Busy Weekend

Friday: Me and Ken's 10th wedding anniversary. We celebrated by making a big flowerbed (brick edging, fill in with topsoil) and scattering sand around our backyard to help alleviate our drainage problems. Afterwards, we ate an unsatisfying dinner at Outback Steakhouse. We then commenced to ... lounge ... at home.



Saturday: We finished up the yard work and then headed to Chicagoland to visit Ken's college friends. One of them had been named on of the "top 40 Illinois attorneys under 40", so we attended a nice dinner party complete with wine, appetizers, and dessert. We pretend this is our anniversary dinner instead of the fiasco from the night before.



Sunday: Traveled home only slightly worse for wear. Ken is watching sports while procrastinating on schoolwork; I am doing laundry, cleaning, and contemplating a walk. I also foresee a trip to the grocery store. Later I will polish a flash fiction piece and send it off.



All in all, quite productive. I'll sleep well tonight, I think.

Road-weary

Arrived home from Denver at around 3:30 a.m. Slept it off for about six hours and now I'm vegging in front of the TV with a laptop and a kitty in my lap. Driving to a far-off destination can be a bitch--let's face it, we spent two days on the road--but at the same time I like it. We saw parts of the country we'd never seen before, we sang along to songs, and we experienced a few truly crappy McDonald's. The drive itself was easy--only four interstates with very little construction. We stopped in Omaha to see a college friend I hadn't seen in almost ten years. We ate. We drove. We slept. And then after World Con we did it all again. Good times, but it's always good to be home.

Here's what I've learned on my summer vacation so far:

1. Omaha really is a happening place. The downtown has seen some gentrification in recent years and is pretty hip. We saw it at night, and we were going to stop on the way back through to experience some of the little shops and stuff during the day, but we wanted to get home, so ... next time.

2. People in Iowa can't drive. At least, they are incapable of driving over twenty miles an hour on a two-lane highway in the dark. You know how they put all the traffic on one side of the interstate when they're working on the other side? Well. This scares Iowan nighttime drivers so much that they come to a stand-still. I will just stay it was an unpleasant way to spend a half-hour when you're still several hours from home.

3. Apparently you have to go to an actual city if you want to see political ads. Or maybe the campaigns have already written off my area. Whatever the reason, I've seen more of McCain and Obama during the past four days than I had the previous month. And I've been watching the election coverage on the news networks!

4. Having a weird schedule + eating at weird times = weight loss. Who knew? I think I skipped a lot of meals and walked a bunch, so that helped. Whatever. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right?

5. You know how on the map of the US, Nebraska is pretty much bare after Omaha? Yeah, they aren't lying. It's freakish. Colorado is the same way--you'll easily go fifty miles without seeing a house. Spooky. Also, Iowa is full of rolling hills, Nebraska is flat, and Colorado is hilly with brush instead of grass.

6. Being a mile closer to the sun really does mean you burn quick. We went to a Rockies baseball game on Thursday and zowie! I got a little pink. We didn't stay for the whole game, and it's a good thing, because otherwise I would have been lobsterfied. And before you say it--yes, I was wearing sunscreen. Not enough, apparently.

We leave for another convention in two days--this one much closer to home (Indy)--and so here's what I have to accomplish:

1. Laundry

2. Mow the lawn

3. Finish the current chapter in the WIP already

4. Return the rental car

5. Return the library materials

6. Knit something so I can make sure I still frickin' know how

7. Veg


I'll post a link to the Official Worldcon Con Report once I write it. Now, I must put jeans in the dryer ...

Lessons learned

A few things I learned over the weekend:

1. Do not, under any circumstances, see The Happening. M. Night Shyamalan wrote, directed, and produced it, and it is truly terrible. The concept was good--it's a day-of-apocolypse story--but the execution was horrible. Characters and dialogue were awful and things were thrown into the plot that made no sense. Ugh. One good thing I will say about it was there were some nice cinematography. I repeat: Do. Not. See. It.

2. Driving along the edge of a severe thunderstorm is almost worse than driving right through it. Also, looking for a tornado while trying to keep the car on the road in the wind for an hour straight can be a little exhausting.

3. Reading a holocaust novel right before bed can give you funny dreams.

A post of three parts

1. I got purling down. Ha-ha-ha! Now I'm half-way through a lovely pink-and-brown varigated-yarn potholder. Next, I will practice changing colors of yarn, and then work on a scarf. Today at Hobby Lobby I saw some cool lime-green yarn, which would be fun, but I think first I'd like to make a burgundy-and-gold Gryffindor scarf. Knitting is the new crack.

