at the brochure, and we loaded everybody up in a van and headed out on the open road. I mean everybody. My in-laws, my huge, angry husband, his brother and sister-in-law, the children and all the dogs. In a van. On the highway.

These things always sound like a better idea than they actually are.

We drove an ungodly amount of hours and spent a couple thousand dollars to sit in a tiny cabin that wasn’t ours (sans air conditioning) in the Land of No Cell Phone Signal. We expected to be imbued with the beauty of nature. Instead, there were fights, mosquitoes, and a rental boat no one knew how to operate. By Day Three, I tried to get in a cab to go to the closest airport to fly home.

And we were broke at week’s end.

In the face of the Great Recession of late, I find it hard to believe families can afford to take off for a little R & R. There has to be another alternative.

What about a vacation at home? A “stay-cation?” Seriously. Follow me on this for a minute. It’s possible to create a getaway experience at home, still do a ton of activities and not break the bank:

1. Get into the mindset by blocking off the dates to go into vacation mode.
2. Have a budget and don’t stray.
3. Put away ALL THINGS ELECTRONIC i.e. PSPs, iPods, laptops, BlackBerries, what have you.
4. Go off the beaten path and find places around Tampa Bay you’ve never had the time to see, like museums, aquariums, art exhibits etc.
5. When planning, go online and look for coupons to print out.
6. Eat out! No cooking allowed. You’re on vacation.
7. And no cleaning, no laundry, no routine things!
8. Buy a couple of souvenirs.

Yeah, it’s not the same as cramming the family into a rental car and blowing two grand at the Orlando attractions, but just think how relaxed and rejuvenated everyone will feel at the end of the week … and not be in debt.

We’ll be the guinea pigs. I’ll let you all know how it goes!

Ikea? No, thank you

By now, everybody must be quite sick of reading blogs about the new Ikea … So here’s another one!

The Swedish furniture conglomerate finally opened its giant doors Wednesday in Tampa, after much anticipation and hype, and greeted people with lots of fanfare. Guys dancing on stilts and employees banging thundersticks and sporting balloon hats and such.

People actually camped out for the opening of this uber giant, some for more than 50 hours. Some folks brought their little kids and made a family affair out of it. And when the doors finally opened at 9 a.m. – to a line wrapped around the two-story, 353,000 square foot building – it was total insanity.

Is it worth it? Some shoppers that waited in line got a free hotdog. One guy won a $90 chair. Lots of people got nothing, but the chance to boast that they were one of the first to walk through the enchanted doors.

So another retail giant has moved into our fiefdom. Local independent businesses, I’m sure, are keeping a worried eye on Ikea. Who wouldn’t, after all of the media coverage? Ikea this and Ikea that. My husband actually said if he heard the word “Ikea” just one more time on the news that he was going to get a shotgun and blow holes through the wall. (I shut the T.V. off at that point.)

Here’s my take: a maze of pre-fab decorated rooms and $4.99 plates of Swedish meatballs aren’t going to hold charm over people for very long. I was over it before it even opened.

It's a helluva drive, for one, no matter where you’re coming from. And, it takes half a day to tour the place. Two-thirds of a mile for one trek around the place, according to the press release. Seriously. Who can shop with that kind of pressure? Too many things. I get tired just thinking about it.

I’ll take my local indie businesses any day over this bloated, overblown cartoon of a store. At least I don’t need a map to navigate their aisles.

Starting an at-home business? Don't quit your day job

I will work for myself. I will have a less stressful life. I will make lots of money...

Starting and running an at-home business is sometimes one of those ideas that sounds better than it actually is. Especially if you go into it with that mindset. The fact is, it is just not that simple. And with the added stress of a failing economy, it can be damned near impossible if you don't have the right tools.

So you want to be your own boss. Set your own hours. Be the owner of something, and put dollars in your own packet instead of helping someone else's stock go up a quarter of a point. But how do you make that transition without losing your shirt, or your mind for that matter?

The first thing is to understand that whatever you do - from making killer cream pies to grooming pooches - will NOT be an overnight success. Studies show the mean time investment to actually start turning a decent profit is 2 to 5 years. So even if you have that bang-up dress design/pizza service/glittering porcelain frog lawn statue that everyone wants, it's still going to take time.

Let me tell you from experience. My copywriting and editing company, 911 editing, has been around now for over 2 years. I do have a modest client base, and one heck of a portfolio (if I do say so myself); still, no one's beating down my door. The amount of time time I spend networking and marketing borders on ridiculous.

But that's what it takes. That and a market niche, meaning you have to know who will need your product or service.

Other questions to answer before taking the plunge: How will you bring it to the market? What will it cost to produce? How will you find your prospects? How many items do you need to sell in a week/month/year to break even? How much will it cost to set up your office? Who's your competition and how can you do it betetr?

And, believe me, even if you're cheap (I resemble that remark), start-up costs can add up. Plan ahead on where you'll be getting things like a desk, basic office supplies, computer, phone line(s), web hosting, business cards/letterhead/ads/brochures, marketing and copywriting help, and necessary software.

