I'm not going to, though. I can't afford the self-indulgence. Instead, I'm thinking about the second job I took to pay for Christmas presents and earn a little extra cash. I was hired by a company called The Pampered Pet to do pet sitting on the weekends. I thought it was the ideal second job. It won't affect my study nights or school nights, it's not more computer work, it doesn't require me to deal with feverishly acquisitive shoppers (ever work retail during the holidays? Eurgh!), it pays pretty well, and I get to spend time with fluffy cats and playful dogs and probably some hamsters and turtles and parakeets. I love animals, always have, don't mind cleaning up after them or getting hair on me. I think it's going to be fun.

I haven't seen my best friend Denise since August which was making me feel kind of down, but I talked to her on the phone for over an hour last night so I'm feeling much better. We chat all the time, but I don't see as much of her as I'd like. She's running her own business so she's working incredibly long weeks (and convincing me that owning my own business is not something I'd ever want to do, being inordinately fond of my lazy weekends). She started work this week at a photo studio in the Stanford mall, the same place she worked as a studio photographer last year for the holiday photo season. She's horrified to discover traffic is outrageously bad. The 30 minute commute of last year is now an hour. I mention this by way of illustrating how terrible Bay Area traffic truly is, and why getting my own car doesn't mean I ever want to commute to my job. It should not take a full hour to go 25 miles. It inevitably does. I feel so sorry for John who does it every day. At least I can take the train and get a little reading done.

What would make my life better in every way is if someone would take the initiative and set up a coffee cart at all the train stations. We're allowed to eat and drink on the trains, and lord knows we're a captive audience while waiting. I'd gladly pay real money for a decent cup of coffee to take with me every morning. I can't imagine why someone hasn't done it yet. There's money in coffee 'round these parts. But it has to be the good stuff. No one in Northern California will touch Nescafe any more.

Me, I'm going to make myself some decaf right now and stretch out on my sofa to finish my new book. It's a collaboration between Andre Norton and Rosemary Edghill. Rosemary is one of my all time favorite Regency authors, and she's a good mystery writer as well. This book was marketed as fantasy/sf, though only because time travel is involved. It's an odd read. It keeps veering between the sorcery, Regency, and romance genre imperatives. It's also strange because the audience is not a specific demographic so there are sudden expository lumps all over the place. But the disturbing part, the part that made me seriously lose my sense of wonder, are the names.

Names are critically important in maintaining atmosphere in a novel. The introduction of a jarringly contemporary name in an historical context, even with the excuse of time travel, ruins the fantasy. I was okay with Rupert St. Ives, the Duke of Wessex, and I was happy with Sarah Cunningham/Conyngham, and I accepted Illya Kosciusko as a Polish adventurer. But the name of the Danish princess who was to bind together the powers of Europe? Princess Stephanie. Oh, please. It's not Scandanavian, and it's a modern name, and it's just plain goofy. Why not Princess Britney or Princess Patty? Who can hear the name and not think of Monaco's troubled youngest daughter with her children born out of wedlock, and her mobster associations and her feckless boyfriends? What, I ask earnestly, were they thinking? And if you're going to give people lists of middle names to imply aristocratic blood, please don't use Dowsabelle for a Regency duchess. I started laughing out loud, not the reaction I think they had in mind.

Names matter. I hate when authors make a misstep like that.

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