2. We watched Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle today. Funny stuff. There were some lame things--riding a cheetah, for example--but some really funny things, like Neil Patrick Harris snorting coke off a stripper's ass. Ken and I and a few friends are going to see Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay this week. Hopefully it doesn't suck.

3. We went to the theater and watched Iron Man last night. Great movie, awesome special effects, good plot. Robert Downey, Jr. rocked the role of Tony Stark, Gwenyth Paltrow made a good Pepper Potts, and Jeff Bridges looked good bald. I thought the actual story wasn't as good as Batman Begins but on it's own merit it's pretty good. I think it's worth paying full price. If you see it, stay through the end of the credits. There's a little scene that sets up a sequel. I know what you're saying: "Why should I stay for five minutes and watch a bunch of names scroll the screen when I could already be half-way home?" I'll tell you why: Samuel L. Jackson. 'Nuff said. Though I have to say it was cool watching the names roll by. There were a zillion (okay, maybe only a hundred) people that worked on the computer graphics, and I told Ken that soon we'd go to a movie and watch the credits to see our friend Jimmy's name. To which he replied, "Have you talked to Bridget lately?" and I had to say "Uh, no." This only proves once again that I am a bad friend.

Bliss.

Today was a perfect spring day. Sixty-five degrees, breezy, sunshine-y all day long. Absolute awesomeness. I got some laundry done (yay), made a new crock-pot lasagna recipe (needs a little tweaking but yummy anyway), cooked no-bake cookies (always excellent), tried baking seven-layer bars (still cooling so the jury's still out), cleared the dead perennials from the flowerbeds (exposing new growth underneath, bonus), grocery shopped with Ken (double bonus) and walked around the woods near our house with Ken (triple bonus). All that plus I've made a little headway on the short story that's due May 1st. I honestly don't know what could have made this day any better.

Okay, okay, maybe an e-mail from an agent wanting to see a full manuscript. Other than that, though ... nothing. And, hey, the day's not over yet, am I right?

As Ken and I walked through the woods earlier today, I realized again how much I need to live in the country. We always talk about buying a house in the woods, and today just completely reinforced that notion for me. Friends of ours live in the country, and a few times a year they have bonfires. We go and eat food and drink wine and listen to the quiet and look at the stars and as we do all those things, I can actually feel my soul become peaceful, like I've found a piece of me that's missing. Today was a good way to recharge the batteries.

Day off

Tomorrow I have the day off work, and I swear I'm going to be busier than if I went in. On the to-do list:
Laundry (yikes)
Write short story (lofty, but doable)
Run on the treadmill (gotta get some of this schlebby winter flab off)
Pay bills (yuck)
Make tax appointment (double yuck)
Make dinner (easy-peasy, in the crock-pot)
Maybe see a movie (not sure which one yet)

And you know, maybe read a book or something somewhere in there. We'll see how much gets done. Wish me luck.

Christmas memories

1. Ken asked me to marry him on Christmas Day, so that's obviously my favorite. We were living together at the time, and so it was our first post-college Christmas. We opened gifts before eating a nice breakfast of french toast, sausage, and orange juice. As I cleaned up the breakfast dishes, Ken said, "Hey, Santa left you another gift." I walked into the living room to find a little Precious Moments birthstone chest. I opened it and there was the ring. I looked at it for awhile and finally Ken said, "It's an engagement ring." That broke my amazement enough for me to tell him yes.

2. Decorating sugar cookies with mom and dad. Dad would bake them, mom and I would decorate them. Dad didn't usually want any part of the decorating business but he'd watch. He'd also purposely burn the last batch so he'd have cookies to dunk in coffee. His sugar cookies were of the puffy soft variety, and I loved them. I need to ask him for that recipe; somehow I don't have it.

3. Stealing Christmas lights. This would be when I was a teenage houligan, probably around 14 or 15. Remember the old-school lights that if one bulb burned out, the whole string shut off? Well, a group of us walked around town and pulled one light off of random strands of lights. At least, I pulled them out; I figured it'd be easier for the owners to find the reason their lights went out. One member of the party only loosened one light so the homeowner would have to twist every light to find the defective one. Ah, youth.

The perfect evening

Enjoy awesome, sunshine-y late afternoon
Perform hard cycling workout
Sing along with husband to a kick-ass song on the radio during drive home
Bake perfect batch of chocolate-chip walnut cookies
Watch Cubbies play their first game of the post-season

Mix all ingredients together in the stated order.

The Rules

1. Don't ever blog while drunk.
2. If someone says, "Here, just have one glass of wine," and that one glass turns into, like, more, you can ignore rule number 1. It's a stupid rule, anyway.

