Targets of Advertising

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in her forties in possession of a Facebook account must be in want of online dating ads.

Often they are of the "Wealthy men seeking mature women" type and let me tell you, those aren't fooling anyone. You find me one wealthy guy who really likes mature women and I'll show you a guy who is fending women off with a stick. That guy doesn't need an online dating site.

Generally, though, I get an ad from Zoosk showing me a picture of some guy that is not calculated to make me want to sign up. Just a tip, Zoosk -- stop showing me pictures of guys in tank tops. It's not sexy. My favorite Zoosk picture is of a guy with slicked back hair wearing a tank top and orange crocs. Let's face it, when I am offended by some guy's fashion choices, it's a bad sign.

 And then there's this other site. I'm pretty sure "Trent" and "Cesar" are actually the same person. Unfortunately, neither they nor "Jim" can form a complete English sentence, which is a little sad since they are clearly respected professionals. Also, since I don't post pictures of myself on Facebook, I'm not sure which photo they are commenting [on]. Perhaps the pictures of my cats? That would be a little weird.

And just to prove that a) other people get even worse ads, and b) my friends are funnier than I am, I offer this from one of my vet school classmates:

Taxpayer #2 has left the building

In some sort of record setting, hell-freezing-over, end-of-days type move, I actually filed my taxes today, a whole two days early. That's crazy talk, I know.

I'm sure that means that I have made some critical error which will land me in debtor's prison, but seriously, look at me being all adult-like and stuff.

I also got some guy out to give me a quote on rebuilding the back fence.

My only complaint about the day is that when I filed my federal taxes I got an email that didn't have the opening line of "Dear Taxpayer #2". Apparently the IRS has updated their software and taken out some of the debugging code, but now it's so impersonal that I just don't feel the warmth that I normally get from their emails.

The next thing you know they won't be sending me the usual October email, which is like the IRS equivalent of a Christmas card even if they disguise it as a request for me to fix some part of my tax filing.

Anyhow, my Camp NaNoWriMo novel continues to progress. Somehow I am still on chapter three, but there has been action! Now I just need to get all the characters to move on to chapter four. Maybe tomorrow...

There Are Blow Flies At Camp

So, the good news at Camp NaNoWriMo is that I have been dutifully slogging away at my 1,667 words every day and have even built up a two day buffer.

The bad news is that apart from individual statistics, there are "cabin" statistics, and four of the twelve people assigned to my cabin never showed up for camp. They have written zero words. That's 200,000 words for the month that other people will have to write as far as the cabin statistics are concerned.

I mentioned this to other people to see if this was a common problem, and found that 33% DOA is not that bad. One cabin had 10/11 people not show up. We all made jokes about the flies buzzing around the dead bodies

In the grand scheme of things, this isn't that big of a deal, I know. Still, why sign up the week before if you aren't going to even try?

People are flaky. That's really all I have to say.