Nom de Plume

Nonfiction Readers Anonymous weighs in on the wonders of Susan Cooper, and reminds me to reread the set for myself this season. We did, however, buy the boxed Dark is Rising set for Steve’s nephew last Saturday. It was a hard decision for Steve. You see, he’s always been the ultra cool uncle–especially after he gave Ben the very expensive skateboard he was riding when he busted his Achilles heel tendon. It’s hard to top that gift.

“He doesn’t like to read,” Steve protested. We were standing in Elliott Bay Books.

“Yeah,” I said, “that’s a problem.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t get him books then.”

“No, we should. I meant that not liking to read is a problem. We need to fix that.”

Which may sound snotty, but really, I do believe in foisting books on kids. At the worst, the books sit unread on shelves. At the best, they read them and discover wonderful new worlds.

I’m not above bribery either. We slipped in a note that said, “Don’t let your mom catch you reading the dirty parts.”

It didn’t start auspiciously, that I can tell you.

I opened an etrade account a week ago. Wow, I thought, this is great! I can transfer funds automatically. Tweedle dee, tweedle da, I blithely linked up my bank account and transferred a thousand bucks. Done. Easy as pie.

Come to find out that if you type 1,000 with a comma, as any civilized person would do, the etrade system reads aforementioned comma as a 0. And suddenly, that carefree transfer becomes a harbinger of doom. It sucks $10,000 out of your bank account, defaulting into your savings where you had been storing your tax money. Sadly, you are now going to be late paying your quarterly taxes.

It takes five full business days to clear. Poof! The money seems to be gone; it’s not in your bank account, nor is it in your etrade account. It has seemingly … vanished. Where does it go? Into a high-yield escrow account? Probably.

But finally, you have the money wired back into your bank account. All is well. Uncle Sam is happy. You are happy. Etrade is happy because you just bought three probably completely worthless penny stocks that are environmentally friendly.

Anyone have any good tips?