I just feel like I am.
Bad cold. I am sick of being sick. And still trying to squeeze every moment of visiting with Kevin and Karina that I can out of all the work I had to do this weekend. So no updates. Apologies, munchkins. Back soon, I promise.
He goes back to Chicago today. :-(
Things to do today (sorry for these lists, but they do help to keep my brain organized; feel free to skip over them):
Tomorrow's another long day. There's a candidate coming in for the position of nonfiction professor in the department, so I'd like to go to one or two of the things they have scheduled with him if possible. And then in the evening, there's a pre-Valentine's-Day smut reading in my department; it should be fun, I think, though I admit to having a bit of anxiety about reading smut to my colleagues. But I figure if they can do it, I certainly ought to be able to. Honestly, it's not so much the reading that's the problem. It's the two questions of a) should I properly dramatize the sex scenes, which might be embarrassing, and b) should I read something that's really hot, even though it's maybe not so literary, which might be embarrassing in a different way. Eh. Not a big deal either way; not worth stressing about. I won't stress. So there.
Had a wonderful visit with Kevin; fell apart all over him Saturday night (I think?) due to accumulated stress, but he was wonderfully steadying, and left me feeling like I probably really can cope with everything this semester. Including my finances. I may owe a big hunk in taxes this year; I'm sort of scared to look at them properly. I was scared to even think about it until I dumped all over Kev. I guess the Freudians are right about that whole 'putting thoughts into language distances them (moving from primary to secondary processes) and thus makes trauma easier to cope with'. I don't believe that works all the time -- I think sometimes putting things into words makes them more intense and emotional, rather than less. But it does seem to work for reducing trauma, especially when you're traumatized beyond all reason. Karina said something about my having a phobia about finances -- it's not quite at phobia stage, but it could get there, I think. Going back to grad school was not good for my financial stability. I think I'm going to have to move my goal from 'financial stability at 30' to 'financial stability at 35'. I suppose that's okay. Makes me feel like a little kid, though. I think in my head, part of the definition of 'grown-up' is 'financially stable'.
Haven't had a chance to really miss him yet; his departure was certainly softened by Karina still being here. It was so nice to come home after a miserably long day to someone. Someone who had done three loads of dishes, no less. I am so lucky. And it's possible that he may be able to come back out in two weekends; depends on various factors that he has little control over, but if it happens, it would be awfully nice. Everyone pray for low plane fares from Chicago to Salt Lake City, okay? He's probably not going to know if he can come until less than a week before travelling.
Okay, I could babble further at you, but I can tell that I'm really avoiding work. Let's see how much I can get done by lunchtime, okay? I may check back in with y'all later today -- again, sorry for the long silence. Just didn't have the energy to journal.
Noon. Well, I read those articles ("Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl" was actually funny as well as interesting; Sedgwick can be scathing sometimes...) and made the phone calls. I think it's at least relatively offical now -- Crown/Melcher want me to editor a sequel to Aqua Erotica, tentatively entitled Bodies of Water. It's planned as a Summer 2001 beach book, and I'll be looking for stories that emphasize heat as well as water. So anywhere from oceans to rivers to lakes to bathtubs...but more of a beach/tropics feel overall than in the previous book. I think they're aiming for this being the perfect beach book. I'm not sure how many people are going to be comfortable reading a book with a naked person on the cover while they sun themselves on the beach -- but maybe they won't put naked people on the cover this time. Hmm...we'll see.
In any case, I'm delighted. It does mean that they're not wanting to do the best internet erotica book I proposed to them -- or at least not yet. Bob says to talk to him about that again when we finish this project up (somewhere in late spring, I imagine). So it's not dead, but it's definitely not alive either. Hovering in limbo for the moment. Could definitely be worse.
So if all goes well with contract negotiations in the next weeks, this may solve that financial panic I was talking about. Fingers crossed. It's a larger initial print run than AE, which is nice. Hopefully that means I get more money too. :-) But you guys have to please all run out and buy copies when it comes out, so that we sell through the initial print run and they remain impressed by me. Okay? That'll make it much easier for me to edit anthologies in the future.
And just a quick nice note in addition to this good news; they've just contracted for another 15,000 copies of AE. Which makes this the fourth printing, and brings the total print run up to 85,000. :-) The first two print runs took it to 45,000, and they had sold all of those before Christmas. Very satisfying. Yay, us! :-)
Of course, all of this brings up the question of agents. I'm a bit bewildered by the whole agents thing, to be honest. I don't have one, and in fact, someone just asked me if I wanted to be one for them. :-) I don't know the first thing about agenting, so while I'm flattered, I'm going to have to say no on that. But I'm pretty sure that I should get me an agent before doing contract negotiations on this sequel, and I a) feel weird about it, because I didn't have one the last time and it somehow feels rude to get one at this stage, and b) don't know where to find one. Susie Bright's agent, while very nice to me, was also too busy to take on new clients. I guess I'll call Marcy Sheiner and ask her if she has an agent who might be helpful. But if that doesn't pan out, I'm not sure where one goes from here. Suggestions welcome (especially ones that don't take too much time!)
