Oh yeah! I forgot to mention! coTangent finished hiking the Pacific Coast Trail today! I'm so stunningly impressed and envious I wouldn't even know where to begin. *Congratulations* to coT!
Healed! The chiro says I'm healed! I am not to go for a run. O.O Dr. Woody said not to tell him if I did, and I said oh, he'd know, and he said, yeah, because I'd come in with a lump on my head from where Ted smacked me. :)
Anyway, he had me do several evaluation exercise and I could DO THEM ALL! Without it hurting! I was very pleased! Dr. Woody was very pleased! He said he's been thinking about starting a circuit training thing a couple of nights a week for people with injuries like mine, and I thought I'd probably do that, although I wonder if it'd cost more if I did. Probably. Heh. However, he did give me a clean bill of health to start swimming and going to the gym again, although he said I should take it easy at first.
Um. We changed our address at the post office and we turned the keys in for the condo and ... and maybe I'll go take a bath or something. I'm horribly sleepy suddenly. Although I really should do some more work, which was my original plan after coming home.
I'm back! I'm back! The house is coming together! Well. Uhm. Which is to say, the kitchen is pretty much unpacked although it ended up a disaster again yesterday, the living room is more or less unpacked *and* there's artwork up, and I kept trying to unpack the bedroom last night and I kept opening boxes and looking at what was in them and thinking, "Well, *this* doesn't make any sense," and trying to find boxes that did.
Things that need to be changed about the house:
1. The bathrooms have no medicine cabinets. They have cupboards and drawers, but no medicine cabinets. This Will Not Do.
2. The frelling kitchen has a lightswitch on the wall outside the kitchen but not one on the left-hand side when you walk *into* the kitchen, which is the place the kitchen light obviously *should* be.
3. There is nothing like enough lighting in the living room. We're looking for little lamps that we like so we can put them on top of the stereo speakers, which should help.
4. There are no shelves anywhere. :) We're working on this one, though. :)
When the people were coming in to look at the apartment, some of them said, "You're going to take the shelves down, aren't you?" in a sort of nervous way, and we said yes we were, but I don't understand how anybody could not *want* an apartment that comes complete with 200 linear feet of shelving! I mean, where do they put their *books*!?
So the cable guy came this morning and now we have cable and we have a cable modem and we have um. A house that's only partly put together, but it's OURS!
I made cookies yesterday, and I'm very pleased with the new oven. And apparently I've successfully made a loaf of bread in the breadmaker, which is good, and there was something else I was going to say but I've completely forgotten what it was, so I'm going to go put the puppy out for a while and ... read the story bits that Sarah sent me. Yay!
Vroom! Gone til Monday sometime, when the cable people come to hook up the cable modem which is supposed to happen between 8am and noon. We'll see if it actually does. :)
Bai!
Hm. That will teach me to ask Ted to just grab something and put it out for me to wear, since he was going to bring all our clothes to the new house. I have a tanktop (which would be okay if it weren't 45 degrees out and the house door being open a lot) and no socks. Oops. :)
I'm still at the apartment, trying to get a little more work done. I'm not sure how long I'll be here. I'm beginning to get the feeling that if I linger too long, they'll just pack me up and move me, too. :)
It was frelling *cold* in the house last night. I had to get my robe and put it over me so I could warm up, despite the comforter and the blanket and the sheet and the t-shirt I was wearing and the cat who was curled up against me. Ted, who was overheated, couldn't figure out what the hell was wrong with me.
I'm trying to figure out how to politely ask for somebody to go get some doughnuts, since there's No Food At All in this house.
Hee hee. So I just someone call up and say, "Hi, is this Catie?"
I said, "Yes..."
The someone said, "Congratulations!"
I said, "Thank you! Who is this?"
And it's my friend Melissa, whom I had forgotten /works/ for Pacific North Mortgage & Realty (or something like that, I forget what it's called exactly), and who had just gotten all our closing paperwork across her desk and was finishing it up for us and called up to congratulate us. :)
And Melissa just called back to say that Sandy, who did our closing for us on Tuesday, came by while Melissa was on the phone with me, and she wanted Melissa to tell us that she, Sandy, had had a really terrible day on Tuesday and that we'd really made her day because we were so enjoyable and cheerful during the closing, and it had really lifted her spirits. So that's nice! *beam*
So Amy, the girl at the comic shop (ok, she's not the _only_ one, but she's the one who counts) is very nice and usually pulls Ted's comics for him early, because we tend to come in before the pulls are done (only because they do pulls last. Is that not screwed up?). So as a thanks, Ted brought her two jars of homemade jam, one of raspberry and one of blackberry. Amy was very very excited and pleased! Amy wanted to go home right away and have some toast! It was pretty cool. So that was a nice thing. :)
Of course, then I wanted to put Nobilis on layaway (because it's goddamned expensive) and so that made the other girl at the comic shop doooooomed because she'd never done that before, or maybe she had but she couldn't remember how, so despite the jam I was clearly there to make their life difficult, and /then/ I wanted to know why they'd never gotten an Ultimate Wolverine and where was the Ultimate Colossus, which was supposed to be out today? And Amy said, "Talk to him!" and I said I couldn't, because I couldn't remember his name, and she said, "Eric!" and so I said to Eric, "Eric! Where are the Ultimate busts?" and, "Why didn't you get me any? I said I wanted the whole Ultimates line!" and he said, "If it's not written down, I can't remember it!" So I sighed dramatically and made them write it down, and he called up the store in Eagle River and is having a Wolvie bust sent over for me, and they'll get me a Colossus. Hnf. I'm so difficult. :)
Calling U-Haul now...
Well, the good news this morning /was/ that my back hurt less. I've brought the dog out twice since I got up and my back's not doing so well now, but for a few minutes it felt better.
The bad news this morning is that Chantico exploded in her kennel and what was an up-early morning turned into an hour's worth of dog-walking and clean-up. :P
Giving up on work for a while, since I've been at it (in some fashion or other) for 8.5 hours, and going to try working on Mrs. O'Leary's. Still think it's easier to write on a computer that's not hooked up to the net, but bad back.
Which feels better today than it has, although I'm sort of just waiting for it to spasming again.
Okay. Off to write.
music: Bon Jovi, These Days
An excellent political commentary by Russ. Very, very nicely said, and with excellent use of protest lyrics to boot.
Goooooooooo Sarah! Sarah has written a 7500 word short story in the last day, to submit to a Star Trek short story contest. We just spent a couple hours editing it, and she's off to send it to the contest now! Goooooooo Sarah!
I suppose I should go do some real work now. :)
Ted and Shaun packed up and moved 31 boxes of books (and 1 box of figurines) last night. These aren't small boxes, either. _Gawd_ we have a lot of books. Meanwhile, I sat huddled in the computer room, being utterly useless, because I can't bend or pick up anything. Well, not utterly useless; I got 500 words written on my O'Leary's story and Starling and hegemony and I had a good time talking about my two burly, oiled slaveboys hauling boxes of my loot on their well-oiled, rippled backs.
Of course, after a few minutes that devolved into something about chocolate fudge ripple and almond butter, but maybe we better not go there.
*Wow* is it just *pouring* rain out there. Ted doesn't think we'll be able to build a fence at all -- he thinks the ground'll be too wet. So I'm thinking maybe we should get a chain-link dog run for the winter, and next spring build a fence.
I'm doing weird things with my mouth when I'm sleeping. I had my tongue pushed really hard against my teeth at one point when I woke up last night. I think it's because of my back, which is causing other weird mouth problems. My left jaw-hinge becomes more and more painful throughout the day if I'm sitting at my computer desk. I think there's some kind of feedback pressure system that's making it hurt. It's very frustrating, not to mention painful.
Despite the fact that it's only 8:30, I'm starving. Time for breakfast!
Hooray! I've gotten my Mrs. O'Leary's story started! 550 words to the good, that's me! Hooray! Hooray, and g'night!