Productivity

Today I:

1. Mowed the yard

2. Bought three t-shirts, a skirt, a pair of shorts, a pair of capris, two books, a hairdryer, and two beach towels

3. had lunch with girlfriends

4. lounged by the pool

5. got slightly sunburned

6. got a haircut

7. ate dinner with my wonderful husband

8. wrote 800 words



And now I am tired. I am going to shower, read a bit, then crash. But before that, a picture of a wet cat to amuse you:

Morgan loves to shower. He is my little freak of nature.

The "eight facts about yourself" meme

Rachel Barth tagged me, so I'm going to try to come up with eight interesting and/or unusual facts about myself. Here goes:

1. I used to read my dad's Archie comics as a kid. If I had to pick one of the guys, I'd have to go with Jughead. Apparently I was into geeks even then.

2. I've never had formal swimming lessons.

3. When I was in first grade, the family dog trapped a skunk underneath the house. The skunk sprayed and the smell permeated the whole place. We had to move out for a week while the smell dissipated.

4. That was not my last encounter with a skunk. A few years later, I went to our back door to let what I thought was my cat Frisky into the house. When I discovered it wasn't Frisky but a skunk, I yelled "Ahhh! A skunk!!!", slammed the door, and ran to get my parents. Unbelievably, that skunk didn't spray.

5. I played the drums in the sixth grade but quit because I was too scared to go to Contest.

6. I've been asked if I'm left-handed enough to think that maybe I'm a little ambidextrous.

7. My second toe is longer than my first. I've heard this is a sign of high intelligence. That almost makes up for not being able to wear sandals without someone commenting on my toes.

8. If asked to choose between cake and potato chips, I'll choose the cake.



I don't think I know eight people with blogs that haven't already been tagged ... but Sean Murphy, Innuendo, and Bridget, get eight facts about yourself up on your blogs pronto. I'll be checking ...

A question

On ew.com there's a discussion going on about favorite books. An editor, J. Peder Zane, asked 125 contemporary authors to name their 10 favorite books. Your list says a lot about you, I think, so I put some thought into it and came up with mine. These are in no particular order.

1. The Stand by Stephen King
2. The Genesis Code by John Case
3. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
4. Jhereg by Steven Brust
5. The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan
6. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
7. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
8. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
9. The Cat Ate My Gymsuit by Paula Danziger
10. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson

For a fantasy/horror/sci-fi writer, you'd think there'd be an Asimov or a Sagan somewhere in this list, but I tried to include childhood favorites as well as more recent reads. I also tried to include a book from each of my favorite series. I should note that I only read the Jodi Picoult book because it was a book club selection, and I left off The Lies of Locke Lamora since, having read it so recently, I might be biased. I should also note that this list--like I suspect yours would be--is fluid. Ask me three months from now and half the list might be different., though The Stand would remain at the top.

What's your list? Don't want to list 10? Shoot for five.

Oh, as an aside: A few days ago I reread The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier. I can see why some of my friend's parents wouldn't want them to read it--it's set in a private boys school, and there are numerous references to masturbation and tits--but it's got nothing on Judy Blume, I think. My memory was right in that the basic theme is how shitty kids can be to each other; what I didn't remember was how dark the book is. Not only are Cormier's adolescent characters willfully cruel, an adult teacher uses blackmail and bribery on the students to save his own hide. The good guys not only don't win in the end, they get their asses kicked. It's a poignant portrait of how solitude, peer pressure, and the group dynamic are an integral part of our academic experience. Having said that, the plot is a little threadbare and jumpy; the narrative is overly wordy and skips around to a lot of characters who ultimately have no bearing on the story; some plot points are overwrought and unrealistic. This is, however, coming from an adult writer re-reading a YA book with a critical eye and the question "could I do this as well or better?" in her mind.

Day off

Tomorrow I have the day off because I work the weekend. This means:
1. I can stay up late tonight. ("Late" is a relative term here. I might make it until 11:00 p.m.)
2. I have to clean house tomorrow because we're getting (drum roll, please) new living room furniture delivered on Saturday! Oh, yeah, baby. Two new couches and two recliners. This of course means we have to get end tables, coffee tables, and possibly an entryway table. This also means our living room will finally look like adults live in our house.
3. I can play poker and watch "Jericho" in between bouts of cleaning.
4. I can get some writing done in the afternoon. I haven't written anything since a few days before Bailey died. Now that I'm not wallowing in misery anymore, I find that I want to get back to the laptop to put the pictures in my head on paper. (I'm going to try a metaphor here. Before, my grief was like wearing tight clothes over a blistered sunburn: constant pain. Now, it's like muscles after a moderate workout: it hurts, but only if I move the right way. I didn't phrase that well but it's pretty accurate, I think.)