Okie, back to work.
Okay, that's the negative. There's lots of positives. I did get the SH checks and contracts out yesterday, and I cannot tell you what pleasure I got from using my new accountant-style check register -- the kind that leaves little stubs for each check that you can neatly fill out in detail. I was also pleased by having 'Strange Horizons -- www.strangehorizons.com' imprinted on the checks. Very very satisfying. Yes, I'm weird.
And I managed to read the history and reread enough of the Weber to get by today. I did read the Weber properly back in college, my freshman year, so a brush-up was sufficient for me to get the general gist of it again. He managed to piss me off in his introduction with all of his big sweeping generalizations about the Occident vs. the Orient, but I coped. The rest was interesting, at least, even if I don't know enough about economics to know if I should be convinced.
I even slept almost eight hours, so that's good. I feel okay today; I'll take some Dayquil and I should be able to make it through on that. Though I wish the day weren't going to be quite so long...
Oh, hey -- I had one other interesting thing that happened yesterday. I discovered that I like seitan. Like it okay, at any rate. With Karina here, I've been cooking vegetarian, and I thought that this visit I might try some of those meat-substitutes I'd heard about. Tofu I know how to handle, but I hadn't tried tempeh or seitan. Threw some tempeh in a curry last week; it was okay, but a little too nutty for me to enjoy eating very much of it. Overwhelming, but not bad for a little added interest. But seitan -- I'm not sure I can think of a good way to describe this stuff, but I sliced some and simmered it in a peanut sauce last night, and it was actually pretty tasty. Still a little lacking in solid texture (like tofu), but much more flavorful. I could eat the sliced stuff straight (I guess I bought it already somewhat seasoned) and it was okay. Marcia claimed it was like roast beef, and I think that's going a bit far, but if you can imagine somewhat bland, soft roast beef, that might be an okay comparison. At any rate, nice to add another food to the cooking options.
Anyway, I'd best shower and dress and face the day. I probably won't be back 'til tomorrow -- in the meantime, why don't you take a look at the new issue of Strange Horizons? There's a terrific retold fairy tale this week, "The Fen-Queen's Bride" (one of my favorite tales, too, and one that isn't often retold), an absolutely beautiful poem, a movie review of Shadow of the Vampire (which Kevin actually wants to see -- I'm not sure I'm interested), an editorial on SF and politics, and, most exciting for me, an article on natural history museums, by Kira Berman. Now why is that last one so exciting? 'Cause Kira is the first girl I ever kissed. :-) I know that my old friends and lovers are over-represented at Strange Horizons; that's really just a temporary thing, while we're still hunting around for people to write us articles. But it's kind of fun. Kira's Director of Education at a natural history museum at U Michigan now; it's nice that so many of my old friends/lovers are becoming experts in their fields. So this is how that networking stuff works...
Oh, and before I go -- we're looking for a new Articles Editor at Strange Horizons, to join David and Catherine. Lots of fun -- you know you want to, right? :-) Just a couple of hours a week could make you part of the ever-growing staff at one of the best little sf magazines around. Anyway, details are on-site, in the 'About Us - Join Our Staff' section. Lemme know if you're interested.
As for me, I'm doing pretty well myself. Made it through yesterday, and by 7:30 I was all jittery with nerves for the reading. I wonder if that will ever go away. When I was a little girl doing annual piano recitals, I would feel physically ill while waiting in the wings -- that's mostly translated to being hyper and only slightly nauseated, but the icy fingers persist. Still, the reading went very well. I did "A Jewel of a Woman", which generally reads well and which got a lot of laughs last night. It was a great crowd, though -- grad students and their friends -- and everyone read pretty darn wonderfully. I really like these 3-5 minute readings; no time to get tired of anyone, and it's so much easier to stay focused on the pieces. I miss the poetry slams a bit. They have some here too, but I haven't had time to hook up with that community.
After the reading, we all (including Karina, of course) went out to a bar, the Twilight. Amazingly smoky, but we did have a nice night. I wanted something fruity, so I asked the bartender to make me something. He looked a little uncertain, but after some goofiness agreed to just pick something. The one he ended up making was called "A Hot Steamy Night", and involved vodka, triple sec, and several juices. Yummy. I had two. I'm not normally a big bar person (especially smoky ones), but it felt right after a sexy, silly reading. Lots of fun. And my clothes are now mostly aired out...
I have to admit to being a little hungover today; just enough to keep me from being as productive as usual. But I had a wonderful conversation this morning, with the woman who may soon be my agent! She's sending me a contract to look over, and if all goes well, my agent search will be over practically before it's begun. It's awfully nice knowing helpful people. The net is amazing, have I mentioned? There are days when I don't know how I managed to get things done without it. I suppose I would have managed -- but some of them would have been accomplished much more slowly! Anyway, I'll tell you more about all this if it comes together. I'm feeling a bit superstitious that talking about it too much might make it not happen. (I must have caught this from my mother -- I'm not normally superstitious. She made my dad call last night because a dinner guest had knocked over a picture of me, and the glass had shattered, and she was afraid that it might have boded ill...luckily, I'm fine.)
