Hey! Instead of spending money on waxy, musty-tasting Walgreen’s candy today, you should give a few bucks to The Book Thing in Baltimore, an organization that gives away free books. To anyone. For free. They have a chance to move out of the cruddy basement space shown in this article to a better space, but unless they can raise the money for the down payment, they’ll lose their lease on the old (cruddy) space and PERISH. Read The Old Hag’s post for more info and click here to just give.

There’s been some family-related business to tend to lately, so not only have I been light on posting, I wasn’t able to make cynical theme Valentines the way I’ve done in the past. However, I did have a little time this morning to steal some source code and put up this. You are encouraged to report your scores in the comments. Please send a sexy photo if your score is over 80%. Thank you.

This new boot camp class is three days a week for the next six weeks. I go on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays I am overcome with a kind of fitness amnesia in which I somehow forget that there was ever physical suffering or sorrow or those weird calisthenic exercises that involve jumping up from a squatting position and then squatting down again and kicking your legs out behind you like you�re some kind of fleshy lounge chair. I suppose I could continue to discuss how much that sucks, but I won�t, because just now, when I tried to find a helpful image to show you what that particular horrible exercise looks like, I discovered instead that “calisthenics” is the best Google Image search word ever. You could spend hours looking at pictures like this and this, and you can even leave SafeSearch off (which you wouldn’t think would be the case, considering, and which you might find either a disappointment or a relief, considering) and still get amazing results. It’s the kind of Google image search that makes you see the whole world working in some kind of uncanny synchronization of action and purpose; you see kids do calisthenics and grown-ups do them, too; red-blooded soldiers and Chinese do them; cats dressed as people do them and people dressed as bats do them, by God! And, best of all, image-searching on the word “calisthenics” leads you to this page. It makes me wonder: would I enjoy my boot camp class more if we all got to dress up as pirates or Pierrot dolls or steam trains? Hmm. See, this is how I forget the pain.

In other news, my friend Michael in North Carolina got his gall bladder out yesterday and I am very jealous our friend Rebecky got to see the gallstones. If you go read her entry, you’ll find a link to other pictures where you can see that Michael is pretty on the inside, too.

I’ve been taking a break this week, for no good reason other than I just felt like it. Boot Camp Two (aka Return of the Boot or Dawn of the Boot or A Very Booty Sequel or, inevitably, Electric Bootaloo) doesn’t start until NEXT week, and I hadn’t figured that out until Friday evening while out drinking. The epiphany was met with relief and more drinking.

Hey, here’s two ways of talking about your blog-related book deal: this and this. And I mean no shit-starting by linking either of those. Just so that’s clear. And if there’s any shit to be had I am sure it can be cleared up by, you know, drinking.

Also, I’ve had lots to do at my day job, and if you happen to know what I do for a living (like maybe you’ve read about it somewhere recently) you do know not to email me here at my personal website for anything having to do with to the wonderful world of children’s books, RIGHT? Not that any of you have. You’ve been very respectful of my personal blogspace and my nutty extra-curricular grown-up book activities. I say “grown-up book” because every now and then when I’ve told people I know through work about INTNM, I’ve called it an adult book. And that just sounds wrong, doesn’t it?

I’ll write more about Boot Camp soon. I’m trying to decide whether I should disclose the fact that when I did the two week intensive class, I got Special Applause sometimes. I am extremely slow, you see. I confess to having slightly mixed feelings about the Special Applause. But that’s for another time.

Apparently the Hideout was filled to capacity last night and they couldn’t let everyone in, so if you’d come to see me and trucked all the way on down to the bar’s weirdly remote and semi-industrial location only to be turned away, I owe you a drink.

The show was a blast. The only trouble with reading at events like these is that I don’t get to spend all that much time just sitting in the audience, and everyone was so funny that I hated missing any of it. Readers were: Mark Bazer, who was one of my favorites from Funny Ha-Ha 1 in the fall, Todd Dills from The 2nd Hand, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Leonard Pierce, who read this thing which you must read, and Annie Logue, who was funny enough to make me suspect that the very serious-looking hand on her webpage is not actually hers. Plus some really fucking hilarious films.

I read a couple of short chapters from the book as well as couple of excerpts from my summer camp story, which is going to be in an anthology called Sleepaway to be published in June. A couple people were asking me about it, and there’s a page up at Amazon already, and I’ll keep an eye out for other places with ordering info.

Oh, and go buy books by Claire Zulkey and John Green, since it was their idea to throw this shindig in the first place.

I�ve spent the past couple of days being the exact opposite of the Ironwoman I was last week, acting like a total delicate flower in the wake of blizzards and colds and lots of work, but really, I�m milking it all I can before I start in with the three-days-a-week-for six-weeks early morning boot camp class next week. Jesus fuck, I signed up for more of that stuff, despite the torture from before. I�m like the Patti Hearst of fitness. MY NAME IS TANYA NOW!

I have gotten addicted to reading all these lovely weblogs and articles about promoting your book, and while some days I feel like I’m being very helpful to my book’s cause just by reading these sites, other days they make me all like, “oh my God it’s three months to publication have I memorized the promotional copy of my book yet so I can recite it to people I sit next to on the bus? Why haven’t I called the restroom advertising people to check rates yet?! Or arranged for somebody in the taco mascot costume to stand on the street and hand out postcards?! Because everyone says that if you don’t allow at least twelve solid weeks of taco costume campaigning you’re doomed, you’re screwed!” Then I have to breathe into a paper bag.

I did get my first postcards, though. I did not know what 1000 postcards looked like. Now I do.

Two places where I’ll be very soon:

1.) At the Hideout tonight. I think you know the drill but click here if you don’t. I’ll be on the bill with some cool people, including Amy Krouse Rosenthal, whose new book comes out this week and who is getting the word out with a method that is way better than a taco costume.

2.) Guest-blogging for Maud Newton tomorrow. So if you’ve wondering why I haven’t posted as much this week, it’s because I’ve been saving it for Maud. That makes it sound like I took a vow or something, which I didn’t, THOUGH I SO WOULD FOR MAUD.

I need a nap now. See you later. And elsewhere…

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