Embarrassing Story #1
So I woke up the other morning to no fewer than fifty pieces of fan mail.
“This is it!” I thought to myself. “I’ve finally made the big time!”
And then I started to read said fanmail, which all, curiously, had the exact same timestamp. (I know, I know, but I’m a bit slow on the uptake.) And some of it was a little odd, like people talking about having met me at signings I did this summer, or having won a contest I held back in September.
I am not proud of how long it took me to check out the time stamps of the emails. they had in fact, been sent in the summer or September or whenever. Oops.
So what had happened? In October, I contact announced that the form on my website had been broken for I don’t know how long (probably since the launch of my new website), and the emails being sent from that form were not reaching me (it’s been fixed since then). Well, the problem was that there was an error in the code that was misspelling the email address. Well, the email server (host? thingamabob?) has, in its infinite wisdom, decided to set up one of my active addresses as a “catch-all” — and that happens to be the address that my form sends to. (I’ve also fixed that, btw, as soon as I realized what was going on, because who needs that spamtastic headache?) But the happy side effect was that all those misaddressed forms came home to roost.
So, not famous. But still happy, because fan mail six months late is still fan mail!
Embarrassing Story #2
I’m renewing my passport for the purposes of an upcoming trip [details redacted at present, but totally swoonworthy and envy-making]. Anyway, for the last ten years, I’ve been a bit vain about my passport photo. Everyone always complains about their passport photos being just this side of troglodytic, but I thought mine was pretty flattering.
Well, after ten years of being a smug bitch about my photo, I went in to get new ones done for my new passport and, wouldn’t you know it, I now have a new passport photo in which I look rather humorously like a smug bitch. I’m making this face at the camera — I can’t even describe it. It’s the face the mean cheerleader in the 80s teen film makes at the shy, bookish heroine right before making out with the adorable hero she’s dating that the heroine is secretly in love with and perfect for. It’s the face the shopgirl makes and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman right before kicking her out of the store.
“Um, can you take it again?” I asked the passport photo lady when I saw it on the screen.
The passport photo lady gave me a look I’m sure she’d not appreciate having plastered across her own passport.
So, smug bitch it is. Yeah? Wanna make something of it?
Sigh. Customs is going to be fun. Because there’s nothing a customs officer likes more than a smug bitch smiling smugly up at you, right?