Other than that -- went in to campus, had lunch with the prospective nonfiction hire, workshopped with him, had a really good meeting with Kathryn, and was home by around 4-ish. And have vegged out ever since. I'm now suddenly feeling all full of energy, but it's 10:40, and I really ought to go to bed before too long. Instead, I've loaded the dishwasher and the washing machine, so I'll be up at least another hour. I'm such a weirdo. But a happy weirdo, so I guess that's okay.
Strange Horizons is now one of the top ten sf magazines at Yahoo! -- and we haven't even been around for six months yet. Hah!
icicles on the trees
fields of crystal
a world
refracted
in quartz
A quick correction to an earlier entry -- Crown wants Bodies of Water for summer 2002. That makes much more sense than 2001. The tentative schedule is:
I'm sort of dreading the friends issue a bit, actually. Last time, about five of my friends submitted stories that made it to the next-to-last-cut. Talk about miserable. And now I have probably at least double the number of friends who are writers than I did last year (not to mention some erotica-writing students!), who are all going to be extremely hard to turn down, should I need to. And while you'd think that I'd have a shot at taking stories from all of them, the truth is that even if we do eighteen or so like we did last time, something like 5-8 of those slots will be reserved for big name writers, and we're probably hoping to fill 5-8 of those slots from authors from the previous collection, for continuity reasons, assuming they give us stories at least as good as the ones they gave us last time. Which means that there's only going to be room for about 2-6 new writers. The competition's going to be steep. I know that's probably discouraging for some of you reading this, and I'm sorry, and it should not in any way keep you from submitting, please! But I do want you to be aware of the odds. Last time I think we only took two complete unknowns -- Kris Hawes and Daniel James Cabrillo. And even they had published at least a little online.
Anyway -- this is all a bit premature. It's still possible that we won't be able to negotiate a contract we're all happy with. So I'm going to try to hold off on chattering more about this stuff for a week or so.
There's probably lots of other stuff I could tell you about, but my brain is spinning a bit trying to keep it all organized and talking about it before it's all done probably won't help. And it's all dull anyway -- fellowship applications, grading, etc. At least the grunt work as a grad student is more interesting than the grunt work in an office...though it's more stressful too. Ah well.
Tonight people are coming by to hang out, eat pizza, etc. It's not quite the same as a Valentine's Day Massacre Party, but it's better than a poke in the arm with a sharp stick. And it does mean that I need to go to the grocery store and then make cookies this afternoon, which means I need to get at least some work done now. So off I go!
Karina's only going to be here for one more week (oddly enough, our
flights out of town -- mine to Potlatch and hers to Australia via L.A. --
leave five minutes apart from each other; unplanned, but convenient). It
makes me sad. Last time she was here, I took her up to the cemetary and
took photos of her. I'm not sure we'll have time to do that this visit,
but I'd like to. Maybe Sunday, if the weather holds fine. It's clear
today, but has been snowing much of the last week. Nuisance for me, but
at least it makes her happy.I'm going to miss her. I'm missing her in advance.
I'm very tempted to blow off classes today and stay home with her. Not that we'd actually be socializing, but I do have work piling up, and I have some deadlines today that I could maybe make if I scrambled now but that I will do a better job with if I can take all day. My throat is sore and scratchy; not enough to force me to stay home, certainly, but enough that I can talk myself into believing that it wouldn't hurt to do something restful for most of the day. I do have to go into campus around 4:30 -- I have a fellowship application to hand in before 5, and I have a meeting at 5:30 anyway that I can't really miss. But there's a lot of time between now and then where I could be productive. We'll see what I think after having tea, but I suspect I'll be staying here.
Snippet from phone conversation with Jed:
Jed: "Hi! Happy Valentine's Day!"
Me: "To you too!"
Jed: "I can't really stay on the phone..."
Me: "That's okay, neither can I..."
That's probably only mildly amusing. But then you add in Kevin's call twenty minutes later:
Kev: "Happy Valentine's Day!"
Me: "You too!"
[silence for a bit, then me again, saying:]
Me: "You just called because you knew you were supposed to, right?"
Kev: "Pretty much."
Me: "I'll get Karina..."
And, reported from Karina:
Kev: "Happy Valentine's Day!"
Karina: "Happy Valentine's Day to you too!"
[silence again...followed by Karina gently letting him get off the
phone]
There might have been a few more phrases in there, but that was the gist. My guys may not be romantic, but at least they're dutiful and aware of the proprieties. Though I have to remind them of them the day before. You'd think that would make it stop being sweet, but somehow it doesn't. I guess I'm just easy. Someone could probably pull lint out of his pocket and hand it to me, saying "I got it just for you..." and I'd go "Aww...." Karina and I were amused over Kevin's call for hours afterwards.
