*\o/*

Ken got third place! Wahoo!

The most wonderful time of the year (again!)

October already. Holy… Well, holy holidays! Celebrate, for it’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year! Not only is it autumn, it’s Halloween Season!

~ ~ ~

Ken’s off at a 24-hour rally in New Mexico this weekend. He left yesterday morning, got as far as Orange County, and came back, thanks to yet another emergency call from the company in Oregon. Thankfull, this time he was able to talk them through the problem, and it sounds like they’ve sorted it. It was a little touch-and-go yesterday afternoon, though, as we waited to ascertain whether he’d be headed back east or up north…. At least I got a few more hours with him!

Meanwhile, I’ve been a wee bit grumpy and distracted, which means I’m more likely to be doing things like dishes and filing than, oh, writing. In preparation for our trip to NY, I’ve also installed iFamily and have been working on genealogy things, because the anal-retentive side of me glories in that sort of work.

~ ~ ~

I have a post up at Lust Bites about The Mammoth Book of the Kama Sutra, which contains my story "The Tigress," if you’re interested in some juicy excerpts and scintillating discussion!

~ ~ ~

Originally I had plans for both days this weekend, but now it looks like I’m staying home, which I’m actually reasonably comfortable with. I’d planned to carpool to an SCA event with someone on Saturday, but I guess there was miscommunication, because I found out they were carpooling with someone else. Then I found out they weren’t, but the new arrangement would have required me to be ready to go before 8 a.m., and, um, no. I’ll see most of the folks at GWW next week anyway.

Sunday is the LARA picnic, but I find I can’t summon up a whole lot of enthusiasm about it. I can’t figure out why, but I’m going with my gut on this one. It would be lovely to spend the day with a bunch of smart, funny, gorgeous, and talented ladies and meet their families, but it’s a heck of a drive (even if I left the car in Thousand Oaks and carpooled the rest of the way, as none of the local writers are going), and as with the event, I’m loathe to drive long distances unnecessarily by myself (I’m so not into adding to the pollution and traffic problems).

So I’m going to stay home, go to yoga, make a beef stew for the war in the crock pot, watch Ken’s progress via the spiffy tracking system, and ideally get a buttload of writing done. Maybe even do some sewing. Who knows? The world is my oyster! (What does that mean?)

---

Currently Reading: Just finished The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Sutterfield. Awesome book! All sorts of gothicky goodness! I finally gave in and indulged in my desire to lie on our new comfy sofa and read for hours. Pbltz, I say to all the things I needed to be working on. Next in the queue is La Nora’s latest, Tribute. I suspect I’ll be reluctantly dragging myself away from it to be productive over the weekend.
Lately Listened To: Celtic Pride, various artists. Mmm, modern Celticy goodness!
Recently Watched: Law & Order: SVU

Ow.

Note to self: When pulling something down from a high cabinet on utility porch, try to avoid can of Dr Pepper smashing onto face.

Result: small cut on bridge of nose, annoying but minor ache in sinuses, nerdy looking Band-Aid on face. Sadly, other than minor, expected temporary swelling, there seems to be no real interesting affect to shape of small, unremarkable nose.

Additional comment: Not even as amusing as the time Lawrence dropped an almost-full water bottle on my head, although tonight's episode resulted in actual blood loss, which must count for something.

Happy Birthday Ken!

Happy Birthday to My Beloved!

We’ve been having a lovely day together. Celebrations this morning, followed by walking to a downtown restaurant for brunch. Then we had to take the car in because one tire was flattening (we’d pump it up, and two days later it would be flat), and another was soft. Turns out they both had nails in them. Sigh. And the front two were worn, so we got four new tires, alignment, the works. Not fun, but at least something accomplished!

Then we bought a new sofa (to be delivered Wednesday) for the media room, since the one in there (a Fagelbo from ::spit::Ikea::spit::) was very comfortable to sleep on, but awful to sit on. (Plus it faded almost immediately, cheap piece of crap that it is.) So now I’ll finally have a comfy place to lounge and read, and my ass won’t go numb when we’re watching TV.

Then it was a quick trip to Costco and home again to grab a snack before trotting out to the cheap theatre to see Mamma Mia!, and then we filled all our water cooler bottles and picked up a pizza to cook later. In a few minutes we’ll toss the pizza in to cook, maybe head down to the pizza place on the corner to pick up some wings (Ken’s having a bizarre craving—usually I’m the wing obsessor!), and watch Kinky Boots.