Between the time Ted's alarm stopped annoying me and the time I got up this morning, I had an extremely weird dream. It began with me and Sarah and a third person, possibly Angie, at some restaurant sort of thing in Los Angeles, where Danny Devito stopped by our table and gave us each a $20 bill, which we thought was really strange. He tried to explain, but two extremely irritating women came by and wanted to take pictures of him, and he was being jovial and polite despite clearly not wanting to deal with these women.
Then Sarah took out a bunch of photographs of my friend Heather's wedding, and it turned out that the two extremely irritating women had /been/ in Heather's wedding, and so we suddenly had this unpleasant connection and couldn't figure out what to do with that.
Somewhere in there I realized we were in LA, and that Urban Family Dog was playing this weekend, which I told Emily (who had appeared), and then we had an argument about it because she didn't believe me.
Shortly thereafter, my high school friends Kelly and Rhonnie showed up. Kelly, as far as I could tell, was being fitted for a bridesmaid's dress which was actually quite nice, only when I admired it, she leaned back from the table and the dress fell down, and then she got very upset with me.
I figured out that Danny Devito had given us the $20s to whet the pot, because it turned out there was a fundraiser going on, but then Danny turned into Jim Byrnes, who was actually doing the fundraiser. It was for something like a childrens-home foundation that Jim was starting, and he had several bluesmen there to speak and sing for the crowd. There were only two extremely strange things about this: 1. Jim looked like my chiropractor, and 2. he had legs, which, I suppose, if he was my chiropractor, makes sense. Oh, and then Sarah wanted to keep her $20 and Jim scolded her.
The dream ended with me turning around to talk to Jim while he was sitting in a row behind me, and noticing that he was holding a typewritten article, but the text of the article was more like a note you'd pass in class; there were a few paragraphs which I don't remember what they said, and then the final paragraph said, "Kit's really into Methos, and if you know him, you can tell that Methos is really getting into Kit."
When I woke up, I wondered why James Marsters hadn't put in an appearance in the dream. Everybody *else* did. I mean, Danny Devito?
I also had a dream which had the beginning elements of a great epic fantasy novel, but I'll have to have that dream several more times before I have enough detail to do anything with it.
When I woke up I also discovered I was lying in a sort of twisted position that really wasn't any good for my back. Then again, nothing's really any good for my back. I'm *tired* of this. :P
HAUS!
We have signed the paperwork!
We have received a housewarming gift from the real estate agent! (Mixing bowls. 3 of 'em. 8 quart, 4.5 quart, and 2 quart. they match our kitchen!)
We have turned the goddamned heat on in the house!
Tomorrow, we will start moving in!
Which is to say, I'll watch everybody do stuff and feel guilty because I'm a PATHETIC USELESS LUMP OF PAIN.
We decided we're going to build a much *smaller* fence, so the dog has *some* room to romp. It'll still cost a lot, but not quite more than we could ever hope to scrape together. Then next summer we'll build a bigger fence. Stupid closing costs, anyway.
In other news on the pathetic useless lump of pain front, Dr. Woody will be back on Friday, which is surprising because he wasn't suposed to be back until the 10th of October. However, he apparently developed a horrible sinus infection and couldn't sing (he went to Australia with his country-western band to do a month-long circuit) and so he's coming home early.
On one hand, that really sucks for Dr. Woody. OTOH, I'm really glad my chiro will be back.
HAUS!
Well, god damn it. When we went in to do the mortgage paperwork last week or whenever it was, Mandy the mortgage lady gave us a closing-cost amount of about $7100. We said, "Wow, that's not very much, does that include the earnest money we put down?"
And Mandy said, "Yes," and we said, "Cool!"
Only what we were asking was, "Does that include the earnest money ($1000), thus making the final closing costs a total of $7100," and what she was answering was, "Is the earnest money on top of this $7100, thus making the total closing costs $8100."
$8100 is less surprising as a total closing cost, except we've been going on for the last two weeks thinking it was going to be *$7100*, and that we were going to have enough left over to build a fence. And now we won't have enough left over to build a fence and I'm *grumpy*. :P
For many years -- since I was about 15 -- I have been holding Mythago Wood against Charles deLint. During a perusal of titles at Title Wave this evening, I discovered that this was utterly unfair, given that Robert Holdstock wrote the book.
Perhaps I ought to try reading a deLint title or two . . . :)
GUYS. HEY. DON'T LET ME FORGET. Saturday there's a critique group at Title Wave that I want to go check out, and on the 2nd Monday of the month they have a sf reading group meeting, and on the 3rd Monday they have a mystery reading group meeting. I want to do these things! Don't let me forget!
I have just been *completely* suckered by Lucy.
I went upstairs. She was sitting on the lowest set of stairs in the house. I petted her a little as I went by. I came back downstairs. She was still sitting there. I said, "Whatcha doing, kitty?" and stopped to scritch her more thoroughly. She streeeeetched and put her paws on my leg and sort of climbed up my body, so of course I picked her up and she crawled up to put her legs over my shoulder and began purring loudly.
It was then clear to me that what she was doing was waiting for a human to come pick her up so she wouldn't have to walk the twelve feet from the bottom of the stairs into the computer room, where she obviously wanted to be, because it's where she is now drinking water out of my coffee cup.
HAUS!
Closing tomorrow at 3!
HAUS!
Deirdre's going to write a romance novel. If she gets published before I do, I'll have to kill her. :)
I made a terrible mistake.
I was at auditions for Dad's show he's doing (I was taking pictures of auditioners) and my tummy was upset so I bought a 7-up from the coke machine and opened it and drank about half of it. And it was quite awful, but I was expecting it to be quite awful, because I don't like canned soda much anymore.
And while I was sitting around talking to Mom, I commented that I didnt like canned soda much anymore."
And she looked at the can and she said, "Well, that's not a 7-Up."
And indeed. I looked at the can, and it was *not* a 7-Up.
It was a Mountain Dew.
I have't had a caffinated beverage in months, nevermind one with as much caffiene and sugar as Mountain Dew has.
O.O
My back is getting worse. I'm lying down again now, on an ice pack, at the moment, and trying to scrape enough braincells together to write. It's very hard to write while lying on your back. It mostly makes me want to sleep. It's not that *typing* is so hard. It's just writing. Being creative. My creativeness is all in a puddle at the back of my head and it's sleepy.
Maybe I'll take a nap. :P
Today:
I managed to haul myself out of bed aroun 11:15, showered, had some toast and juice for breakfast, burned a second piece of toast and decided I didn't want it *anyway* (hmph), mudded for about five hours, then went to Arby's for dinner, followed it up with some ice cream, and took some polaroids of people for auditions for a play my Dad's directing. Then I watched the season premiere of Enterprise, and now I'm here again.
Voila!
There are half a dozen or so references to mizkit on Google which are not references to me. One is an angry scientist. Not a mad one. Merely an angry one. (Scroll down on the page, or search on mizkit.)
So Ted and I went to lunch with Alex, who used to be one of Ted's coworkers, until she got laid off last Friday. Alex is great. I like her a lot. She's got a little girl named Lauren who has amazingly clear green eyes and her mother's otherwise Asian/Caucasian mix features. Gorgeous little girl. She wasn't at lunch, though.
We went to the tapas restaurant in town which doesn't really serve tapas, but which has a very cute waiter complete with an outrageous Inigo Montoya accent. Since we went to have tapas, we felt it reasonable to ask why there was no real tapas. Our waiter started to explain, then flung his hands up and said, "Aaaah, it whaaas a /mhess/!"
The problem, he further explained, was with *Americans*, who want a fast lunch, not to sit around hanging out and chatting and ordering little bits of food, and even if they're willing to order little bits of food, there's only one chef, so he was going nuts trying to manage tapas-sized meals in very short amounts of time.