We did have some people over last night, btw. I cooked desserts (trademark cranberry white chocolate chip cookies, lemon bars out of a box, red velvet cake out of a box with cherry pie filling layers and grated chocolate and powdered sugar on top) and we ordered pizza. We had thought about playing a game, but the seven of us just chattered instead. It was good. I got to spend some more time with Erin and Jeff, from my department, whom I really like a lot. With any luck, they'll decide they like me too, and we'll see more of each other. It's interesting -- I do still have some of the same anxieties about socializing, being liked, etc. that I did in high school -- but somehow they don't affect me nearly as much. It's good. I don't think I'd go so far as to call it the wisdom of age...but I think I can fairly call it 'having perspective'. It's interesting how as you get older, the body falls down but the spirit climbs up. I really appreciate that. I really appreciate a lot of things that I didn't used to. It's good.
11:00 and I just woke up. I'm very groggy as a result. Should be okay in
a bit, though.Stayed up late-ish talking to Kevin (though I think the real reason I slept so much is trying not to get sick). Got angstful for a bit because he made some offhand comment dissing Lacan and I got all stressed that what he was really doing was dissing the intellectual value of literary theory (and by extension, me, since that's a lot of what I'm doing in grad school). He cleared me up eventually, but it took a while. S'okay.
And then at the end of the conversation, he asked me whether he should stay at his post doc at University of Chicago for another year, or go ahead and start his tenure-track job at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in the fall. Which was his roundabout way of telling me that they actually made him the offer. :-) We talked it over a bit, discussing pros and cons, but in the end, the two possibilities seemed pretty well balanced; I didn't have much helpful to add. Two good choices; not a bad position for him to be in.
And what does this mean for me? Well, if all goes well at UIC (which, incidentally, is where Roshani is going to med school :-), then he'll eventually be offered tenure there. And while it's certainly possible that he'll go elsewhere either before or after that point, it's likely that he'll stay there. Which means that Kevin is probably going to be located in Chicago for a long long time to come.
This is actually excellent. I'd rather he were there than in some random state where I know nobody. I'd rather he were there than in some random state where they beat up non-whites regularly (well, maybe they do that in Illinois too, but it's not always the police helping with the beating up, at any rate). I'd rather he were in a major city than a college town. I'd rather he were in Chicago than Salt Lake City -- if he were coming here, that would be great for the next few years, and not so great for the time after that.
Now, would it be better if he had gotten offers in New York, or Boston or the Bay Area? Well, maybe. New York and Boston have winters that are almost as bad as the Chicago ones (which really is my main objection to Chicago). They're cities I've never lived in, which is a minor plus, but then again, I haven't really lived in Chicago either -- living in Hyde Park is a little different. The Bay Area -- probably my top choice in terms of places to live (plus the highest concentration of people I love), but I think possibly even harder for me to get a job there than in Chicago. So even that's iffy.
As for my job thing -- well, we'll have to see about that. I finish here in a few more years. Then, presumably I'll be going on the academic job market. If I simply apply to the best schools I can get jobs at, that might not include one in Chicago. If I limit my search to Chicago, I may be taking a job that pays less or is less prestigious or that requires more teaching (those three often go hand in hand), or I may not be able to find a teaching job at all. And I just don't know at this point how important that will be to me then. I could have turned into a hard-core academic; I could have decided that I love editing above all else, or that my writing demands that I not try to also be a professor. So we'll see, and in the meantime, Chicago seems to offer some pretty good prospects for my being able to get some sort of teaching job if I want it. I can certainly adjunct if nothing else -- there are lots of colleges in the area. Which was part of the reason we were really hoping he could find a big city job...
So it's all good, really. And a relief; even though it doesn't really settle anything about my future, I feel better not having those possibilities of small towns in the wilds of nowhere hovering over my head anymore. (Isn't that an odd image?) And airfare between here and there is relatively cheap. And Roshani will be in Chicago for at least a few more years until she finishes med school (and probably long-term, assuming *she* can find a job at a hospital there). So even though I slept 'til eleven and I'm really a bit shocked at how little of the morning is left, I'm pretty happy. Life is good.
I'm feeling a little punchy.
Speaking of pay -- it's weird having an agent. She's in negotiations with Melcher now, and while I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to go into specifics, I will say that it's very interesting having her call me up and give me reports on how the day's discussion went. This should all be nailed down within a week, I think. I'm fairly sure at this point that the book will happen. Fingers crossed. Interestingly, I finally got around to telling her about that best internet erotica anthology idea, and she thinks it's exciting. She wants me to send it to her, so that she can send it around to other publishers. Who says I should only work with Crown? This is a good point, so I'll send it to her next week. (It's long, so I'm going to print it out cheaply on campus. Does that make me a bad grad student? Nah....)
Spent yesterday catching up on some of my outstanding projects, mostly little things that needed to be gotten out of the way. Karina stood over me and cracked the whip. Not really, but at one point she did drag me physically off the couch, pledging that she would do the damn Hayden interview questions if necessary, if I would at least come and supervise. Once she got me in front of the computer, I did do them. They weren't as bad as I'd feared -- it's weird how you develop an unreasoning dread of certain tasks, that just increases the longer you put them off. David, you have Karina to thank for my not putting them off any further.
My desk is astonishingly clean. This pleases me.