And there will be more celebrating, too. ;-)

Tomorrow I’ll have to get back to reality and work and whatnot, but today is all about Ken!

What I Did on My Summer Vacation, by Dayle, aged 42 and 5/12

Being an Account of Our Annual Trip, This Year to Utah, August 2008

So, Utah! Even getting there was something of an adventure. As you know (Bob), Ken blew the clutch on the bike on the way home from the Midwest (this was after the rear drive failed and was replaced). Turns out that the clutch blowing resulted in oil and tiny bits of shredded metal and gods know what else spewing all over the innards of the bike. When it became clear that the bike wouldn’t be ready for the trip, we had to regroup.

I was already flying out on Tuesday, so Ken booked a flight that would bring him in about an hour later. We also decided not to stay through the following Tuesday, because Ken wouldn’t be running the rally that started that day in Utah. While we were looking forward to going to Utah, it wasn’t specifically all that high on our list of travel destinations, so we agreed that heading home (me) and back to Oregon (Ken) on Sunday made sense. It meant Ken had an extra week of work so that (::fingers crossed::) we have him home* for the next month and a half or so.

Other than getting up at an unholy hour of the morning to get to OXR (where there was a bit of panic about paying for parking, which involved stuffing cash into an envelope and loosely writing down where my car was, because it was dark and I couldn’t read the parking space number), I sashayed onto the plane, had a quick change in LAX, and soon was at SLC. Ken did indeed show up about an hour later, although he walked right by me and thankfully called my cell before he’d gotten too far. (I think I must’ve turned to look at the gate just as he went around me or something.)

We had a pleasant drive to the Zermatt Spa and Resort in Midway City, found our chalet (where our friends Ernie and Pauline and their friend Mo had already set up base), and ate lunch.

Then we took a nap, because my 4-5 hours of sleep the night before had been luxurious compared to Ken’s 2 hours.

When we registered and picked up our swag, I found a lone flyer for a birds of prey show, and I snapped it up so fast the paper was a blur. The next day, we were so there.

But first on Wednesday, there was High Tea.

The woman at Zermatt who organized it used to run a tea shop in the area, and she knew what she was doing. She even provided tea hats for all the ladies! (And now I’m so inspired to haunt thrift stores for hats and decorate them accordingly.) I say “for the ladies,” but Ken is an amazing sport with a silly sense of humor, and yes, I have pictures of him in several different hats.

The tea itself was gorgeous to the point of gorging ourselves: broccoli and cheese soup, cheese and crackers, and of course tea sandwiches and scones (although apparently rural Utah doesn’t “get” clotted cream, so we had to put up with whipped cream ::shudder::). I’m surprised we ate dinner that night.

But we had at the opportunity to work up a good appetite that afternoon—flying birds of prey!

They flew a prairie falcon, a gyrfalcon, and a red-tailed hawk. The prairie falcon essentially flew away and didn’t come back for an hour; apparently her sister flew off during the morning show and hadn’t been seen since. (Sadly, there have been golden eagles in the area, and they think one might’ve gotten her.)

The gyrfalcon flew to the top of the barn and pretty much came down only occasionally—apparently he wasn’t very hungry, so after landing on a couple of kids’ heads (yes, that was planned) he got lazy.

The hawk, however, was fabulous! And we got to fly her, too. Ken got pictures. Another guy there got an awesome picture of her in flight, just about to land on Ken’s hand.


It was just incredible. Squee bouncity!

I love vacation. :-)

We truly intended to go to bed early that night, but best laid plans and all that…. Still, we dragged ourselves out of bed the next day at 5 a.m. because the carrot was a hot air balloon ride!

This was our 10th anniversary celebration, and Ernie and Pauline’s 30th anniversary celebration. I admit, at first I was pretty nervous, as I do have occasional bouts of vertigo (and height/falling dreams), and I was afraid that it would hamper or even ruin the experience for me.

The basket was tinier than I expected, with two sections for passengers and one for the two operators (flyers? pilots?). There were six passengers (another couple from CCR rounded our group out), and we were divided between the two sections, and to my horror I was separated from Ken, although truth be told we were right next to each other, just not touching from the waist down. (And when things started, I regretted not being shorter, so that the edge of the basket wasn’t at my waist, but farther up….)