So we ordered just regular meals. Which were very good. But I want to go back to the place just to keep listening to that guy, oh my god. Alex, swooningly, said, "Man, sell me a car, I don't care, just as long as I can listen to him," after he went away one of the times, and Ted said, "Sell me a car and *drrrrrrrive* me home!" I mean, *wow*, what a fantastic accent. And he was cute, too! Sort of Chrisberish, only taller and wider across the shoulders and with a mustache, and I want to go back often enough to get to know him so I can get him to say 'Hallo! My name is Inigo Montoya...!" :)
Snfrt. Small fussy problems with the closing paperwork for the haus. They want a copy of the earnest money check showing that it cleared, because they're not happy about the random deposits that aren't paychecks into our account and so they want to make sure the money was actually there. I have this urge to go, "What_ev_er!" but I won't because it really annoys me. *snrt*
Ted pointed out I hadn't updated my webpage in over 24 hours, so here, I'm making a posting to say hi.
Hi!
:)
(Happy, Ted?)
Ok, I got email back from 100megs saying that despite the fact that they (generic they, not 100megs specifically) claim 24-48 hours for new DNS to resolve, that it tends to take more like 72-96 for everything to propagate world-wide. So the site'll probably keep flapping for another day or two. S'okay, it's not like there's much content on it anyway. I'm going to move my writing stuff over there, I think.
Paperbacks are 7 inches tall.
Gah. I keep thinking somehow that there's another week left in September. Four days of being somewhere else seems to have confused my tiny little brain. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to manage moving *and* finishing the first third of MD by the 30th. Gah! _Gah_!
CEMurphy.net is still not resolving properly, after all. I donno what gives with it; I've emailed gandi and 100megs to see if they can shed any light on the subject.
I hate moving. I feel like I don't even know where to *start*, right now. Despite the fact that the obvious answer is 'the garage', because that's where stuff that's still in boxes is. I may have to put the books in boxes for a few weeks while I (which is to say Shaun) work on the maze bookshelf, because I don't think it's going to be done by the time we move in. OTOH, I think if I use 1/2 inch plywood instead of 3/4' -- and 1/2' should be plenty thick -- I should be able to fit one more row into the maze, which is good, 'cause right now it's 8" tall, which is 96 inches, and if you divide that by 10 inches (the current distance between the top of one shelf and the bottom of the next in our paperback-sized bookshelves), that's 9.6 shelves. Our current shelves are 3/4' particle board and there's 8 inches between the bottom of one shelf and the top of the next (the space the books actually fit into). So if I save .5 inches over 9 shelves, that should give me an additional 4.5 inches, which is one more shelf. Right?
*plots it out on photoshop*
Right, except I still end up with dead space at the bottom. frell. I get 10 rows and then 6 inches of dead space, and I need 8 to fit books in it. Or 7, at least. Frell.
I should eat breakfast and do some real work instead of this.
I just got a wonderful email from my friend Jai, nagging me to write and saying some magnificently encouraging and flattering things. I have some of the absolutely most awesome friends in the world. *beam*
Angie was just complaining about the fact that GM asks for a subject line when you make a blog posting, and that she always feels the need to be clever, but that she's not very good at it. In a fit of sympathy, I shared some of the last twenty or so of my subject lines:
yay! cemurphy!
ok, this was funny. :)
bwahaha
or maybe .net
home!
didn't win!
*laugh*
*yum*
Ah!
ai!
I am a master of profundity, I am!
Well, of *course*...
I just took a quiz, "What planet are you from?"
I came out a child of the sun.
"The Ever-Creative Sun. I am the creator of my world."
I mean, we all *know* I'm the center of the universe, right? :)
Ben Browder will be on CNN tonight at 8:15 to talk about the Save Farscape movement. I'm just astonishingly tickled about the whole thing, mostly, I think, because it's such a lil' guys vs. big guys case, and the lil' guys are kicking ass. It may ultimately come to nothing, but man, has it been some seriously good PR for Farscape and some seriously bad PR for SciFi.
I need to vacuum and clean up a little; somebody's supposed to come look at the apartment today, and it's a bloody disaster. I need to *eat* something, too. My god, I'm hungry.
Aberdeen sent us a Happy House gift -- an ice cream scoop, a Billy Joel CD for me, and a fencing book for Ted. *beam* Thanks, Deen!
I'm reading Peter David's Sir Apropos of Nothing, which, sadly, I don't like nearly as much as I like the title. Apropos is a complete jerk. I can't decide if I should keep reading or if I should just give it up, because I don't really get the impression he's going to turn into a more decent human being -- I'm halfway through the book now, and he's possibly /more/ of a jerk than he was at the beginning. :P
Ok, food, vacuuming, some real work and reading Sarah's short story. Zum!
Okay, off to register cemurphy dot *net*, not dot com. Somebody already had cemurphy.com. Sulk.
Man, I'm tired. My whole body feels kind of numb. I suppose going to sleep at 5:30 would be an error in judgement, but it sounds awfully nice. *yawn*
Sunday at lunch, Winifred said that while she was calling people up to the podium so they could give out the Colorado Gold award for sf/f on Saturday night, she was struck by a terrible urge to say, "Manifest Destiny, by Catie from Anchorage," instead of "by Catherine Murphy, Anchorage Alaska," but she thought she better not because everybody was being so solemn and formal about everything. I thought she should've, 'cause it would've been very funny, 'cause every single time anybody introduced me to *anybody* all weekend, they said, "And this is Catie from Anchorage!"
I said after the awards ceremony, after I'd been introduced as Catie from Anchorage for the umpteenth time, that it seemed like my last name was actually "from Anchorage," and the woman I'd just been introduced to said, "I had a roommate who was Carol from Alaska!" I said, "She must be a relative!"
Another woman leaned over and said, "I know a woman we call Lisa from hell. Do you think that's the same kind of thing?"
We all shouted with laughter and admitted maybe that wasn't *quite* the same thing!
Yesterday after one of the seminars, a woman about my age whose name is Tresa and who goes by Tre (like tree) came up to me and asked what Manifest Destiny was about, because it was a finalist in the SF category and she was really desperately curious to know how manifest destiny fit into a SF category story. She wanted to know what the tie-in was. I just thought that was so totally cool, that she was curious enough to come ask me about it!
I had a really great chat with Bob Buettner, who won the sf/f award, about his book, which I can't *wait* to read the entirety of, and my book, which he hadn't read any of but which he asked some good and relevant questions about anyway, and so that was very neat.
Jessie Wulf -- who was the delightful woman who stopped me on the very first day and said, "Oh! You're one of my finalists!" and talked with me for a bit -- told me Sunday afternoon that she hoped I'd be back next year and that she hoped I'd be ineligible for the contest, which made me laugh and agree heartily -- it's for unpublished authors only. *grin*
Home again, home again, jiggity jig! And *sooooooo* tired. *laugh*
It's been a bloody magnificent weekend. I have a lot more to write about, and I'll try to get some of that done this evening, but in short, boy was that fun. *laugh*
oh my gawd I'm tired.
Off to register cemurphy.com now. :)
The conference is over, the people are departed, and I, too, am on my way home. See y'all tomorrow. :)
Well, I didn't win, but I really feel very strongly that the guy who *did* win really really *deserved* to, so I'm not crushed.
I did, incidentally, get 110 out of the possible 120 points, so that's not too damned shabby, is it? *grin*
Off to hobnob more!
Bundle of nerves, bundle of nerves.
I've gone to some utterly fantastic seminars today, and at 3:10 I had a meeting with Winifred Halsey, which, from about 1pm on, I got progressively more nervous about, up until the point I was standing outside the conference room door, at which time I more or less calmed down. 'More or less' means my hands are icy cold and the M&Ms I'm now popping like they're crack cocaine are hard to pick up because I'm trembling, but right now I'm writing to psyche myself down some.
I stood around for several minutes, actually -- 7 or so, and that, when you're talking about a 10 minute meeting, is really quite a lot. So I'd only been in there maybe four or five minutes when they insisted on bringing the next person in, and Winifred asked me if I could come back in 20 minutes or so, so she could finish talking to me.
What, like I was gonna say no?
She made a suggestion as to what to do about the preface for MD -- she actually thinks the story might need one, but she has a good idea on how to make it more personal, more immediate, and -- in fact, let me write down my furthering of her idea so I don't lose it . . . .
Ok, there, it's written down.
She asked if I'd marketed it to the major NYC publishing houses. I said no and she said I should.