A fair bit of homework to do this morning, which I should get to. Work until brunch, brunch, work after brunch, then at 4:30 go over to Carol's and get weird monster makeup slathered over our faces. She works with this guy who sells monster makeup; they need models, and Karina and I have volunteered. If the photos come out okay, they'll go on their website, and if I'm feeling nice, I might even tell you where it is. Karina's going to be a delicate lovely vampire maiden; I'm going to be something gross, probably with brains spilling out of my forehead. Should be fun.
Later, my dears.
Yesterday a bunch of grad students drove up into the mountains to have lunch with the job candidate. The restaurant was okay, but kind of a diner, and we missed breakfast food by five minutes, which many of us were pretty bummed about. Decent meatloaf and mashed potatoes, though. (Wanted pancakes and orange juice and eggs!) It was a good talk; I like this candidate a lot, and will be happy if he comes next year. I liked the other one too, for different reasons, so it's really a win-win situation. I like win-win situations. If I were smart, I would try to engineer more of them in my life. Jed's got a friend whose name I'm forgetting who specializes in that kind of thing. Seems like a pretty good way to live, if you can manage it.
Afterwards went and picked up some books I needed and office supplies. Someone on one of the lists I'm on mentioned something she called a 'portable office' -- a little box with compartments that she took to conventions so that she'd have her own tape and stuff, so she wouldn't have to run around begging tape from the con organizers to put up her flyers. Seemed like an excellent idea; I now have a little plastic box with several compartments, filled with scissors and tape and paper clips and push pins and business cards and pens and markers. I'll just keep it in my closet and chuck it in my bag whenever I'm going to a convention. Of course, now that I've told y'all about it, I bet I get people coming to mooch my push pins at the con. :-)
I'll be at Potlatch next weekend, for you Bay Area folks. Registration at the door is $40, and it really sounds like it'll be a fun little con. There's an auction of cool stuff on Sunday to support Clarion West too. Since it was CW that convinced me to take my writing seriously (really Beth Meachem and Tappan King at CW), I'm happy to do something to help support it. I hope to see lots of you there; I'll be ringleading a panel (on diversity) and running an algonquin discussion (on Strange Horizons). I'm getting very excited about the con -- and I get to see Jedediah! :-)
In additional to the portable office, I picked up some photo paper, so I may spend a little bit of today trying to see what kind of images I can print. I'm told that Photoshop can be used to make grainy pictures less grainy, but I don't think I've figured out how yet. Any tips would be very welcome. I also bought two books, Carol Emshwiller's The Start of the End of it All and Partha Chatterjee's The Nation and its Fragments. The Emshwiller is for Strange Horizons; we're thinking of possibly doing an author focus on her for the end of April. I read the first story -- very surreal, but definitely cool. I'll be reading this off and on over the next week or so. I'd like to finish it by Potlatch so I can loan it to Jed or David then. The Chatterjee is for my history course, of course; I read the first chapter last night but got too sleepy to continue with such dense stuff -- I'll continue it (and hopefully finish it) today. I read Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs instead; interesting. There's a comment near the very end, on the nature of gender relations as connected to sadism/masochism, that I'd sort of like to discuss with y'all -- but I think it would lose a lot of its impact if you hadn't read the rest of the (very short) book first. So go read it, okay, and tell me when you're all done. :-)
Anyway, here's the plan for today:
It's dangerous having a digital camera, y'know? Or at least it's dangerous for your friends who are trying to sleep. :-)
The exciting new thing is that I had an idea for a cookbook, oddly enough. It's a very concept-driven book, so I'm not going to talk about it in detail here yet, but if I find a publisher interested in it, then I may be asking y'all if you want to volunteer to be recipe-testers. I'm actually going to be trying to put together the proposal this afternoon, because I'm sending the internet erotica book proposal to Sarah (agent) tomorrow, and I might as well bundle this in with it. She seems excited about the concept, so that's encouraging. We'll see how it goes.
Much of today has been spent reading the Chatterjee book. It's not bad, but its focus is all on Bengali history, and while the principles he's illustrating still apply to Sri Lanka, the use of all this new history for examples is making my head spin a bit. He tends to assume that you're familiar with a lot of it, and I'm just not, not at all. So I'm having to work harder than I really want to; I wish I could just say to him -- 'look, I trust that your examples bear out your conclusions already -- could you just summarize the conclusions for me?' Instead, I'm skimming the Bengali examples and trying to concentrate on the nationalist theory bits; tougher to do that than you might think, because the theory is all woven through the book. Makes my head hurt. I'm not even halfway done yet, and I really ought to finish it by tomorrow morning. Don't wanna.
On the plus side, the other main things I have to do are about an hour's worth of grading, and a review of the Carroll book for SH. Shouldn't take too long; I think the plans for today are feasible. If I'm at a reasonable place around 4-ish, I'll probably dress Karina up in something pretty and go take photos of her. I'm not sure if it's a good day for it -- the sun is coming in and out, and sometimes it's clear and bright and sometimes it's rather dank and overcast. We'll see what the sky looks like at 4. I think getting out for a few hours would be good for me; I'm feeling a bit tied to the computer/reading chair and cooped up.