My advice is this: Start with a business plan. Have someone do a professional one (they start at about $100). Mine has saved me some heartache and a bit of sanity. Have Plan B, and C and D for that matter. Know how you will manage the bumps in the road ahead of time, and be able to recover from them. Study your market. You can never know too much.

And don't quit your day job .. yet.

Two local women turn unemployment into cash crop

Talk about turning lemons into lemonade.

Two Sarasota women laid off from their jobs this year and down on their luck after running through their savings can officially add another title to their belts: Entrepreneurs. And successful ones at that.

Stephanie Aucoin, 48, and Barbara Bourn, 59, were back to square one a few months ago after being given lay-off notices from their respective companies. Money in both savings’ accounts quickly disappeared; Aucoin had to borrow $10,000 from her parents to make it. Bourn had to sell her house, like so many others.

They didn’t wallow in their misfortune for long. Bourn and Aucoin put their heads together and came up with an idea to bring attention to the unemployment plight of so many: wristbands.
Every worthwhile cause lately (and a few NOT so worthwhile) has its own wristband, but not the jobless cause. These two ladies decided a whole lot of people could benefit by wearing one. And they made them screamin’ mustard yellow with bold black lettering: LAID OFF NEED A JOB.
Can’t miss ‘em. And just being seen with one of these babies on your wrist is good self-promotion. Aucoin found that out first hand, too. An exec riding up in an elevator with her saw the band, was intrigued, and offered her a position on the spot! See, fairy tales do come true after all.

The pair put their ingenuity into the business, put up a website and got themselves on Twitter for networking. And, after some local coverage, the Wall Street journal picked up the story and gave them some national media attention! Something tells me they’re sales may go up.

After five weeks, their site boasts over 500 hits daily. They’ve got a ton of followers on Twitter, and have sold more than 4,500 bracelets. Enough to cover their investment and pocket almost $9,000 in profit. Not bad for two girls just trying to make it. Great inspiration for the rest of us!

You can visit them on the web and get their full story, get yourself a bracelet (even if you don’t need one, something tells me they may be a hot commodity after the media attention) at: www.laidoffneedajob.com.

Rate of homeless children increases 131 percent

Think for a moment about being homeless.

And not just you, I mean your entire family, including the children. Where would you guys all go during the day, to get out of the heat? Wander in and out of stores? Where is your family sleeping for the night? The shelters won't open until at least 6 p.m.

And three meals a day? Well, the line at St. Vincent dePaul is wrapped around the building everyday. I've driven by and seen it. And past that, what about drinks? Snacks for the kids?

The children need to go to school. Will they understand having to bathe and dress every day at the Salvation Army? Or the YMCA? Where are their school clothes and supplies coming from?

What if you get sick? What if they get sick?

And being homeless carries a stigma: people look at you and your family and think, Lazy. Drunk. Stupid. Disease-ridden. Not in my backyard.

Think it's impossible? Let me provide you with some scary numbers: the Pinellas County Coalition just released its annual head count for the area's homeless, and the number of children has doubled in two years. It has gone from 96 children under 18 in 2007 to 2,224 this year. That's an increase of over 130 percent.

I want to repeat that last figure, because it sounds vaguely important: Over 2,200 kids right now in Pinellas County have no home.

Why? Officials of course blame the economy. More families are homeless than ever. For some people in the Tampa Bay area, it's as close as one missed paycheck. When the breadwinner gets laid off, often these families are on the streets within 30 days. Shelters, food pantries and donation services can't keep up; their resources are strained. Simply put, need is up at an exponential rate, monetary donations are down. The coffers are almost dry.

Also drawing on those resources is the large, intangible group of working poor, the ones that don't get a head count every year. Without help from soup kitchens and places that provide donated clothing and household items, they're looking at that 30 days real quick. Survival becomes minute to minute.

So what do we do? What can we do? Where does relief start? Individual donations? Leaning on our politicians? Legislation? I read quite a bit of speculation, but no clear answer.

Maybe it starts here at home. Shopping locally and keeping our money in the area, making sure our local businesses thrive. Giving what we can when we can, and helping out by donating gently used things to services that get them in the hands of people that need them. There has never been a better time than now.

Do they still make Aqua Net?

I have been secretly reading with glee the blogs devoted to the being trapped in the 1980’s written by Steve Spears, St. Petersburg Times online editor. Spears has dedicated his entire existence to honoring those guilty pleasures that defined the era, like Duran Duran, the Brat Pack, Ferris Bueller and the Rubik’s Cube.

Spears is himself “Stuck in the 80’s,” and judging from the popularity of his column, so are a lot of us.

Best-selling horror novelist Stephen King is also trapped in that whole vortex. His recent column in Entertainment Weekly focused on all the 80’s pop songs that won’t leave his head. Like “Mickey” by Toni Basil. That to me suggests he’s still listening to them. A closet 80’s addict, perhaps.

