Dude...seriously?

Thursday night while we were watching TV, my back started to bug me…in a sciatica sort of way. Uh oh. I took some Advil, slept. Friday, it happened on and off, to the point that I made a chiro appt. My back (and neck) were a mess, and she told me to take a very hot bath with Epsom salts, sit on a tennis ball to work the deep muscle through which the sciatic nerve runs, and slather my butt with Biofreeze. I did the first two (forgot about the third), and also took a prescription muscle relaxant left over from my last bad bout.

It bugged me on and off during the show, and I took another muscle relaxant and half a prescrip painkiller before bed. Woke up with it hurting again, and I couldn’t get comfortable. Now I was getting nervous. I took another muscle relaxant and painkiller, and spent a goodly amount of today in a floaty, muzzy haze. Mmm…shiny…

Now it’s sort of happening on and off: It’ll hurt for a while, then fade away. I’m going to continue to take it very easy over the next day or so, and I’ve got another chiro appt on Monday.

I really can’t afford a bad bout of this right before Black Oak Lodge. I also really can’t afford to panic about it because that’ll just cause my muscles to seize up more, and this is all about stopping that muscle from seizing up on my damnable sciatic nerve… I’m avoiding the drugs as much as I can, because when I’m all happyfloaty, I’m mostly useless when it comes to actually being productive.

Anyway, if you’re waiting to hear something from me, or waiting on something from me, please be patient. I’m triaging as best I can!

Edited to add: I was going to ask why Nik Kershaw's "Wouldn't It Be Good" is suddenly stuck in my head, but I'm just going to blame it on the drugs.

Really? Are you kidding me?

Happy Birthday, Dad! Wish I could be in Myrtle Beach at the Olive Garden sharing it with you!

~ ~ ~

It’s been a stressful week, mostly involving me at the computer answering 8 million e-mails and designing the newsletter and fretting over Black Oak Lodge, or at Morgana’s working on my corset and one of my Italians, or trying to catch up on sleep and failing.

So getting a jury summons today ended up being kind of funny. Especially since I’m supposed to report on my birthday.

I’m kind of afraid to defer it, because the two weeks after that date are open. I don’t have anything else scheduled until late April (two Queensrÿche shows), and then there are Styx shows in May, and workshops and Faerieworlds in July. No doubt something will crop up in June.

I have no problem with serving; I did it a couple of years ago. It’s what makes our system run: a jury of your peers. If I’m ever unfortunate enough to be part of a trial, I want that jury of my peers, so I should do it for someone else.

Besides, you call the night before anyway to see if your group is up the next day, so there’s always the chance I won’t even have to go in on my actual birthday.

I’m really celebrating my birthday all weekend—two Day After Daze (with Todd drumming!) shows at Pancho’s on Friday and Saturday nights, and meerkats! on Sunday. So the actual day is less important. I’ll probably be happy to have the time to sit with my laptop, waiting to see if I’ll be called!

~ ~ ~

Tonight we went to a charity concert to benefit the Las Virgenes Unified School District Student Musicians. Now, I’m all about supporting the arts in schools, but I’ll be honest: The real reason we went is Tommy was performing, as well as Venice, a local band we really like (they opened for Styx in Germany and Switzerland in 2000, which is how we learned of them). Michael McDonald and Christopher Cross were also slated to perform, so we considered fleeing after Tommy’s performance. Thankfully MM and CC mostly performed together, and not very long. Tommy did come out for the final songs with MM (and sang a verse of “Takin’ It to the Street”).

Anyway. Despite messing up the first song, Tommy was amazing as always. He got a standing ovation after “Renegade,” which I didn’t expect to see in this type of crowd, and I heard a guy behind me exclaim, “That guy rocks!” Why, yes he does.

We had cheap nosebleed balcony seats, but that was okay. (Hey, it’s not like Lawrence was there!) We ended up sitting with Fran and Thom and Lisa, and afterwards we went out for food with a small crowd of Styx fan friends. Fun!

::waving hello::

On the plane home from Oregon. As usual, I’m a combination of exhausted and energized. My brain whirls with plans, plots, ideas, enthusiasm.

Neither of the anthologies we wrote for are “sold.” (Denise Little, the editor, works for Tekno Books, who packages anthologies for DAW, among other places. These two haven’t been picked up by DAW yet.) However, we’re also free to send the stories we wrote elsewhere in the interim. My story for the first antho didn’t quite make it (although a number of attendees came up to me afterwards and told me how much they liked it), but my second story did. It was a very silly story. :-) However, I’m still going to send it elsewhere and see what happens. I can always write another story.

I’m already fired up for the workshops in July, too. The first weekend is Structure and Plot, and the second is Contract & Copyrights, which I sorely need. For the week in between, Kris will work with us individually on things we want help on, but the two things I came up with aren’t craft issues. I don’t know if I have craft issues. So I’m thinking I’ll spend those 5 days hammering away at some project. Not sure what project; that’ll depend on where I am at that point. That’s 5 months away, for crying out loud.

Kris also gave me some advice and insight on how to deal with Ghosted, which has been fighting me for some time. One thought is, in fact, to set it aside, possibly up to a year, and come back to it with fresh eyes. I’m not convinced I want to do that when I have some other things I can try, but we’ll see.

First goal right now is to deal with volunteer stuff for the next two weeks. I overcommitted, yes, but I have to accept that and deal with it. Black Oak Lodge will go fine, but Ken and I need to focus on it, and I need to have the right attitude to do that.

Anyway, the best thing to come out of this weekend is the reminder that I’m part of a network of amazing, fun writers. All are peers and friends. I met nifty new folks, reconnected with ones I’ve missed for far too long.

My only regret is that I was so busy, I never got the chance to walk on the beach. I adore the wild Oregon coast. Still, I really can’t begrudge the time I spent with smart, creative, hilarious friends.