It took me about 10 minutes to logically look up and process how the basket was attached the balloon and that there was no way barring a hurricane that the thing could tip over.

At that point, it just became sheer awesomeness, in all senses of the world. I know I say things are magickal, or amazing, or stunning, and all those words fit here, but it was so much more. It was…impossible. We floated. Gravity did not have any power over us. How is that possible? I still can’t wrap my brain around that concept.

When they weren’t firing off the burner, it was silent. Just us and the light wind. Floating, drifting. The sun rose over the mountains, and then we cast a shadow on the ground.


We watched people get pulled over by cops, too, way down below, but that was just amusing.

The best part for me, though, was coasting 10 to 15 feet over the ground towards landing. That’s when it really felt like we defied gravity, that it had no meaning.

Imagine if you jumped up in the air…and just stayed there.

I’m embarrassed to say the rest of the day must have paled in comparison, because I can’t remember anything else we did. I know there was a dinner and silent auction that night, but that’s about it.

Friday was a pretty low-key day, due to some minor medical issues on my part. We went into Park City to find a bookstore, and met the world’s mellowest cat therein. We bought no books, though. We simply went into the attached Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and spent our money there!

That night was the big banquet, where we learned that through the various fundraising efforts, most notably the auction, we raised $28,000 for Utah Children’s Justice Center, Wasach & Summit Counties branch. The director was in tears. So were a lot of us.

Ernie, Pauline, and Mo left very early the next morning, well before we were prepared to drag ourselves out of bed. So we had a more leisurely awakening, and then walked across the street to the Homestead Crater: the only warm-water scuba site in the continental United States. We decided to just snorkel, though, rather than take scuba lessons. (I took lessons in college and did everything but my fresh-water dive, because I couldn’t afford it, so I never got certified. Sigh. Someday!)

This was another amazing experience.


The mineral water was 95° and impossibly blue; the sun slashed through the hole in the ceiling to send one corner sparkling. There wasn’t a lot to see, per se, but there’s something to be said for just floating, drifting, experiencing.. Watching the air bubbles from the scuba tanks burble up from the depths. Savoring the moment.

After we showered and checked out, we made our way into Salt Lake City and checked into another hotel, then met up with our friend Thom for a late-ish lunch. We found a Thai restaurant in an outdoor shopping area, and had a lovely time eating and chatting.

And then, after Thom headed of to a rehearsal and we headed to the Apple store to buy iPhones!

We’d been talking about it for a while. Ken really disliked our current phones, and needed something that would function loosely as a PDA as well (for contacts, calendar, etc.—iPhones still aren’t good with other types of information management, but we’re hopeful). My biggest holdout was having no option other than AT&T, because I don’t like not having options. Plus I’ve been quite happy with T-Mobile. But I agreed that our phones were less than optimal, and in hindsight, it’s a good thing we did get them, because when Ken’s laptop was stolen a week later, he still had e-mail and Internet access via the phone and thus didn’t lose any work time.

Clutching our booty (which included not just the phones, but cases, Bluetooth earpieces, etc.), we determined that if we were in a new city, we really did have to do some proper touristy things, so we headed to Temple Square. We didn't take any tours, just walked around and admired the flowers and water features and architecture.

I was still a bit under the weather, though, and just plain wiped out, so we didn’t spend a lot of time there. We headed back to the hotel and collapsed for a bit, playing with our new toys and just sort of being mellow and brainless. We eventually roused ourselves for a late supper in the hotel café, and called it an early night.

Our flights weren’t stupidly early the next morning (yay!) so we were able to have a leisurely breakfast in the airport. We were on the same flight to SFO, and then I had to rush to make my connection to LAX. A sad kiss goodbye, and then I was winging south and he was pointed north. Sigh. But, as you know, we were together a week and a half later in Arkansas, so…

Anyway, pictures are here. Enjoy!

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*”Home” being a relative term, since over the next month and a half we had/have a trip to Arkansas, a trip to central California, Great Western War, and a visit my parents in New York.

Thursday 13: Thirteen Projects to Work On

1. Ghosted (urban fantasy novel)
   
2. Angelika (paranormal erotic romance novel)
   
3. short story for CinemaSpec
   
4. short story for In & Out
   
5. short story for the lesbian cowboy anthology
   
6. Ken’s birthday present (can’t say what it is here, in case he reads this!)
   
7. getting to the gym more often
   
8. Italians for Black Oak Lodge, March 2009. I have fabric for four. Four! Sheez. I may not complete them all (it’s only a 3-day event, and nobody really dresses on Sunday) but I’ll get ‘em started.
   
