Philadelphia: Sept. 1994-Sept. 1996
So after five years in Chicago, I moved to Philadelphia to join Kevin.
He'd moved there a few months previously because his adviser had
transferred to UPenn (it still amazes me the way grad students are coerced
into following their advisers around). This is my cat and my computer
(well, our cat and his computer, really). It's pretty characteristic of
the time; we were fairly isolated in Philly, with few friends, and I spent
a lot of time with the cat and the computer. Her name was Chandi, which
is I think a variant of Kali, which seemed like a good name for an
occasionally destructive cat, but that was pretty much irrelevant, since
Kev refused to call her anything but "Kitten". It stuck.
It was in the second year here that Dale Larson offered to publish
Torn Shapes, and kindly paid to have a professional headshot
taken. I think the photographer did a fabulous job (though I think Dale
may have envisioned something more like me lounging half-dressed on a bed
for the back cover photo, which I admit, might have sold more copies).
This had to be one of the pivotal events in my life -- I had written a
book! And someone else had paid to publish it! And it had an ISBN
number! And it was in the Library of Congress! (I saved the letter from
them.) Not the splashiest immortality ever -- a book gathering dust in
the Library of Congress, but still. It mattered to me. Still does.
That was a quiet and reasonably productive time for me; I got a fair bit
of writing done. But Kev and I did watch too much tv -- Star Trek was on
at 6 and 10 every weekday, and sometimes we just stayed there in front of
the tv in between. Which is just an appalling amount of tv watching, when
you stop to think about it Good cuddling, though. After a while, I got
tired of feeling like a slug, not to mention slightly envious of Kev's
progress towards his Ph.D., and applied to grad schools. In the fall
of '96, I headed off to California.
Next -- Ah, the Bay Area!
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