Perfect days

You know, the last couple of days have been pretty close to perfect.

We headed up to Saratoga, CA, on Wednesday, listening to music and talking. We didn’t hit a lot of traffic, and found the hotel just fine. Humungous suite (Tani booked the room for us, and all we knew was that she’d asked for a king-sized bed!), complimentary chocolates and Oreos and popcorn. Dude. I showered and “fluffed and buffed” to get ready, and we ate the popcorn before meeting up with Tani and Annalisa and heading to the venue.

The Mountain Winery is, as expected, up in the mountains, and the view was gorgeous, if a little hazy and overcast. We grabbed food at a grill onsite, Ken bought a Styx hoodie because it was really cold! (I’d brought a long-sleeved shirt to wear afterwards, and it was a good thing, because I hadn’t realized the venue was outside. I did, of course, take it off for Styx, because I believe in sharing the wealth of my cleavage with those who appreciate it. And appreciate it they did.)

We were on the “wrong side” in front of Tommy, but the stage was small and low (thigh high on me) so I got to look across at Lawrence and see a lot of facial expressions I don’t normally catch (because the keyboard was spun away from where I usually stand). We were at the end of the second row, and security let us stand parallel with the shorter first row, so that was just fine and dandy. We weren’t allowed to approach the stage, but were very close, and that just gave more room for dancing.

Afterwards we hung out in our enormous suite with Tani and Annalisa before calling it a night. Fun!

We drove home Thursday along Hwy 1, one of the most beautiful roads in the country. It’s just amazing: you round a corner and see this incredibly stunning view, and then you round the next corner and somehow the view is even more stunning. How is that possible? Your brain just can’t comprehend.

We had to stop for some roadwork, and the incredibly cheerful worker warned us that it would be a 20-25 minute delay, but there were sea lions. Well, yes there were, waaaaay down there. We could hear them clearly, but they were just specks. My vertigo did kick in, thanks in part to the fact that there was nothing more than a knee-high wall between me and a sheer drop, but I managed.  ;-)

I had a blast on those twisty-turny roads. The Saab doesn’t handle as well as the Talon did, but it holds its own. We popped in CDs and sang along when we weren’t talking. And as much as I admired the view, I didn’t admire it so much I drove off the road….

An interesting note: Of the 12 CDs in the holder in the car (for when the iPod connector can’t find a no-station area), only 1 has no ties to the UK. Every other band/artist had at least one UK member (Styx being the most tenuous, as Lawrence was born in Scotland but grew up in Canada). Kinda weird.

Anyway, we stopped for lunch near San Simeon, at a Mexican restaurant we ate at about 12 ½ years ago on our first trip together as a couple. And soon we were home with cats who insisted they hadn’t been fed in weeks, and I dashed off to an Herbal Guild meeting while Ken went to Fry’s to pick up memory and other stuff to get his new laptop up and running.

Today we’ve just been working on various things that have piled up in our absences. I’ve booked my flights to FL in November, bought tickets to one of the shows, sent out the e-mail about Lawrence’s birthday, made turkey reubens for lunch, and, um, oh I don’t know. Paid bills, printed out a fresh To Do list, called my parents, and avoided running errands. Which I should probably get off my cute butt and do now!

Yay and wahoo

Okay, not so much with the work stuff yesterday. I was truly too exhausted. I did manage to make it to a chiro appt, pick up a reserved book at the library, buy basic groceries, have dinner with Morgana and Brian, and have a very brief Full Moon ritual with Morgana and then chat with her before heading home and mostly collapsing (yay, glass of wine!).

Today, I did reasonably well. Churned through e-mail, cleaned off Ken’s side of the desk, worked out with Jen, etc. Now Ken’s home (yay! hurrah!) and we’re about to go out to dinner with Morgana and Brian. We won’t be around for Morgana’s birthday tomorrow, so I’ve got her present wrapped and ready to go.

~ ~ ~

Today’s e-mail brought one and a half story acceptances (a solo story and a Sophie story for the same anthology)! Wahoo! They’re pending publisher approval, so I can’t announce anything just yet. The solo story was a new one that I wrote for the antho (one of those “Hm. Ponder antho theme. Ooh! Write story in one sitting.” stories), while the Sophie story was one that had gotten nice comments but had never quite placed anywhere. I’m chuffed about both!

On the downside, I had three story rejections and one novel rejection while I was gone. Phooh. But it’s all part of the job, and today I worked on getting them circulating again where I could. (One story is a romance, and there are almost no markets for short romances.)

---

Currently Reading: The Host, Stephenie Meyer (about to start)
Lately Listened To: American Drag, American Drag
Recently Watched: Eureka

Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about

(Thanks, Ken!)