9. For that matter, Black Oak Lodge. The first Crown Prints ad has already been sent. :-)
   
10. various kumihimo braids and finger-crocheted award cords
    
11. living room curtains
    
12. For that matter, curtains for the media room and bedroom…
    
13. Lawrence’s birthday present. ::evil laugh::
    

Celebrate!

Happy National Punctuation Day!

(And a shout-out of thanks to Cat for alerting me to this very important holiday!)

There's a face in the photograph...

Our photos from the three most recent shows:

Hot Springs, Arkansas

Saratoga, CA (with Bonus! photos of Ken and our trip home)
Newport Beach, CA

I got a little silly with the captioning...

Enjoy!

Thoughts on nom nom nom

I don’t really enjoy cooking at the best of times—about every other holiday season I get the urge to bake, but if I sit for a while, that too passes. I like to eat (this statement should be self-evident), but I don’t get the creative thrill from spending hours on my feet in the kitchen. There are far, far more things I’d rather be doing, and when it comes to creative projects, I like it when the thing I make doesn’t disappear within a day or so (no matter how much it was enjoyed).

So while Ken’s been gone, I slowly got to the point where salad or sandwiches were the most elaborate things I was putting together in the kitchen (note: I don’t believe in, or eat, non-elaborate sandwiches. If I’m going to make one, I’m going to make a loaded one, with fresh spinach and tomatoes and pepperoncinis and gods know what else). Now that he’s home, we hauled out the recipes and forced ourselves to actually consider cooking again. (Since neither of us enjoy the process, we either do it together or take turns/negotiate other chores.)

Last night we make sausage and peppers from a recipe I snerched from my mom the last time I was home. It didn’t taste like I remembered when she’d make it, but it was close, and it was also easy and healthy (served over brown rice with a side salad), so it’s a keeper. While I was there (and Ken was overseeing the actual cooking parts), I also made a balsamic vinaigrette, which I’d been meaning to do for ages, and cut up a canteloupe, and we both did dishes.

I can’t say it was wildly exciting, but I did come away with a comfortable sense of accomplishment. Can’t beat that!

Random niceness

Our tenant came by today to say that after half a century of life, she figured out how to fix her toilet. She was so proud of herself, and I’m so proud of her! She’s the type of person who needs—and appreciates—a confidence boost like that.

Then she gave us her father’s wooden cigarette case (from the 20s or 30s, she wasn’t sure). Her father owned our house for a good 40 years (she lived in it on and off growing up) and she occasionally unearths things that “belong” to the house. But this was something personal, and I’m really touched.

~ ~ ~

Happy Autumn Equinox!

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.)

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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…!

Upside down and backwards

Christine and I got together yesterday and had a successful writing fest at Borders. She finally nailed the opening of her latest book (and it rocks) and I finished the last scene of Ghosted (I’d written pretty much all of it, but for some reason left a chunk unfinished along with a note about what was supposed to got there). So next I’m going to write the second-to-last scene, and hopefully the key to unlock the rest of the book will be revealed to me. If not, I’m just going to keep writing backwards. Hey, it’s an adventure.

Then Teresa and I had a phone confab about Angelika (which needs a new title; comments welcomed!), which did blow open the problem we were having with it. We didn’t really know our main character, what her internal goal was, and what her flaw was. Whee! It won’t massively change what we’ve already written—we’ll just have to tweak a few things—but it will definitely help with both the internal and external conflicts. Go us!

Now I’m on the plane to Houston, where I’ll swap to a plane to Little Rock and be with my beloved again! They actually fed us lunch on this flight. I’m gobsmacked. People have been very friendly today, even early this morning when we were all yawning on the bus from parking to LAX. Maybe it’s because of the date?

It’s also Tommy Shaw’s birthday! (Apropos of anything else, except I am on my way to see the band!)

Sometimes, I really love technology

1. I wasn’t entirely sure I understood the point of Facebook, especially since I already had a MySpace account. But I had a few friends who were on one but not the other, and I have to say, Facebook is much prettier and easier to use. My point, though, is that an editor I worked with five years ago (on Dyke the Halls) managed to track me down via Facebook, and was delighted because he wanted to invite me to submit to a new anthology! In fact, he said, “Hope it might be of interest to you (maybe even a few times, since I can use more than one story under your many pseudonyms...).” Major warm fuzzy, and I’ve already sent him a Sophie reprint; a new solo story will be written before the deadline.