That's better than a kick in the teeth. :)
All the further we got was her saying that generally the writing was pretty good, and before she got to comment on the first chapter we got interrupted. So when I go back down I'll get some more of what she has to day.
I went to Joan Johnston's "The Power of No" seminar, which was absolutely fantastic, and I took a lot of notes, all of which I'll put online -- it's all about what you do and don't have to take from publishers and agents.
I also went to one of the agent's seminars -- the Insider's Guide to Agents -- and it's pretty funny, listening to an author's POV and an agent's POV. Needless to say, Sheree Bykofsky's take (she's the agent who gave the seminar) is a lot more flattering than Joan's was.
Right. My hands have warmed up, it's been 10 or 12 minutes, and I think I'll go brush my teeth and then see if I can get online and post this real quick before going back to see Winifred again. Zum.
--
I didn't get to post this prior to talking with Winifred again; some woman was on the public computer and stayed there for more than two hours, which I thought was rude.
So I went back to see Winifred, and we talked a little bit more about how to make the preface of MD more personal -- she said that from her opinion, the only thing that would turn a publisher off would be the tone of the preface, and we talked about it a bit and I'm really very sure I can pull off a much more intimate preface, so I'm extremely pleased about that.
She said to email her and that she'd send me names of particular people at the big publishing houses to contact: she *specifically* mentioned a man at Tor Books, which, well. Tor is the cream of the crop, when it comes to SF publishing. That would be Quite Something. And she said that I should give myself a year, and that if I hadn't sold it in a year -- she said a year because, and she said this too, the big houses are very very slow about responding, and it would *take* a year to get through a couple of them -- if I hadn't sold it in a year, to come back to her with it.
O.O
So I'm going to give myself a year from January 1, since I still need to /finish/ the manuscript and I'm not comfortable with sending out queries and whatnot until I've got it done.
I am feeling so incredibly inspired. Inspired to write, inspired to send stuff out, inspired to damned well sit down and make myself a schedule that includes two hours of writing a day -- I can't *wait* to be in the new house and put together my reading nook, 'cause I think I'll use that for my *writing* nook, too. It's just enough out of the line of sight of everything that I think it'll be perfect, especially if I've got a headset on. God! God, it's great doing this! I feel like I *can* do it, like I'm just one good hard shove away from publication. *laugh*
This has been a really fun con so far, and I'm looking forward to the awards banquet tonight -- although I don't think I'll win -- and there's some more stuff tomorrow that I want to go to, too, so I think it'll continue to be really fun.
Margie Lawson asked for my address and email, as she thought she might want to contact me once I was back in Alaska. Tres cool!
An *astounding* number of people here have been to Alaska, many of them within the last year or two. First people say, "You came all the way from Anchorage?" and then they say, "I was in Alaska last summer," or words to that effect. It's been really neat!
Okay, I'm going to go, um. Hobnob, or something. I'll post again after the awards banquet. :)
Quick mid-day update. Went to a positively *fascinating* seminar about using emotion in writing, spent a significant part of the hour thinking, "Boy, I really need to go back and work on that in MD," then went to lunch with Karen Duvall and Margie Lawson (who was the delightful woman whom Anne Tupler introduced me to last night, and who also gave the seminar on emotion, and met M... damn, I've done it again. I want to say Marcie but I'm not sure that's right. Anyway! Met one of the women who judged MD, who saw my finalist ribbon (they gave us ribbons to stick on our nametags), said, "Who are you, who are you, no no, what did you *write*!" and I said Manifest Destiny, and she SHRIEKED and clutched my arm and said, "I *LOVED* your story!"
And then told me all the things that were wrong with it -- mostly that I really needed more emotion in my writing. *laugh* So I was pretty damned pleased about that.
She said they're opening RMFW back up for non-Rocky-Mountain states people to belong, so I do believe I'll be becoming a member as soon as that happens.
This has been *such* a cool con so far.
More later!
Ah hah! Web access! This is going to be a Very Long Post. :)
RMFW Con Report, 9.12.02
Taking a break from con stuff to ice my poor stiff back, which really very much does *not* appreciate the whole hours-on-airplane/hours-in-panels treatment it's getting.
So! I got on a redeye flight that was packed absolutely full and failed to sleep at all, which is very sad indeed. I kept my eyes closed pretty much the whole plane ride, but I don't think I slept more than 15 minutes; 3 hours is a long time when all you're doing is drifting and trying not to let your arm touch the arm of the hairy man in the seat next to you.
I tried, but failed, to get bumped to a morning flight. If I'd thought more clearly, I'd have volunteered to be bumped when I called up to see about upgrading to first class and they told me the flight was full, but, well, I didn't. :)
Both flights were utterly uneventful. I finished a book at the airport and during the first half of the flight to Denver, then tried sleeping again -- there was no one in the middle seat this time, but I was still denied sleep. By that time I was tired enough to be nauseous, but the very pleasant woman in the window seat told me about her adventures being a nurse in Fairbanks -- she'd always wanted to go to Alaska, and for the last two summers has worked up at the hospital in Fairbanks, the name of which is escaping me. Her schedule is such that she can go zooming off to different parts of the state on her days off, so she's been all over, including up to Barrow just last week when there were thirty or forty polar bears hanging around outside of town.
The coolest part, though, is that her 89-year-old grandfather, who had always wanted to go to Alaska, went up for a month with her this summer, and so got to see Alaska, and went fishing, and did many other things, and proclaimed it the trip of a lifetime. Isn't that great?
The hotel I'm at is perfectly fine, except I'm on the 7th floor and 1. the elevators have glass backs and (far more distressing) 2. the halls are open, so if you care to, you can look down seven floors over a half wall into the common areas of the hotel.
Needless to say, I'm not doing that. :P In fact, the hallway where the elevators are have half-walls that are ... railed? Banistered? Not closed in, anyway. So I've been walking along the dead center of the hall when I go to the elevator, because otherwise I'm mindlessly terrified. I'm also walking very close to the inside wall when I'm headed for my room. It's extremely nerve-wracking.
The room, however, is very nice. I sat and watched a tremendous thunderstorm yesterday afternoon, watched lightning crack and listened to the thunder and watched the absolute *deluge* of water falling from the sky, being whipped around by high-force winds until there were areas of distinct mist far above the ground, where the wind was so strong it pulverized the pelting rain.
One strike of lightning hit a tower, probably constructed for such a purpose, and the tip of the tower glowed a ferocious blue for a full second or two.
Before the thunderstorm, I slept. I intended to sleep for an hour and a half, but my wakeup call was early, so I said 'another half hour' and when I woke up it was five, rather than 3:30. Since I hadn't slept on the plane at all and hence hadn't had any sleep since 7:45 the previous morning, I seriously considered staying in bed.
I was, however, supposed to call Joel and Erica and have dinner. So I sort of slugged around debating whether or not I was going to do that, and had this sort of argument with myself: I could keep sleeping. Yeah, except you'll probably wake up at 5am if you do that. If you don't get up, you won't see Joel and Erica at all. You should get up. But I'm so *tired*. Listen to it rain. You should get up and look at the rain. But I'm really *tired*. If I don't get up, I won't see Joel and Erica, and I'll probably end up waking up in a while and spending the whole evening in the hotel, alone. That would suck...
After several minutes of this I got up, stared at the storm for a few minutes, then called Joel. *grin* We went out to dinner at this teeny tiny very cheap very yummy Mexican place, and just talked for a few hours. Erica had walked home in the immense thunderstorm, which was cold but pretty exhilirating, to hear her talk. I told them about the RMFW contest/conference, and they were -- Joel was very surprised I was writing a SF novel; Erica was not. We laughed until we just about cried at dinner; old friends are great fun. *laugh* After dinner, we their apartment, where their small dog Peabody was charming at me, and we hung out and talked for another hour or maybe a little more, and then I had to go home because I was fading darned fast.
Came back to the hotel, finished reading Callahan's Key, which is indeed so much like reading Heinlein that it's almost annoying, and fell asleep.
I woke up at 7, closed the curtains the rest of the way, and went back to sleep.