It's driving me crazy that today's a national holiday and so many businesses are closed. There are a bunch of phone calls I need to make, and they're all going to have to happen tomorrow morning. Nuisance. And I'm hungry. I should go eat some lunch. Oh, and there's a bunch of Potlatch-related mail that I have to answer -- and not just answer, but try to shape into something coherent for the diversity panel. Can't forget that.
I hope you guys are still enjoying the randomness of this journal. It's gotten so work-focused lately, I know. Of course, it generally is pretty work-focused; I don't do tons of talking about my personal life, although I'm sure you pick up a fair bit along the way. Jo Walton (one of the SH authors) sent me a note yesterday, saying:
"It's very very odd reading your diary. It's weirdly literary and not, and it gives me a feeling of knowing you disproportionately better than you know me....It's very different from usenet and people talking about themselves, because that's a much more mutual arrangement."
Which was interesting -- somehow, it still feels reciprocal to me. I think that's in part because many of you drop me notes, and in part because I read several journals myself. So that while I don't know all of you as well as you know me, I know a lot of you at least somewhat, and a lot of other people over the net. This all feels very natural to me -- the way I was meant to live my life, semi-transparently. I realize, though, that that's not for everyone, that lots of people prefer more privacy in their lives. I asked Kevin recently if he'd mind if I put pictures of him in here. His response was funny -- he said that he'd rather I didn't, but that it would be okay if I did. And I said that I'd feel guilty about it if he felt that way. And he said that I probably should feel a little guilty, but that it didn't need to stop me doing it. Heh. Maybe I'll be safer if I stick to pictures of the back of his head... :-)
Okie, I stopped and had a sandwich (sharp cheddar cheese and mango-ginger chutney on nutty bread, yum) and I feel better. Third mug of tea is steeping, and I think I can face one more chapter of this book. If I get that done, then I think I can justify putting it aside for the rest of the day and working on more fun stuff; I can do the other half tomorrow morning. Well, most of it, anyway. One of my classes is cancelled, so I'll have another hour and a half to read then. Should all be manageable.
If you're having a nice relaxed day today, enjoying the holiday (in America, it's Presidents' Day), then it's probably a good day to catch up on Strange Horizons. An article from one of our staff proofreaders, Chip (who I originally met through this journal, so there's another example of the kind of thing I was talking about above), a story by Alan DeNiro (Clarion West '98, very cute, could develop a crush on him if he didn't already have a girlfriend :-) about music and jazz and family and a corpse, a poem, "accidental series", by Charlie Finlay (who apparently knows Kate Bacchus, whose house I used to go to for great Bay Area parties), and a review of David Coe's Eagle Sage -- you may remember that we did an interview with Coe some months back. So a nicely jam-packed week this time around; enjoy!
I got into an odd state last night; I'd been working hard all day, finished two-thirds of the history book, did the cookbook proposal (which I'll revise tonight and send out tomorrow), got through some of my mail, did all my mending while watching tv, just in go-mode all day, y'know? And then there came a point where I was too tired and scatter-brained to do any more useful work, but too frenetic to just sit and rest. Especially 'cause we'd moved from new sitcoms to reruns. I was driving Karina nuts, I think, bouncing around the living room, complaining about being frustrated, and bored, and... Finally, around 10-ish, I climbed into bed, called Jed, and talked to him for an hour or two. Somewhere in there, my brain slowed down, and I was able to fall asleep. Although I suspect it was still humming quietly even then, which is why I slept poorly and kept waking up. I have this tendency to sleep resting my head on my arm, which never used to bother me, but now makes my arm hurt. A lot. I don't know if it's that my futon has gotten harder, or my head has gotten heavier or my arms have gotten more fragile. Whatever the reason, from about 5 to 7 this morning I was flopping around in bed, trying to make my arm stop hurting. Annoying.
But I'm not going to get crotchety again, especially not when I've worked through my bad mood. Karina seems to have trouble sleeping almost every night, and Jed and Kevin have both had a fair bit of trouble sleeping too. I don't know how they stand it, I really don't.
Plan for today: teach, catchup on writing for Kathryn's class, eat lunch, go to class, come home early (two classes cancelled today), do research for UHGCC keynote speaker, write Sticks review for Chris (due), sum up Potlatch discussions, revise cookbook proposal. Definitely a working evening, but should be feasible, assuming I don't collapse into a pathetic little heap. Some of this *can* happen tomorrow morning if necessary, but it would really be better if it happens today. Finish Chatterjee book somewhere in there too.
I'm trying hard to get as much as I can done before I leave town; I know I'll have more fun at the convention if I'm not fretting about everything hanging over my head at home. We'll see how it goes.
Okie -- shower, dress, and with fifteen extra minutes, maybe I can squeeze in that cookbook proposal revision before I leave for campus. :-)
I did almost everything I needed to last night, except for the review for SH. Bad Mary Anne. It's easier to miss deadlines when it's for your own magazine. :-) But it's on my list for this morning, along with revising the cookbook proposal, calling my history professor and explaining why I'm not done with the reading yet (not fun), doing the outstanding SH checks and contracts before leaving town, verifying my PayPal account for SH, and asking Pair about accepting credit cards at SH. Well, that's for this morning and early afternoon, with a meeting with a student at noon. Most of it isn't particularly painful stuff, so as long as I don't procrastinate...