On the writing front, I'm gathering opinions about the last story I finished. If all goes well, I may have some good news about it soon. Stay tuned.

My mom has arraigned a book signing for me in my hometown. A mother of a childhood friend of mine runs a gift shop, and she wants to host a book-signing for me. So I need to write a press release for the hometown paper, buy a case of books wholesale for Janice to sell in her shop, and maybe set up a photo-op of me donating a few books to the library. Oh, and let's not forget have Ken take a good picture of me to run with the blurb in the paper. Yeah, it sort of seems a bit much for one story in one anthology, but what the hell. It's a "hometown-girl-makes-good" type thing, and it's never to early to cultivate fans, I say. If anyone has any advice about the press-release, I'm all ears.

Tell me about your first time

No, not that first time--I mean the first time you read a book with sex in it and then re-read the scene on purpose. There's a discussion going on on Jenny Rappaport's blog about "dirty" books we read as kids. It's such a great topic that I'm bringing it over here. The article that started it all was on ew.com.

A lot of the books--Clan of the Cave Bear, Scruples, Hawaii--that are mentioned I've never read, but I've got a few of my own. My mom was into romance novels, and there were a few that, while I never read the whole thing, I did have a few page numbers memorized.

I'll start my list with the Judy Blume books. She was a one-woman sexual education machine.

Then Again, Maybe I Won't. This was one of the first books I read that had a male protagonist written in the first person. The scene that immediately comes to mind is when the protagonist gets a boner in algebra class and the teacher calls him to the front of the room to work an equation.

Deenie. This was one of the first books I read that explicity talks about masturbation.

Are You There, God? It's me, Margaret. All about periods, baby.

Tiger Eyes. I don't remember if this book talked about sex; I remember it mostly because of the horrific death scenes.

And other authors:

Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews. I remember reading this book during summer vacation before my freshman year in high school. At one point (if memory serves, I was sitting on the couch reading a particularly juicy scene) when my mom asked, "Is there anything in there I wouldn't want you to read?" "No," I said, praying I didn't look guilty. She bought it, and I continued to read about Chris and Cathy, the siblings that became lovers when they were locked in an attic.

Christine by Stephen King. My dad gave this to me freshman year in high school, and I didn't look back. I read anything by King I could get my hands on.

The Chocolate War by Robert ... Cormier, I think. I don't remember what this book is about specifically--I think it's about how shitty kids can be to each other--but I remember that some parents didn't want their kid to read it, so of course I did.


I'm sure there are others, but this is a good start. When I think about it, my upbringing was sort of strange. My parents didn't really talk to me about sex at all, but they let me read pretty much whatever I wanted. Maybe they figured if I learned about it through literature they wouldn't have to have "the talk" with me. All I know is, reading has always been a huge part of my life, even as far back as kindergarten, and it obviously continues to be. One of the reasons I want to be a writer is to open up different worlds for younger readers. If twenty years from now somebody said, "I learned about sex/relationships/how cool the world could be from reading [insert wildly creative title for my four-wizard book here] in the sixth grade," I could die a happy woman. Sigh.

But enough about my internal writer angst. What "dirty" books shaped your childhood?

productive morning

This morning I have:
-Sent "Sudden Death" to Glimmer Train Stories. I ended up just making it a regular submission as opposed to a contest entry. Sure, the contest would have paid more, had I won, and there is a certain amount of prestige in being an "award winning author," but ... hmm. Now that I think about it, I don't know why I didn't enter it into the contest. Actually, I still can. Their website says you can submit the same story as a regular submission and a contest entry if it qualifies for both. Maybe I'll mosey on over and do that.
-Sent "Rules of Engagement" to Realms of Fantasy. I swear, these people are going to get sick of me. They send me a rejection and I turn around and send them another story right back. Same with Asimov's and Fantasy and Science Fiction. If I swing the bat enough times, I'll hit the ball sooner or later.
-Sent "The Brethren" to Book of Dark Wisdom. Actually, I'll be doing this tomorrow evening, as their website says they're not open for submissions until February 1st, but I got the story ready to go today.
-Printed a draft of "the four wizard book." I really need to come up with a better working title. I need to bust a move on this so I can actually start querying it. It's not going to write itself, dammit. It's really rough, but it's got potential.
-After I log off, I'm heading to the gym.

It's mornings like this that make me miss working evenings. Though, if I want to be honest with myself, when I worked evenings I wouldn't even be out of bed yet and so I wouldn't have been so productive. I just miss not waking up to an alarm.