Hm. This has taken fifteen or twenty minutes to write, and it's now a little after nine. People are theoretically congregating down in one of the bars after the book signing which ends at 9, so I think I'll mosey on down there for a while. I'll write more either tonight or ... not, but since there's no Kinko's nearby (or Denny's, which I find very distressing, and my pocketbook finds even more so), odds are this won't get uploaded til Monday anyway, so it hardly matters when I write it.
So I'm off to network! Zum!
RMFW Con Report, 9.13.02
Good Lord, it's Friday the 13th. Who knew?
Actually, Silkie did, 'cause she wanted to go to the Winchester Mystery House and do their flashlight tour, now that I think about it. :)
I discovered that the hotel has a business center with an old PC, so I should be able to post to my blog from there. Well, I know I can; the question is if my disk from Little will read so I can just cut and paste and not have to retype it all, which would be a real pita.
I didn't, what with being extremely tired, manage to get up until very close to 11 this morning, I think. Once up, I indulged myself in a bath and the remainder of Callahan's Key, shaved my legs and managed to get downstairs sometime around 12:20, midway through the registration hour. I collected my stuff, went to eat, didn't eat very much, but spent so long reading all the material they'd given me that I ended up being late for the first panel/lecture I wanted to go to, which was 'making the con work for you'. It turned out I didn't really need to go to that one -- there were a couple others that probably would have been better -- but I don't mind having gone, particularly since they've got a nifty setup where they tape virtually all the panels, so if there are things I really feel like I've missed, I can get them on tape.
So I skipped all the panels and lectures today and instead went to the editor/agent workshop that was being run by Winifred Halsey, who happens to be the woman who's 1. senior editor at Speculation Press and 2. the judge of the SF section of this contest. Now, this was basically a critique group, and it was a setup where you went in with your ms and read it, and she critiqued it. She had the material beforehand, so she had copies to hand back to people, all marked up, and because it was *her* workshop, she ran it the way she wanted to, and let the other people in the workshop comment, too, just like, well, any critique group.
It happened that I didn't read; I signed up to, but my registration got in too late, so I only audited the readings -- I was kind of hoping I might get to hear some of my competition's work! As it turned out, two of the people didn't show up, so I *should've* brought MD along to read some of it, but well, that's okay.
As a matter of fact, I /did/ get to hear one of my competition's work -- and it was really good. It's, um. Not derivative, although it's a piece along a theme that's been done before. Think Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie) and you're on the right path. However, whether it's been done before or *not*, it was damned good. So that was extremely cool.
Even cooler was the fact that Winifred was there early enough that I got to introduce myself and explain that I wasn't reading, but that I was one of the finalists, and she hung around for forty minutes after the workshop was done and answered questions and talked about writing and about the kinds of things she's looking for and what she thinks makes a good story and so on and so forth. I like her very much; she's a very cool lady, and I'm *tremendously* glad that I went to the workshop, because I'm *far* less nervous about meeting with her tomorrow than I would have been otherwise.
She's promised the finalists a 1-page critique of their entries, and I already know one thing she's going to say about mine -- she hates prologues, and MD has a prologue. _I'm_ not entirely comfortable with the prologue, and in fact said as much after the critique part of the workshop was done and we were just hanging about and chatting, and she said flat-out that she had some ideas for me to work my prologue into the main body of the story, so, well. *stupid grin*
She hasn't, however, had time to finish the critiques, so it's very likely that we won't be getting our entries back tomorrow evening, but that she'll hold on to them for another week, write the critiques -- she feels very strongly that if she's going to be judging, that the pieces deserve a real and thought-out critique from her -- but you know what? I am SO WILLING TO WAIT a week. I mean, JEEZ!
So that took all afternoon -- I was there almost three hours, and I'm so very very glad I went. It's a shame I didn't bring MD or US along to read, 'cause, well. Two people didn't show up. But it's okay! I really enjoyed the workshop! And Winifred's not scary at all. *laugh*
Uhm. Oh, well, after that was dinner. I was on my way in and I joined up with a couple of other women, a mystery writer named Sara and a SF writer named Lee -- Lee has /two/ submissions in the contest that made it to the finals, so she's almost half my competition right there. We had dinner and talked about writing and about conventions, and she'd brought a piece that *wasn't* one of her RMFW submissions, to be read at someone else's workshop, and she talked a little about it and then asked if I'd like to read it. I said absolutely, so after we ate we went up to her room and I read it.
And it's really, really good. She's had it suggested to her that she submit it as a YA novel, and it could work very well as a YA novel, but I told her to find out who publishes Tom Deitz's books, first, and give them a holler, because it's . . . very much different, but still a similar feel. But I mean, I read five pages and I was completely drawn in. I would've read the whole book right then.
It apparently has sex in it, which is most of why she hasn't submitted it to YA publishers as-is, but if you're looking at it from a YA POV, it's Diana Wynne Jones or Diane Duane in feel. I really, *really* enjoyed it.
So I've read work from 3/5ths of my competition now, even if this particular piece wasn't actually for this contest. And lemme tell you, if that's the quality of work I'm up against, I'll be absofuckinglutely *thrilled* if I win, and not at all dismayed -- well, hardly at all dismayed! -- if I lose. This is some good stuff.
Isn't that *fantastic*?!
After I read Lee's story, we went down to the opening ceremony/dessert bar (and I ate way, way too much dessert, but they had so many good things! *laugh*) and there were speeches and then a panel by four authors -- this year's RMFW Writer of the Year, and 3 RMFW NYT Bestseller List authors. It was a really enjoyable panel, and I'll probably write about what they said, but not for this *particular* posting. They talked, in short, about their experiences getting published, what they'd do differently, and generally encouraged people to never say die. :)
Both during and after the panel, there were book signings. I headed out to go to the bathroom and was stopped just barely outside the door by Anne Tupler, who was the woman who called me to tell me that I'd made it into the finals, and I swear to God, she was as excited as I was. *laugh* She said I had been the absolute most fun call to make and that talking to me and hearing my excitement had made all of the hard work that went into collecting entries and judging and the whole convention *worth* it. She said she hoped I won, just because of my reaction. *laugh* And I told her that I'd had the most *exhausting* day that day and that when someone asked for me by my full name all I could think was, "AUGH. I DON'T WANT TO GIVE ANYBODY MONEY TODAY!" and so when she said she was from the RMFW it just really blew me away, I was just *so* not expecting it.
She actually *hugged* me. *beam* *laugh*
Oh, and, Sarah? Anne Tupler writes scripts. I told her I did too, and I'll be trying to find her tomorrow to talk to her some more about that whole deal. *grin*
Earlier in the day, a woman walked by, stopped, said, "Oh! You're one of my finalists! Who are you?" and congratulated me and was really tremendously nice, and turned out to be -- crap. I've forgotten her name. Janice, I think; anyway, she's RMFW's head honcho, and she was extraordinarily nice.
So, too, were -- *gah*, I cannot remember *names* -- both of the co-chairs of this year's con. Anne introduced me to one of them, and the other I'd talked to earlier at the dessert buffet -- she said, "Oh, you're the girl from Alaska!", which I seem to be getting a lot of. *laugh* In fact, I've had *several* people say things like that -- one guy stopped me, said, "Alaska! Why weren't you at the New Members meeting? I was trying to see who was from furthest away, and you're obviously it!"
Well, I wasn't at the new members meeting because people have to be from a handful of specific Rocky Mountain states to be /in/ RMFW, but y'know. Details, details. *laugh* And other people've said things like, "Wow, I thought I'd come from a long way away," and when asked, turned out to be from Wyoming. *laugh*
So the woman whose name I can't remember was *really* nice, and we talked for several minutes -- she asked if I thought the dinner break had been a good idea, because apparently they hadn't done it in previous years, and I said yeah, it was, and that there'd been enough time to eat without being rushed, or I thought so, anyway, but without there being a lot of lingering around and down time, and then she wanted to know if I thought the panel during the book signing was a good idea, and I thought it was /great/ -- I really will have to write about that panel -- and we decided together that maybe having a 45 minute panel instead of an hour, or perhaps starting the booksigning a little later, might cut down on some of the noise that cropped up towards the end of the panel, but, well, it was pretty fun, and pretty funny, that this lady dove right into demanding what a stranger thought of how the con was being handled. :)
I said I had to go introduce myself to Karen Duvall, because she's on Jim's email list (Jim Butcher, author of the Dresden Files & a friend of mine), and this friendly nameless woman said, "Oh! Karen's a great friend of mine!" and dragged me over to introduce me.
