Thursday, December 18, 2008

Holiday WINS and Title Fun

The Daily Kos is asking readers to speculate on what the title of George Bush's little-anticipated memoirs will be. Care to start our own list of suggestions?

Also, I'm still patting myself on the back for a bit of technological cleverness this week that saved me from a major headache. When I manage to think of it, I like to send a holiday treat to my freelance clients--you know, to make them like me and want to work with me more next year. When I managed the freelancer pool for Frommer's, we used to rake in piles of sugar-laden payola. (These days, not so much.)

Anyway, I wanted to send my new client a box of my favorite chocolate/caramel "turtles" from Mike Libs in Evansville. I picked them up when I was there at Thanksgiving and even chatted a bit with Mike himself, a self-styled Willy Wonka who is one of two brothers carrying on the family candy business. But I waited until nearly the last minute to mail them, and was faced with braving an ice storm and long lines of other surly procrastinators at the post office.

Then it occurred to me: Maybe www.usps.com could help. And help it did! I was able to print a mailing label and pay the postage with my credit card. Then I dropped it in the outgoing mail. Woo-hoo! Add that to the fact that I did 75% of my Christmas shopping online (and still got awesome deals) and I am feeling pretty happy. Is there anything you can't do online?

3 comments:

Katharine O'Moore-Klopf said...

The Bush memoir: How to Ruin Nations, Including Your Own, in 10 Easy Lessons.

Doing everything online: You betcha! I rarely shop in physical stores. I lo-o-o-o-ve online shopping. And USPS and UPS are more than just items in my bookmarks file. They long ago merited shorcuts on my desktop.

Then there's work: These days, I communicate with most of my clients only through e-mail. Only a very few have I ever spoken with by phone, and I've never met any of them in person.

Plus, there's all the fun to be had through Facebook and the networking to be done through LinkedIn.

Long live the Internet!

Anonymous said...

Hey! Congrats on being quoted in the Book Business article about book marketing/launches.

(And have a great holiday!)

Lori Cates Hand said...

Ready for some irony? My package of Christmas candy came back to me because the recipient had closed his PO box (without telling me). Oh well, too bad for him. I'm eating them!