...and I'm afraid this counts as procrastinating, so until later, munchkins.
1:00. It's brightly blazing sunny out today -- not good for Karina's fair skin, but very good for Mary Anne's mood. I just had a conference with a student, sitting outside at a Cucina picnic table. How lovely! I forget sometimes how hard I find it to be productive when it's dark; I do enjoy stormy rainy days, but they make me moody and restless and wanting to be having sex in a field somewhere -- not conducive to sitting and plowing through a pile of paperwork. :-)
But at this point, I've finished and mailed the proposals and signed contract to Sara, I've e-mailed the history professor (much easier than calling), I've revised and re-revised the diversity booklist for Potlatch (probably one final revision to do before it's ready to take to the con) and I've met with two students. Good morning. Karina's up now and having her toast; we'll soon be heading out. We're going to walk down to a sculpture garden; I may take some photos. Then we'll walk to the Blue Iguana and have lunch (more mole, yum), and then she'll drop me at Borders where I will diligently write my book review for Chris while she does some last-minute sight-seeing. Dinner with Paul and Marcia eventually, and then home again home again. Lovely day, lovely mood, happy happy joy joy. I'm going to go do one or two more tasks before my silly buzz wears off. :-)
Around 2ish, Karina and I headed downtown, by way of a statue garden.
Along the way, we paused to take photos of a LDS chapel -- and then
noticed that the telephone wires above the chapel were just covered with
little black birds.Blackbird singing in the dead of night...
They were great. Every once in a while, about a third of them would take off and just swoop around before settling down again. We didn't manage to capture a picture of that, though. That's okay -- I'm pretty happy with this picture. I just wish I knew more about photography. I love taking pictures, but aside from one very basic class in high school (which mostly taught us how to develop film, a skill I hope to never need again), I haven't ever studied photography -- or even how to compose a picture. I am woefully deficient in the visual arts. My aesthetic sense is okay, which means that if I take fifty pictures, I at least have a decent chance of figuring out which ones are awful. Although even there -- when Kirsten was here, she and I took some photos, and I thought it was fascinating the way she could take a photo that I thought was irredeemable, focus on the interesting part, and crop down to it. That was just cool. The ones of my eyes and braid -- she did those. The full originals were scary. :-)
At some point, I'll make time for some classes in this stuff. I'd love to do books that combined photography with writing. (Photography almost feels like cheating; it seems like the only art where you can accidentally get something pretty damn good (if perhaps not absolutely great) -- where's the sweat and toil?) I'm not sure what kind of books; maybe a Sri Lanka travel book? I just like making books, I think. I'd like to take a bookmaking class too, and make beautiful one-of-a-kind books, or lovely limited edition print runs. Ah well. Later...
We eventually made it to Blue Iguana for lunch (close to 4!), and then went to Borders, where I failed dismally at getting my review written. Chris is going to kill me. But Karina and I did talk about it (she read the book earlier this week), so I'm not feeling quite as stalled as I had been. Still hope for finishing it this morning; we'll see. I picked up a few books -- a replacement copy of Pamela Dean's Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary, because I gave my copy to Kirsten when she was here; a copy of Disch's Camp Concentration, because three separate people in three different contexts in the last month have been shocked that I haven't read it, and Molly Gloss's The Dazzle of Day, again on a recommendation. I'll let you know how the last two are; you already know I love Dean. Hung out there until Paul came and picked us up; we grabbed some raw veggies at my place and then headed over to his. There he made yummy fried wontons (stuffed with tofu seasoned with scallions and tamari) -- now I know how! I love learning new cooking techniques. And stir-fried vegetables over rice. We chatted and played a puzzle game whose name I'm forgetting; I discovered that when I'm tired, I suck at waiting to find out the answer -- I must know, immediately. This may be true even when I'm not tired; we'll have to wait to find that out. Really nice evening, as is usual with them.
When we came home (1-ish), we talked for a bit before bed. Her last night; it's weird having her only be here for three weeks. When we were dating, she used to come for three months at a time, her summer vacation (in our winter). The rhythms of the visits were entirely different back then; it's odd how different three days is from three weeks is from three months. Oh well -- one of these we'll have teleportation and all this will be irrelevant.
Okay -- book review, read two stories for class, SH contracts and checks, water the plants. Lots of time to do all that before noon. And somewhere in there, the SH t-shirts will arrive; fingers crossed that they look good! If they do, I'll put a picture up. If they don't, I guess I'll be annoyed. I think it would be really cool to have the six or so SH staff that are going to Potlatch all walking around at the con in their black t-shirts. Maybe we'd look intimidating and cool. Maybe people would want to join our gang. :-)
After noon, classes, then home for dishes and packing, then onto a plane at 7. Jed will meet me in S.F., and we'll go back to his place for dinner. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Sounds lovely.