Here’s my confession: I am too.

I loved the 80’s! I spent the whole time wearing rubber bracelets up each arm all the way to my elbows, flashing mismatched neon socks with my leggings and talking like a Valley Girl. I totally wanted to have children with at least three members of Duran Duran, to be Madonna and to go to school with Molly Ringwald all at the same time.

I bought Aqua Net by the case, demanded to be allowed to drink Jolt cola, and peppered my jean jacket with buttons whose slogans screamed out bits of wisdom like “Frankie Say Relax” and “Gross me out the door!”

I paired all that up with black fingerless lace gloves and Ray-Ban Wayfarers. My mother, in her ever-ready crusade to keep me innocent, drew the line at the corset. (I still snuck it in my backpack along with electric blue eyeliner, and changed at the school dances.) I won’t even get into the rhinestones.

But then the 90’s rolled in on the wings of grunge, And I fell in love with the Smashing Pumpkins. So I traded all of that in for flannel shirts, tank tops and a pair of Doc Martens. My worship of all things 80’s had to be undercover, in the closet, on the low.

My husband has caught me more than once, dancing by myself, Cyndi Lauper blasting away on my iPod. I still have black half-shirts that beg to be worn with waist-length pearls and rosary beads, but they’re hidden away in a drawer. If my hair starts getting too big, I tame it with a straightening iron.

But reading Spears’ ode to my favorite era has brought it all back, like running into an old high school friend.

And his devotion is so complete, if I were single, I be tempted to ask him to marry me.

Like, you know, totally.

The higher up you are, the worse the layoff

I read with some interest a story in the New York Times Sunday edition, about the woes of out-of-work CEOs. I was about to pass it by - after all, who cares about laid off upper echelon when we have so many regular joes in the unemployment line?

But the photo of the fired CEO that the writer was profiling beseeched me: He looked so downtrodden. I read on, and found out that this gentleman in his mid-fifties was newly laid off after giving his heart and soul to build up a corporation.

He drew a healthy six-figures from this company that services the pharmaceutical and bio tech industries, traveled the world for them, was fluent in three languages. He essentially constructed and launched their global quality assurance program, taking the company from a fledgling effort to an international force. It's fair to say he was good at his job.

So good, in fact, they canned him. And that's the reason they gave: now that the company was trading at its current caliber, they didn't need his skills anymore. Sure, they offered him a severance check and an impeccable reference, but where the heck was he supposed to go with it?

Where do all the unemployed CEOs, COOs, CIOs and CFOs go, with their five-page resumes and oft-intimidating pedigrees? You can't just place a senior executive into an entry level job and expect them to succeed. These are baby boomers who've reaped the rewards of a magical, uninterrupted stream of success. In very bad times, they're trying recapture the magic. Quite the quandary.

And in truth, there really is no answer. Just like the regular joes, they're getting stonewalled. National services like New Directions in Boston offer the laid-off execs classes in prospect networking, seminars on business network sites like LinkedIn, and office space for them to make their calls.

But they caution that it will take well over a year to produce any leads. When the severance money runs out, and these unemployed bosses dip into their savings, they are faced with the same issues that plague many American households, like how to pay the mortgage and where to go for health care.

Hopefully, this is not another dreadful sign of the times. It's not refreshing to know that CEOs aren't safe from the axe. In fact, it's disturbing to know that the bursting bubble has reached the top of the ladder. It means things are bad all over.

Clothing swap success reveals a deeper need

I applauded the success of the clothing swap held in St. Petersburg today, while watching the coverage on BayNews9. Spinderella's Steals closed their store for the afternoon to host the swap of donated clothing, sponsored by Localshops1.

The three-hour swap saw hundreds of participants, hunting through the piles of gently used stuff to take home some new treasures. I was glad to see that families showed up, and were able to get some good things for their children. And, I'm sure, some folks walked away with GREAT clothing pieces for their donation.

But what struck me was the tone of the comments made by most of the people interviewed on the news; their words had a hint of desperation in them. One woman said that it is "the right time" for an event like this, that hooks people up with necessary donated items.

It sure is the right time. The beleaguered economy has left everyone drained, some people to the brink of bankruptcy. Relying on nonprofit groups has made the difference between having a home and being out of the streets for more than a few. Living paycheck to paycheck means people are just one small event away from being in a financial crisis. I know; I've been there.

Another woman said it gave her hope, that she was trying to change her life around and make a new start after some setbacks. The way she was clutching the clothes under her arm, you could tell that the items were much-needed. And her smile spoke volumes.

And three cheers for Spinderella's Steals, for missing a Saturday afternoon's worth of sales to make sure an event like this could help so many. Proceeds and leftover clothing went to a nonprofit group that relies on every penny to provide a roof over the heads of the down and out.

So maybe this can start a trend; maybe more businesses can partner up with Localshops1 to put on more events like this, maybe even with other needed items, like small household things. The more people that step up, the more our community as a whole benefits. We can see each other through this bad times if we stick together and give just a little.