Fwump

I’m home! I’m home!

::topples over in exhausted contentedness::

Okay, that last part isn’t entirely true. I have to say, it’s weird getting home this early (I drove up at about 11:15 a.m., and may I note I can get almost exactly door-to-door, airport-to-home, on one listen of Styx’s One With Everything: Live With the Contemporary Youth Orchestra?). Usually I get home, drop everything and scritch the kitties, turn on the computer and check e-mail, unpack the most essential items, rifle through the mail for anything interesting (like acceptances, payments, comp copies…), drink a glass of wine, collapse in front of the TV for a short while, and go to bed.

But no, getting home so early means I don’t have the luxury of pouring a glass of wine (at least, not yet. Not for hours yet. Sob.). I have to do useful things. So far, in roughly this order, I’ve…

• dropped everything to give the kitties scritchies
  
• explained to them 18 million times that no, the other lady did feed you this morning, and in fact let me in the back gate and was talking to me about it when I opened the back door, thus no, you cannot have food
  
• showered
  
• discovered I lost 5 lbs on the trip
  
• eaten leftover mac-and-cheese, a 100-cal bag of Funyuns, a piece of string cheese, and a dark-chocolate-covered Joe-Joe; and drunk a cup of tea
  
• washed the delicates (laundry, you perverts)
  
• sorted the mail and paid bills
  
• read e-mail, journals, etc.
  
• copied files from Afalwen to Arianbach (that would be from my laptop to the main computer, for those of you who don’t speak Welsh)
  
• talked to Ken (he’s just outside of Albuquerque, a city name I love to type because it’s just so bizarre)
  
• cleaned out the laptop bag
  
• partially unpacked
  

And it’s still not even 2 p.m. yet. What am I going to do with the rest of my day?

Work, probably, as much as I can given that I was up at 2 a.m. local time. The guy in front of me on the DFW-LAX flight put his seat back, so I couldn’t use Afalwen, and I didn’t have the brain power to pull out the Palm and keyboard to write. Instead I read a mediocre book I probably won’t bother finishing, and played Demon Solitaire and listened to various Gowan albums on my iPhone.

Hm, I should probably update and print out my To Do list for the next few days, too, instead of dreaming over customizable organizational forms I just found online…

Bleary

The nice thing about flying at 5:40 a.m. out of a small-ish airport (16 gates total) is no security line.

The bad thing about flying at 5:40 a.m. is, obviously, that it’s 5 effing 40 in the morning.

Ugh.

Better hope we can hitch a ride

Have I mentioned how much I love this band?! ;-)

So not only was it a fantastic show in AR—extra long, with pretty much every possible song from their current repertoire, including a three-song encore—but my boys (especially Lawrence and Ricky, and Todd at the end) totally acknowledged our “far from home” presence, which was just incredible. Even the merch guy was surprised and happy to see us.

The best part, though, was after having a shouted conversation with Lawrence outside the venue (he was at the top of the ramp and the front of the buses, I was at the bottom of the ramp and the backside of the buses and trucks, which were idling). We finished and he headed off to his bus.

Then he came back and down the ramp to chat with us for 10 or 15 minutes. And that just blows me away. He’d already acknowledged us, said hello. He didn’t have to come back.

::grin stupidly::

~ ~ ~

Of course, I have to balance that with the fact that my flights were cancelled, I rescheduled them, and the new ones were canceled. In the end, though, it’s not that bad. I fly out at o’dark early tomorrow, and actually get home a wee bit earlier than I would’ve today, so less than 24 hours’ delay. Plus, Ken and I are hanging out in a motel for a bit, and then we’ll have an early dinner before he gets on the road—I got to spend a little extra time with him. (Okay, it’s time we would have had at home together, because he would’ve gotten on the road that much earlier, but still. Bird in the hand, and all that!)

We had a good time with Ken’s grandmother, too. She can’t see or hear very well, but she’s sharp as a tack, and told us great stories while we went through masses of her photographs. We even found one that was so old, it was printed on metal! So along with getting all my family’s photos scanned and indexed, we need to do hers! We also got to visit with Ken’s aunt, his cousin, and his cousin’s new wife.

We’ve got another busy week coming up, though. Ken’ll arrive home Tuesday. Wednesday we drive to the Bay Area for another Styx show, and Thursday we’ll drive home. Saturday is a Styx concert in Newport Beach, and Sunday is the LARA meeting.

Of course, I’ve gotten no writing done on this trip (in between everything else, I’ve been dealing with some icky health issues that have really sapped my energy). Maybe I’ll do a little tonight after Ken leaves, or on the flights tomorrow. I also have Christine’s fabby novel to crit! :-)

Now, however, I believe some pre-supper cuddling is in order…!