Buy Sexless from BN.com and save 15%!

In case you haven’t bought your copy of Sexless in the City yet, you can take 15% off the cover price now through May 19 when you buy it from Barnes and Noble and use code Y8Y8E9R.

Already got it? Here’s an offer for you too. If you like the book enough that you’d like to share it with a friend as a graduation/Memorial Day/kick-off-your-summer-beach-reading gift, write me with both of your names and your address, and I’ll send a signed bookplate for both you and your friend ... until my bookplate copies run out. I wish I could offer to come sign the books in person, but at this point there’s no book tour planned, so I can’t guarantee when I’m likely to next be in your city.

Don’t forget we also have a select number of copies to give out to people who want to join the Sexless street team by helping spread the word about the book and its soundtrack, suggesting your book club read it (if you’re in one) and so on. Tell us how you could creatively let people know about the book, and we’ll send you a copy (while supplies last).

Lastly, if you’re done with the book, but curious about all the songs and books I quote in it, I’ve compiled a handy reference list of all the authors and artists to whom my book owes such a debt.

Thanks for reading!

Sexless in stores today!

I'll be picking the winner of the contest after a good night’s sleep to recover from doing my taxes, so if you haven’t blogged yet, you can take advantage of the extended submission deadline. Entries accepted until I first check email tomorrow morning.

Already entered? Then take a look around the book’s brand-new website, www.sexlessinthecity.net.

In other news, I discovered during a.m. resucitation attempts today that Starbucks has launched another free music promotion (woohoo!). This time they’re giving away a new free song every Tuesday; today’s is one by Counting Crows.

Finally, if you’re a blogger who wants to post your email address online more securely, my friend and fabulous web designer, Joe, tipped me off to this email-encoding resource. (Not that I’ve started using it, mind you, but it’s nice to know about.)

Thrift and charity on the web

For those of you recovering from a less than chick-flick worthy V-day (mine included babysitting, a cable-car ride and lunch with an over-50 crowd, though I don’t lament a minute), here’s some justifiable shopping therapy/boredom busters.

Google checkout/Paypal rebates
This was a great way for me to buy some yarn I probably would have passed on otherwise. Basically Paypal’s offering a $15 rebate on purchases of $30 or more, while Google’s offering $10 off your first purchase through Google Checkout, with no minimum. So, for example, I spent $32 on 400g of yarn from an Ebay vender in Chicago, but after the PayPal rebate I’ll only spend about $17 out-of-pocket. With the Google checkout rebate I did even better: went to a store called Tropical Yarns and bought a 414-yd. skein of sock yarn (which I’ve been wanting to try) for $10 + $2 shipping. After the rebate, which was applied immediately, it only cost me the shipping! Obviously you could also use these rebates on something non-crafty. ;)

Click to help St. Jude’s
Wedding Date, who has reappeared after a shocking spate of silence, asked me to help promote a click-through program he’s set up to help St. Jude’s. Read more here.

Back with an answer to the latest reader question! Look for it sometime in the next week. Until then, feel free to have your say below and don’t miss some of the very thoughtful, frank remarks already left by readers. Thanks so those of you who’ve shared so openly!

Wasting time in haste

Well, dahlings, no new reader questions this week, so it’s grocery shopping with Anna! Not that I planned on this errand any time soon; yesterday my bank balance was at $38 — all I had to get by on the rest of the month. Which seemed like pretty tight going until a timely check from Sis yesterday. Whew! Thanks to my new influx of cash, I could afford to head back to Trader Joe’s to restock my pantry. Well, that and splurge on a latte from that coffee shop I once used to frequent more often.

By the time I reach Manhattan, it’s after 5. But I’m a writer who can work till 4 a.m., if need be, so who really cares? I’m strolling along 14th Street, all stoked to buy a new bag of those wonderful unsulphured apricots, pass Trader Joe’s new wine store (which still isn’t open), get about 20 feet from the door ... and realize there are a lot of people on the sidewalk. In what appears to be a line. Oh my God, I think, It’s 5:30 on a weeknight, and I’m going grocery shopping. At the new Trader Joe’s.

Yup, sure enough: a line to get in the store. Several folks in line were shaking their heads and complaining about it, as if — like honking — this could make things move or otherwise reduce the shame of, gasp, waiting. The line wasn’t that bad, and overseen by workers so cheerful they must all have been flown to California for TJ’s crash course in West Coast laid-backness. Sadly all this was lost to onlookers. People walking by were exclaiming in loud horror, as if we’d all volunteered to bear children for Osama bin Laden or something (well, maybe that’s not quite the right metaphor, but still, they were appalled): “Standing in line for a grocery store?!!”

East Coasters don’t really get it. As one woman at the coffee shop put it, “I’ve heard their cheese section isn’t all that” — so why the fuss? I guess it’s partly a regional thing — like the sort of mellow coffee shops one rarely finds east of the Rockies, if not Nevada. I’ll confess: when friends in Arizona first raved about TJs, long before I’d had their apricots, I didn’t get it either. And some of the foods I tried from there were frankly not that great (the waffles I ate this morning: C+ at best — but when they’re $.24 apiece, and your budget looks like mine, who really cares?) At bottom, I think it’s the combination of often-decent quality and fairly reasonable prices. Pellegrino costs $1.19/bottle, a bag of flattened banana slices is only $.99.

Well ... cost-for-quality and the lovely way that, when the sun shines right and I’m deep inside the store, I can almost forget I’m in Manhattan instead of Seattle or El Cerrito or Emeryville. Last night I drank a whole liter of their $1.79 lemon Italian soda at the sheer happiness. Because something about the sunshine or the daylight or the lack of a winter chill out West induces a blissful laziness. Or if not that, an ease at least. Sure, West Coast peeps can be uptight about some things, but it’s not the same as here.

Here, folks want to get where they’re going as soon as possible, and the next train couldn’t possibly suffice, so I’m going to jam my arm in and hold the train the extra 15 seconds for me to board (I confess, I’ve been guilty of this too). But worse than that, I’ve seen people sacrifice all the well-being a calmer and lovelier walk to the train (only 2-5 minutes longer) might afford for the sake of rushing along through crowds of sidewalk smokers and car exhaust and honking just because it’s the “fastest” way to the train. As Fiona sings in my new favorite song:

If you don’t have a date
Celebrate
Go out and sit on the lawn
And do nothing
’Cause it’s just what you must do
Nobody does it anymore

No I don’t believe in the wasting of time,
But I don’t believe that I’m wasting mine

At the end of my leisurely sojourn at Trader Joe’s, I wandered out to the growing dusk, past the even-longer line outside. At least some people don’t mind that wait! Perhaps the man with the rasta cap jingling change in a plastic cup should have worked his way closer to the grocer than the subway. I passed him, then remembered I had bananas in my bag. They were fairly green, but he took the ripest one and told me happily that it would be good to eat in a day. Not like the plantains from his homeland, but still ...

I knew how that was. A Trader Joe’s in Manhattan isn’t quite like the stores of home, but the $4 subway round-trip is cheap compared to the cost of a flight to Cali. Then again, if I move out west, I’ll have to drive my groceries home myself, with no train driver to take me over the Manhattan Bridge past the twilight glimmer of lights in downtown New York. Gratitude, methinks, is 90 percent of contentment with one’s present — single or otherwise. Well, gratitude and resourcefulness. ;)