So I got to talk to Karen for several minutes; we talked about Winifred; we talked about Karen's book covers -- she did her cover for her novel, and it's very very nice indeed, and she also designed the cover for an anthology called Heaven & Hell that Speculation Press did, and in short, graphic design is what she does in 'real life'; we talked about Jim and we talked about paranormal mysteries and writing, and she signed a copy of her book for me, and THEN *gasp for air*
Then I went over and talked with Winifred some more. We talked about an email list, the name of which is escaping me (BroadWorld, Sarah?) which she's on and which Sarah is in fact about to start moderating; Winifred said it desperately *needs* moderation, which is what Sarah'd said, too. We talked about Karen's awesome covers and we talked about the Heaven & Hell anthology and she's working on editing another anthology but she hasn't gotten enough quality submissions for it and told me to email her and she'd forward me the guidelines for it (!!!!!), and I picked up *her* book, opened it up, and discovered that it HAD A PROLOGUE!
So I said, "I must give you grief about having a prologue in your book, after what you said this afternoon," and she laughed and laughed and said that I was absolutely right to give her grief and all she could say was that it'd been written four years ago and if she were to do it now she'd make it a first chapter instead of a prologue. And she said we'd talk tomorrow about my prologue. *grin*
Anyway, all in all I ended up buying 3 Speculation Press books (hers, which had a great opening line, even if it was in a prologue *laugh*), Karen's, and Heaven & Hell, and had a really fantastic day!
More tomorrow night, with any luck. :)
Well, I'm off to Coloradoin a few hours. I imagine I'll be able to find a place somewhere that I can check email, but I can't figure out how to set Netscape up to check my mizkit account, so if anyone wants to actually send me any email over the next few days, please use my mizkit@hotmail.com account.
All thoughts and wishes of good luck will be greatly appreciated. I'll try to post from the con. If I can't, well, see you Monday!
Hm, well. Instead of a writeup about 9/11 -- which I still may or may not do -- I wrote a letter to CNN.com's Headline News, who have actually covered the SaveFarscape campaign this evening. Here's my letter:
I was actually online in a chat with Gigi Edgely, who plays Chiana on Farscape, when a handful of people reported that "We were on CNN!" I missed the 8:45 Eastern report, but caught the repeat for the West Coast at 9:45 ET (5:45pm my time; I'm in Alaska).I wanted to thank you for covering the Farscape story, and to encourage you to continue to do so. The SciFi channel cites an insufficiently large fan base and too-high costs as their main reasons for cancelling the Emmy-nominated show. It's the second-highest rated show on SciFi (and was, I believe, the highest until SciFi bought SG1 from Showtime), and its latest aired show, "Unrealized Realities", had a reported 1.5 Nielson rating. I'm given to understand that cable shows are considered to be doing very well if they have an average .8 Nielson rating -- as Stephen [the anchor --ed] said on air, "Why are they cancelling this show?"
CNN Headline News' coverage of the SaveFarscape campaign offers the kind of clout that a grassroots campaign often can't achieve. Those of us who are fans of the show greatly appreciate seeing our efforts recognized, and I hope you'll continue to cover the story, whether we win or lose.
Previous to CNN picking up this story, 'Scapers achieved some victories already -- the sets for Farscape were supposed to be destroyed starting today or Friday; then word came that the sets were to be dismantled, not destroyed -- and now word is that the dismantling is on hold while negotiations regarding the show's future take place.
Maybe it's a crazy thing, putting so much time and effort into saving a television show, but the fans are dedicated. CNN's coverage of the story gives our efforts just a little more oomph. For that, I'd like to thank you, and again, I encourage you to continue covering the story.
Sincerely,
Catie Murphy
On one hand, I think I'm nuts. On the other hand, I really like Farscape, and it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to write a letter and say 'bring this show back'.
I think I'll pop back up to the tv at a quarter to seven and see if there's any more on the story. CNN got 30 emails about it between 8:45 and 9:45 their time, and they were amazed by that. So, well, let's see what else they get. *grin*
Boy does dinner smell good. Hungry!
Well. That was remarkably painless.
We went to sign mortgage paperwork. It took less than half an hour. All, evidently, is well with the world. Then we went and had lunch at someplace with Croissaint in the name, and it was really really yummy.
And, um, let's see. *LAUGH* I just heard Lucy's really pathetic mewing. Mew? Meew? Meowl. Mewl. And I looked around for her, and it kind of sounded like she was behind Ted's desk. Mewl. Mewr? Mowl. And so I leaned over and pulled open the drawer that Ted had just had open, and Lucy crept out looking very VERY unhappy and pathetic. :)
*laugh* One of my coworkers said he'd be going to AT&T this morning, then taking a couple hours off this afternoon to sign some mortgage paperwork. I said that by *great* coincidence, I was *not* going to AT&T this morning, but that I *would* be taking an hour off to go sign some mortgage paperwork, and suspiciously suggested that perhaps Chris and I were the same person. Another coworker wrote back:
Chris knows nothing of mooses. You can't be the same person.
I'm glad he cleared that up for me. :)
I went to adn.com this morning and it came as quite a surprise to me that today was 9/11, despite the fact that the media's been harping heavily on it all week. Last night I read Teresa Nielson-Hayden's commentary about 9/11 -- she lives in New York -- and found it fairly moving; this morning, from a link on Bryant's page, a Dave Barry article which says pretty much everything that should be said, and with dignity.
I may or may not write more about the anniversary later today. This morning, Ted and I are going over to the mortgage people to sign some mortgage paperwork before I fly off to Colorado. Which happens tonight at 2:30am. Gah. Oh, that reminds me. I wanted to see if I could upgrade to first class for the god-awful redeye part of the flight.
Oooh. Look. I actually leave at 1:43am. Huh! Good thing I looked!
Drat. No upgrades available. Apparently the flight is sold out. Could people really have been that reluctant to fly on 9/11, do you suppose? I didn't even *think* about it.
Mom just brought over *stunningly* good homemade blackberry jam. *swoon*
Busy day! Christopher Reeve is regaining feeling, Switzerland joined the UN, and Buzz Aldrin punched somebody in the nose. :)
Cool. The fan outcry about Farscape's cancellation has evidently made them decide to disassemble, rather than destroy, the sets. That means somebody's listening. That's a pretty cool thing! Go fandom! :)
In other news, uhm. Not much other news right now. I have to go mail Ted's alumni membership thing so he can get a reasonably cheap swim pass.
I have to write a synopsis for Urban Shaman. Gah. I hate writing synopses.
OTOH, I really want to have a synopsis to give to Ms. Halsey, if she's interested. :)
Fuss fuss. Sarah's all dizzy and blurry from some sort of inner ear problem. Ear infection, maybe. Fuss fuss. she should go to a doctor. Fuss fuss!
We went out to buy dog food for Aberdeen's roommate's apparently sensitive-tummied German Shepherd and get him some ear mite remover. It took three stores to find this stuff. Good thing we found it at the third, or I'd have given up. More important than the stuff, though, we found that House of Critters will send stuff to the Bush COD, so next time Emily and her roommate won't have to wait on us being lazy to get stuff sent. :)
We went to dinner at Gallo's, which was pretty good. We'd never been there before. I'm very full now. I really want to be less injured so I can exercise. Not exercising sucks. I want to swim, if I can't bike, dammit.
Maybe next week. I'm feeling a lot better. Not quite well, sigh, but a lot better.
Bought some instant ice packs for the plane trip to Colorado, on Dr. Woody's advice.
God, I have no *brain*.
Uh. And came home to print out an alumni membership thing for Ted, who decided maybe he'd better swim, too. Now I'm trying to get up the enthusiasm to clean the cat box. You can understand why I don't feel too enthusiastic about that.