2. Ken bought a tracking device for the bike that pings a website about every half an hour. I’m trying so hard not to get obsessed with checking the site to watch his progress across the country, but it’s so addictive!

3. YouTube, and finding video clips of David Tennant licking an ice cream cone. (Yeah, I’m in that kind of mood.)

4. Digital cameras allow us to capture random but wonderful images. When the cats sleep in the laundry basket, Eostre always picks the whites basket and Grimoire goes for the colors basket…

(Yes, we have a window in our closet...)

Random Things to Celebrate

• I got my comp copies of The Pagan Anthology of Short Fiction, which contains the Sophie Mouette story “Under a Double Rainbow.” It’s a truly pretty book. I love the cover design, the feel of the cover (close, but not quite matte), the title and author fonts. I keep picking it up to pet it… It's just luscious.
  
• I get to see Ken Thursday!
  
• I get to see Styx Friday!
  
• I worked out today with Jen, and it felt goood.
  
• I get a massage tonight. Not only will it feel great and help put my body back the way it ought to be, but Melanie and I always have fun.
  
• Extra-tasty and smooth hummus.
  
• The last scene of Ghosted is almost finished! Of course, the book is far from done, since there’s roughly the last quarter of it to write to catch up to the end. But I sort of know the second-to-last scene—I’ve typed up some brainstorming notes about it, anyway—and I feel in my gut that that’s the one that’s going to crack the code of this book for me. And even if it does’t, it’s going to be a fun ride.
  
• I’m meeting with Christine tomorrow to write together (and laugh and inspire each other and, I suspect, eat lunch).
  
• Trader Joe’s dark-chocolate-covered Joe-Joe’s. Like fudge-covered Oreos, only infinitely better—and they’re all natural. I try to limit myself to one a day…
  

Okay, off to write until Melanie gets here!

Irrational fear and the breaking down of sanity

Dammit, why does CB&TL have free wireless now? I come here to escape the temptations of the Internet!

~ ~ ~

I have this urge to run away. Go on a retreat. I wish I had some cottage or cabin where I could gather all my writer friends for a long weekend, to write and read and talk and take long walks. No Internet, no TV, although maybe a DVD player to watch movies while we drink wine and laugh.

I wish I had the money to rent such a place. Of course, the hotel in Oregon is now for just this purpose, but then I’d need the money to fly all my friends there….

~ ~ ~

For now, though, I’m sitting here in CB&TL with Sabrina, and I’m writing, and it’s mostly crap but it’s happening. I’m writing the last scene of Ghosted, because I have to write the last scene in order to figure the rest of it out (or figure the beginning out. Or to move ahead. Or something.). Then maybe I’ll write the next-to-last scene, because I don’t know a lot of it, and the only way I’m going to find out is if I write it.

That probably sounds insane to a non-writer, but there you have it.

~ ~ ~

Ellenie and I had an extremely productive writing day today! I forgot to note my starting wordcount (in part because I’m trying to get away from worry about exact counts and enjoying the process more), but I think I wrote about 1K. Kinda lame for 3.5 hours of work time, but the important thing is that I broke past my irrational fear of…whatever I was irrationally fearing.

Then, because a mom and her small boy plopped down on the couch next to her while she was working on a love scene, Ellenie suggested we go out for an early supper, which we did at Roxsbury Deli.

I may do some more work tonight, since I’m back to being fired up about it and don’t want to lose that, but first I’m going to do some other bits that need doing (e-mail, etc.) and then I think I’m going to indulge in a celebratory bubble bath. Because, among other things, I’ve realized lately that I need to celebrate the small successes!

~ ~ ~

I also stopped stressing about the fact that Ken hasn’t called, because it’s probably due to the fact that he has to buy a new phone charger. He’s set up a tracking device on the motorcycle that occasionally pings my e-mail with a link to a Googlemap that shows me where he is (how cool is that?!), and he was nearly Salt Lake City mid-afternoon today. Since he still had a banquet ticket to the rally he couldn’t run due to the second bike problem (the clutch), he figured he might as well attend, and then continue on to Arkansas. He’ll probably call me from a hotel phone later.