Does blogging count as interaction?

Life.  It's been interesting lately.  I'm finally getting paid.  That's nice, even if I do have to interact with crazy pet owners for it.  But there are some regulars I already like.  It's especially nice being able to help out with the bills.  I like talking with Vaughn about Yu-Gi-Oh!, and I like the ease with which interacting with Lance is.  Actually, I like all my supervisors, which is certainly different from Starbucks.  Don't get me wrong; I liked all my supervisors that I ended up with (not Krystal or Ashley, whom I started out with), but wouldn't work with some of them again.  Hang out with them?  Absolutely.  But working with them, that's a negative.  But these guys, I'd be happy to do both.  They're all pretty cool people.

What else?  I've been successfully writing again.  As in, I published a story to a website, and have gotten eleven reviews, all positive (well, one's a duplicate; it happens).  Now if I could just write some original fiction at some point, that'd be super special awesome.  One of my readers is amazing, and I have emailed her back and forth fleshing out ideas, asking for advice, and taking some great advice, as well as listening to a reader's perspective on my characterization of the, well, characters.  She's (assuming s/he is a she!) been extremely helpful, and I'll admit I couldn't have written a good second chapter without her input.

Another one of my stories is a parody of all these stories out there with ridiculous plotlines.  Yet one of my reviewers didn't seem to understand this.  His/her review goes as follows:

Very disappointed that [main character] would think that abortion is an option. It really seems totally OOC. Why would he kill a future member of his own family?

Oh, dear reader, thanks (I guess) for projecting your own views on abortion as part of your complaint about my story.  Did you miss the part where this is a parody and therefore not to be taken seriously?  I'm assuming so.  I'm sorry, then, for not including a definition of 'parody' or 'sarcasm' in my beginning author's note which doesn't exist (the note, not the definitions).  I completely admit it's my fault that I included abortion as an option to an unwanted and impossible (being that they're both males—yes, many stories abound in this fandom with that plotline, I shit you not) pregnancy.  Sorry you don't agree with abortion, but this isn't a serious reflection on [main character]'s views on abortion.

In other news, I've made up a to-read list.  I find it a serious fault of the libraries I visited that they don't have multiple (or any) copies of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club.  I checked out Stephen King's Bag of Bones, complete with a coffee-cup ring-stain on the front cover, which, thanks to libraries, is impervious to such things, and also William Shatner's Star Trek Academy: Collision Course.  Whatever, laugh all you want, but I love Star Trek, and William Shatner is made of awesome-sauce, so I'm reading it.  Next up: Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Stephen King's The Shining.  I'm currently reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, as well as rereading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, so taking on two more books shouldn't be too much of a challenge, especially since Stephen King will be a fast read, and Shatner's looks to be too.

Two people in my family have died recently.  (Nobody in the immediate family, though, thank God.  I've had enough of those to last me a lifetime.)  My aunt's brother (obviously, an aunt by marriage, but she's like a sister to my mom and me, and is David's wife; they both have helped us immensely, and are wonderful people) was one, the only sibling she was close to who was still living, on account of her two sisters are completely petty, selfish individuals.  The other sister was an angel, but died of cancer years ago.  Timmy was the only one she had whom she could stand, as I said, but now he's gone.  I'm going to the visitation and the funeral service.  He'll be buried in the veteran's cemetery out by the American Village in Montevallo.  I think they do it for free since he's a vet, so that's cool.

The other person was on my dad's side, and called 'Uncle' Bill Tidmore.  He was 78, and died of a blood infection he got while in the hospital, so that really stunk.  But I don't know if I ever met him; he lived in Florida, though, so it's a 50-50 chance that I did.  I'm sending his wife a card anyway.  I think of all the cards I got when my dad died and how much every word seemed to help, or at least give me more of a sense of "people do care," so I try to do the same.

What else?  I guess that's it.  I'm not exactly interesting lately.  City council elections are August 25.  That'll be interesting.  Langford and Arrington are playing dangerous games, but who's surprised?  I can't wait until Langford's out. What a piece of crap.