I really, really wish I could find an address/phone number for Davis/Panzer, the people who produced Highlander.
These stamps I bought this morning have teddy bears on them, and don't look much like stamps. They look like stickers. I keep wanting to randomly stick them on stuff. :) In fact, they came with a big ol' teddy bear sticker across the top, which I have thus far resisted sticking to my computer monitor only because my computer monitor has a bump where the monitor brightness buttons are and so the sticker wouldn't stick smoothly.
Perhaps I'll put it on Ted's monitor!
Ah! I sent in my con registration too late to sign up for the readings (there's only a very limited number of spaces available for that), so the meeting with Ms. Halsey is in fact a /meeting/, not a reading. Yay!
Now I may panic again. :)
In a fit of SaveFarscapeism, I just emailed Wil Wheaton to ask him if he'd consider putting a link to nebari.net on his blog at wwdn. I donno if he's a Farscape fan, but he's certainly a SF geek, and while probably a significant portion of his readers are, too, and already know about Farscape's cancellation, I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.
I feel vaguely foolish, though, mostly, I think, because I remember being in high school and my friend Kelly who had a *tremendous* crush on Wesley Crusher/Wil Wheaton, writing him a goopy fan letter, and now I'm ... emailing him. Not just emailing, but emailing and asking a favor.
The world is a very, very strange place. :)
Know what I just did?
I just went to the post office and mailed the goddamned Legion script to Tony. Finally. Months late, but FINALLY I sent it. Better late than frelling never, right?
I also mailed a letter to the Sci-Fi channel encouraging them not to cancel Farscape, but in the scheme of things, that's less important. Well, less important to me, anyway.
I went to the chiro and got popped. He popped me and made me do my leg lifts and it hurt so he popped me again and then it didn't hurt, so that was nice. He's going to Australia tonight, and I'm going to Colorado on Thursday, so I won't be popped again til next Tuesday. I hope I don't fall down. Er. What an interesting thing to type. Fall apart, I think is what I meant, but I suppose fall down isn't entirely inappropriate.
I'm feeling more confident about the whole con thing this morning. This may change by this afternoon, mind you, but for the moment I'm feeling better about it. :) I'm not entirely sure if Saturday's meeting with Ms. Halsey is the you-get-to-read-your-ms-to-an-agent/editor sort or if it's the just-talk-to-an-agent/editor sort. I /think/ Saturday's supposed to be the readings, which would be fine, but what I really want is to be able to talk to her, I think.
Well. I'll have the whole con. Even if I don't get an appointment with her specifically to do that, I'll have to nerve myself up to do it outside of appointment times. I'd really like to pitch Urban Shaman to her, too.
I need to practice reading the first chapter of MD.
I'm feeling pretty ... inspired, I guess. Maybe not inspired. Maybe more like I've been kicked in the ass. Sarah's writing, and sending stuff out, and I've been reading Stella's blog, and she's sending stuff out, and... it's just kind of a kick in the ass. It's a good thing.
I should eat something before I run out of energy. And I should listen to some more Bon Jovi. I went and got Crush yesterday afternoon. It's a pretty good album. I went for a little 1.5 mile walk (stroll, really) last night, and listened to most of it during my walk. It was very nice. It rained, but I had an umbrella. :)
Damn. Ignore the fax number further down; apparently it doesn't work. Drat.
Ai! I'm meeting with Winifred Halsey on Saturday. She's 1. the woman who's DOING THE JUDGING for the contest and 2. the woman who owns her own small press publication company. Ai!
I might start panicking now. O.O
Regarding Farscape -- there's an online petition here that's collecting thousands of netsignatures asking that the show not be cancelled; Gigi Edgely, who plays Chiana, posted a fax number for SciFi that you can send comments to -- 1-212-413-6531 -- go to www.tpc.int/sendfax.html to send it for free. Cut and paste the number.
For a comprehensive list of addresses to send snailmail to, check out Caitlin R. Kieran's journal page, Low Red Moon, where she's collected a long list of the most relevant addresses.
Guess we'll see what happens. Anyway, if you have the *slightest* interest in good tv -- even if you don't watch Farscape -- sign the petition and/or send a fax, would you? Thanks. :)
Writing this on my laptop, with no connection to the net. I'm at the library in a chair that isn't "my" chair -- people are sure weird, you know? There's a cubby in the Alaska Collection that I like to sit and write in. There are two chairs in it, and they're both occupied, one by somebody taking a nap. So I'm at one of the desks and trying to get used to typing at a weird angle -- the desk is higher than my elbows, so I've got my coat tucked under the front of Little so I can type at an angle instead of flat. It's working pretty well.
honey, it's now or neverI ain't gonna live forever
And I've got the Bon Jovi Live CD, One Wild Night, playing now, and I don't know if I'll get any writing on MD or not, or if I'll spend the next hour jamming to Bon Jovi, but it feels good, anyway. Self-referential music, too; the song quoted above mentions Tommy & Gina, who are the subject of the /next/ song quoted. Cool. :)
we got each other and that's a lot for love
Yesterday was a long day. We went ... man. What'd we do early in the day? I really can't remember. Yesterday afternoon we did the house inspection and it went well
*laugh* Baby you give love (audience bellows: a bad name!) JBJ: You got it!
Oh, we went and got my glasses earlier yesterday. Without the astigmatism correction I can see through them. Go fig. And they photogrey, although not very noticeably to me, but it hasn't been very bright out today while I've been wearing them. And we went to lunch at Chili's. Last time we were in a Chili's, I had a shaved head and Ted had very long hair, and we were clearly throwing the gender rules of the kids at the table next to us. It was pretty funny. Oh, and we went to Home Despot before that, to see if we could find prefab fence stuff. We couldn't, but we hadn't been planning on buying stuff right then anyway, so no big.
Know what I like about live CDs? The audience are generally tuneful, when they're yell/singing back at the band. Don't know why this makes me happy, but it does.
So the home inspection went well. There were a handful of problems, but nothing huge. Presumably she'll fix them. There are a couple health and safety things she /has/ to fix, and the other stuff, well, we can do ourselves, although it'd be nicer if she did 'em.
keep the faith, ah you better keep the faithyou know you gotta live through the rain
We figured out where we'd put furniture we don't own, and where we'd put artwork, and, most importantly, where we'd put books. I want to try to build a bookcase shaped like a maze, so you can enter up at the A's and exit down at the Z's (or whatever letter I end up with at the bottom of the bookshelf) and follow a path through the bookcase. It'll be 9x8" with 9 shelves. I have to see if I can draw a maze that'll work.
I don't know some of this music. I don't own their first two albums or their latest. I'll probably have to get them sometime. (I can't help it. Bon Jovi is a particular weakness of mine. My cousin Alanna bought me Slippery When Wet for my 12 th or something birthday -- an LP, no less, which I kinda wish I still had, but I don't think I do -- and their 1989 tour was the first (and, er, one of the only) rock concerts I went to. The class before mine, 1989, wanted to use Never Say Goodbye as their class song; the principal wouldn't let them, because of the line, "You lost more than that in my back seat,", an action which put an already disliked principal into the list of names that will be cursed forever among 1989 KCHS graduates -- assuming any of them still remember. And one of the years I worked in the cannery, Wanted Dead or Alive was played every hour, which, at the beginning of the summer, made everybody cheer, and which, by the end of the summer, made everyone groan . . . . these, and a few other things, are why I'm so fond of Bon Jovi. Very formative-years music, or something. Plus, JBJ is really damned cute!) Actually, I went to the store yesterday to find their newest album (Crush?) and they didn't have it at Fred Meyer, so, er, I got the live album instead.
After the home inspection we went *back* to Home Depot to look at wood for potential bookshelves, dropped by my parents' and talked with Mom a while, then went to Denny's for dinner. Came home and fell into bed. I was *really* tired.
Oh, and I took a few more house photos.
Apparently the bastards at SciFi are cancelling Farscape. There's more information over in the Low Red Moon link to the right. Go sign the petition, write a letter, send a fax, if you like the show.
