Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Freebie madness

I use Biblio to hunt down used books I'm interested in.

Today I received yet another package from a Biblio member/seller. I ordered two books by Julie Miller, yet the package seemed big for only two Harlequin sized paperback. Hmmm...

Imagine my surprise when I opened the envelope and four books fell out. Hey, wait a minute. I ordered two. I paid for two. Didn't I? I check my email confirmation and my credit card statement. Sure enough, I was billed for two books. So what the heck is going on?

And that's when I found the hand-written note from the seller in one of the books. I got the other two books as freebie bonus. Yay!

Don't you just love it when people give books away for free? I guess no one wanted those two (they're pretty old-school HQ Intrigues by authors I've never heard of before, but I'll give them a try), so they had to get rid of them somehow. But I don't really care why I got them.

Freebie madness rules!

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Real life sometimes tries to equal fiction

Ooh, it's been a while. Well, my only excuse is I didn't have anything "long" to write. Tweets are a different matter. ;)

Anyway something happened very, very early yesterday morning (right after midnight, to be exact), that made me think. Yeah, I do think, too. Sometimes.

Anyway, back to yesterday early morning. I just finished watching Batman Begins and was merrily settling under the covers when someone starts ringing the bell like crazy and the sounds from the stairwell (I live in an apartment building) sounded as if a herd of elephants came to visit. I open one eye and grumble.

The noises on the stairs continue and a siren sounds in the distance. Well, there goes my sleep, I think and finally roll out of bed and go into the living room...And there OMFG, a huge ball of fire sails upward outside the window.

Yeah, you guessed correctly. Something was on fire.

Apparently there was a short-circuit in the store on the ground floor and it caught fire. Lucky for us a taxi driver saw the flames and called the firefighters. If not, who knows what might have happened.

But did I panic? Nope. I was so cool I actually surprised myself. Apparently I haven't inherited the panic gene. My mom would've freaked. But I was probably just tired and still happy from my Christian Bale intake.
Anyway, I pulled a pair of slacks and a shirt over my PJs and went downstairs. I wasn't going to miss the firefighters, now, was I?

And we (finally) arrive to the gist of this story. I had just finished reading a firefighter novel the previous day (after midnight, remember?) and couldn't stop wishing to have a hotshot for my own - you know how firefighters get in romance novels, hunky, sexy, single, romantic - and there they were, smack under my window. I wouldn't miss it for the world.

Well, it was dark, the black smoke made it even worse, and the firemen were all in full gear. Good luck seeing anything remotely cute or hunky under those helmets and coats. *sigh* All I know is they sure didn't seem like the hotshots from fiction. For one, those I saw weren't very tall, and I'm pretty sure I noticed a beer belly or two in the melee. Shoot!

The police officer was cute, though. Nice smile.