Today. Got out of bed, went shopping. I think I saw someone I went to high school with, but I didn't get close enough to say hi. I'll have to email her and ask if she was at Freddie's today. Brought food home, had some breakfast, then went to look at furniture we can't afford to buy. Luckily (?) we didn't actually see anything we really liked. And now me and Bon Jovi are at the library.
(I know. It should be Bon Jovi and I.)
Two pages of blogging probably counts as enough warm-up for doing real writing. I guess I'll go off and try that. *yawn*
like a favorite pair of torn blue jeansthe skin i'm in is all right with me
it's not old, just older
Haus pictures! I'll take some more -- like of the exterior and master bedroom, heh -- tomorrow when we go over for the house inspection.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! THE OFFER WAS ACCEPTED! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!
*falls right over*!
We went to lunch today and bought a house. O.O
Well, we went to look at a ZLL over on Bridle Circle at lunch, and it was ... fantastic. It's almost 1400 square feet on an almost 6Ksf lot. 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a VERY LARGE kitchen with LOTS of counter space, an actual _dining room area_ (which we haven't had in a long time), a big ol' living room with a fireplace at one end... nice light, a 2 car garage, and there's a foot of dead space between 'our' wall and the neighbor's wall, and a firebreak wall in the center of that, so there should be no noise from the neighbors.
Both times, I typed nightbers. Weird.
So we stared around at it, then we said, "Yeah, okay, we'll buy this," and an hour later Jill slapped a "sale pending" sign up on the realty sign outside, and ... yow.
It's all newly painted inside, and the carpets are nice, and the lot is BIG and we'll have to put a fence up, and holy cow. HAUS.
I hope we get it. :)
I don't know exactly what happened at work this morning, but apparently there was an essay on our sites that had profanity in it, or something like that, and a client complained, or, well, something like that, and the result was that Vincent, our QA guy, sent out an email asking if someone could provide him with a list of profanity words. Vincent is Chinese, and English isn't his first language. After a volley of emails, he then sent this one, in explanation:
Just to clarify why I needed...One of the objectives on QA is to scan our database and source code to identify the profanity words that would potentially offending our client.
The tech and QA works are simple enough, but finding the profanity words requires experts.
I thought that was great. *beam*
The auld back is a lot better in the mornings, right now. By evening it hurts quite a lot and I'm very very tired. And now I'm going to the chiro, where I will probably hurt more upon return than I do now. :P
Well, I wrote a very little bit on MD tonight. My back hurts. :P I decided I'm going to get the first third of the book done, polish it, and bring it down. That'll have to do, as far as the con's concerned. I really wish I hadn't hurt myself. :(
Er. Well. That was easy.
I just called my 401k people to see if I could get a loan against my 401k for a down payment for a house. It took about seven minutes and I didn't speak a word. The whole thing is entirely automated. I asked for a loan, I told it why, I told it how much, I told it how many months I wanted to pay it back over, it told me how much my bi-weekly repayment plan would be, then said it'd send a promissory note within two working days, that I should receive it within five to seven days, that I'd need to sign it, and that I would need to mail them the address of my primary residence by December 10th.
O.O
That was . . . really easy.
O.O
And I've changed my contribution rate on my 401k so between the repayment and the contribution, it'll still be right about what it was anyway. Go me! Wow. That was really . . . easy! :)
I wish -- I wish many things, but at the moment I wish I had more (like, oh, all) of MD written. I wish trying to write while lying flat on my back didn't make me fall asleep. I wish sitting up to use my laptop didn't make my back hurt. I wish I wasn't nervous about this convention. *sigh*
For the sake of clarity: *Starling* is the one who's *deliberately* breeding dozens, or at least several, horses. *Her* horses are Capucine, who is pregnant, Petit Point, who is not, and Palisades, who is certainly not pregnant but who will be arriving at Ambarranch any moment now, where his job will be to impregnant Petit Point at the earliest opportunity.
*Sarah* is the one who's horses are being boarded and are *unexpectedly* turning up pregnant all over the place. Or at least, turning up with babies. We don't actually know for *sure* that they're pregnant. Yet. Can one do a blood test on a horse to see if it's pregnant? Or is that too costly to bother with? I have no idea. :)
It's been a busy morning. Sarah has suddenly become the owner of a third horse with two more potentially on the way, Geni called to report she has a cold, and ... ok, that's all that's happened, but it SEEMS like a lot.
I'm *starving*. meow. meow. meow.
Augh! Wretched!
I just got this letter from the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers:
Should your enjoyment of the conference up until the awards banquet on Saturday night be threatened by the tension of not knowing whether or not your entry won, you hve the option of learning in advance if [the editor] chose your entry as the winner. After Monday, September 9th, you may call or email me; I will first swear you to secrecy, then tell you whether or not your entry was chosen as the winner.
Augh! Wretched! I was PERFECTLY CONTENT going along not knowing until the conference, and then the option to know but not tell is offered! Wretched!
Actually, I'm still perfectly content to not know; I would very very very much *like* to win, but the thing that was really important to me (as I've said a dozen times) was making it to the finals.
Still! Wretched, to offer the option! They must've had some truly traumatized people in the past, to make the option available. I think it's more fun not to know. :)
*giggle* I called up Mom to read her this paragraph from the letter. She asked if I was going to call and find out; I said no; she said, "You'll be like Deirdre, too, and not find out what sex the baby is, right?" Then she said that my Aunt Ardie had said about that, "Well, I can understand wanting to be surprised ... but couldn't they be surprised *now*?"
So we went to the state fair yesterday, and overall, thought it was pretty disappointing. I'd been hoping to find some good pottery on sale, but there were only two pottery booths at all, and the one that had stuff I rather liked wasn't having a sale, so no luck there.
I did, however, get to have a roasted ear of corn. Yum. And it was an amazingly gorgeous day. I got a little bit of a sunburn and a bunch of new freckles. :) The whole thing -- about 4 hours, total, with driving out there, fairing, and driving home -- was quite tiring to me and my poor little old back. I took a nap when we came home, and poor Ted developed a migraine from being out in the bright merry sunshine. :/
After my nap, I went over to my parents' house for dinner, and it turned out Mom spent all day yesterday injuring herself (she was washing the bathroom floor and caught her hair in a knob and pulled her braid loose, although that one didn't /hurt/; she smacked a finger while making dinner and didn't think anything of it until the blood started dripping; she tore her pinky fingernail beneath the quick, and then she tripped on the sliding door runner and jammed two toes, and when she lost her balance and stepped forward she hit the concrete at a bad angle and jammed another toe on her other foot), and of course I'm still kind of hobbling around, so among other things we got into this big discussion of stupid injuries, which came around to Dad talking about a time when he'd thrown his back out, and couldn't walk, but he had to get up to go to the bathroom, and so he was lurching from one object to another, and in our oldold house, there was a doorway with a chinup bar in it, and a bookcase next to that, and Dad habitually balanced his hat on the chinup bar, because the distance between the bar and the top of the doorframe was just enough that it would hold the hat nicely, but as he lurched from object to object, he caught hold of the bookcase, and somehow the bump knocked his hat down, and it did one complete rotation in the air before landing *fwoomp*! on his head, exactly perfectly, which struck Dad as very very very funny indeed, so there he was, stuck in the doorway, clinging to the sides of it, unable to stand up straight, shaking with laughter, which of course hurt *more*...
That was a very long sentence. :)
I went to the chiro to be crunched this morning, and am a bit stiff now. Lying down at the moment; in a few minutes I'm going to put my socks on and go downstairs and try to *gasp* actually get some work done. How's that for a concept?
It's a beautiful day out. It's also the first day of school. Apparently there was a big news report last night about the holy particular hell you'd catch for driving through 20mph school zones at faster than the posted speed. Something like a $450 fine for going 45mph, and 6 points off your license. So everybody was driving VEEEEERRRRRRRY slowly this morning. *laugh*
'k, I should get some food and go to work now. Stupid back.
Go Neil! Hugo Award for Best Novel, 2002, for American Gods! Go Neil!