9:50, Mountain time. Hey, guys. Sleepy baby. I'm on the plane to San Francisco, a little delayed and very tired. I spent a while staring out the window, and started to drift off with my forehead pressed against it; then the captain made an announcement and I woke up enough to listen to it, and the next ten minutes of trying to fall asleep were futile. It's not even a two hour ride; I think I can manage to amuse myself.
I've been reading Carol Emshwiller short stories; they're good, and really unusual. I'm not sure who I can compare her to. I'll let you know my overall impression of the book when I'm done with it, but so far, I'm pretty impressed.
I figured out what it is I like about take-offs. I had actually forgotten that I liked flying, what with all the tiring trips last fall, but I haven't been on a plane in almost two months, and I've found my pleasure in it again. And pleasure is exactly the word I want; I realized that a good take-off is just a little like an orgasm. Really. A slow acceleration, barely perceptible at first, getting faster and faster, more and more intense, until you're actually pressed back in your chair, and then you take off! Okay, it's only a little like an orgasm. But there is something of that same sense of building tension in the muscles, of heaviness of limbs, for me -- if I pay attention. I like it.
I'd really like to go to a space camp some day; be spun around and feel my weight increase (the amusement park rides just aren't the same), see just how my G force I can take...of course, that would just be the first step, preparatory to actually going into space. I used to be terrified, when I was a kid, that I'd turn out to be biologically unfit. I read all these science fiction stories, in which the young space cadets went through all these tests, and there was always at least one (and sometimes, all but one) who couldn't take it, who vomited uncontrollably in zero gee or who had horrible nosebleeds (and ear bleeds, ick) at high gee. And there was no way to know in advance if you were going to be one of those; I was so scared that I'd get to astronaut training camp, go through all the trials, and then find out that my body just couldn't do it. Heh. If I could just go back and tell my seven-year-old self that she had other things to worry about...
Took a break from this to try to write a song; think I've got something. It's called "Always Leaving" -- and what's funny is that it started out in the first line as a song about Karina (who, as you may know, has come to visit us most years for quite a while now...always inevitably leaving again to go home to Australia), but almost immediately morphed into something else entirely, something I can best describe as a certain state of mind. I think this is a better song than the other one would have been. The only thing that worries me now is whether I'll remember the basic melody long enough to get it down somewhere -- Jed has a keyboard, but I have other things I need to do tonight. We've started our descent, so, odd though this sounds, I think I may just wait 'til we land and then call home on my cell phone and sing the chorus (quietly) onto my voicemail. Geeky, but there you are. Technology is meant to make our lives easier, no?
Seat backs up, tray tables up, electronic devices put away -- the captain has spoken, so I'll talk to you later, my dears.
I did arrive safely in San Fran, to find Jed patiently waiting. It's so much nicer having a friend meet you at the gate than at the curb. I don't know why -- it's just a tiny bit of extra travelling to do alone, but somehow it has a much greater effect than it has any right to. I had grabbed some greasy onion rings in the Salt Lake airport, so I wasn't starving; we just went back to his place and eventually made some spaghetti. Very simple, but good. Didn't stay up too late; slept pretty well.
Friday we eventually made it up to the city around noonish. He usually works somewhere on the Peninsula (Redwood City, maybe?), but had a meeting at the main office in S.F. that day. So we dropped off our bags at our hotel, the absolutely gorgeous Ramada Plaza at 8th and Market (it had real Tiffany glass in the ballroom, very impressive and lovely), and then he toddled off to work, and I went to have lunch with Leigh Davidson, of Down There Press (the Herotica people). We ate at 12th and Folsom, a Thai place called Basil. It was fine, but I actually think I like the other Thai place around there better (name forgotten, much more warehouse-like in ambience, lots of chilis, fewer choices on the menu, but more tasty). Had a good time talking over what's happening in the industry, and what we'll be doing to promote Herotica 7 when it comes out (soon, hopefully -- Down There Press has bought Passion Press (audiobooks), and that combined with the untimely death of their financial manager has created much temporary havoc). I find it really interesting talking to Leigh; she knows so much more about publishing than I do. She actually sounded interested in the cookbook idea too, which is pretty cool. Have to let Sara know.
When I finished there, I headed over to the East Bay to stop briefly at Other Change of Hobbit, and then visit with Karen and Jeremiah. I'm going to go have some tea now and get ready for classes; I'll update again later.
7:30 p.m. The visit was lovely -- I'd put up photos, but Karen beat me to it. I really enjoyed the time with her; I was only there for an hour or two, but I would have liked to stay much longer. I miss her lots. And I feel guilty for not being there for her, with her; I would love to help with Jeremiah, and I just can't. There are times when having my friends scattered across the country really sucks; I think living my whole life in the same village would drive me crazy, but it would have at last a few advantages.
Eventually I dragged myself away and headed back across the Bay -- and I ran into Zed on BART!
Zed's another Clarionite, and someone I workshopped with in the Bay Area; it was much fun running into him again, and we had a good chat as we buzzed under the waters. (Despite all the times I've ridden BART, I still think it's cool that it goes underwater :-).
I think I'm going to actually skip the rest of Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning and afternoon; I'm going to do up a con report for SH, and I'll point you to that when it's up. Suffice it to say for now that it was a good convention, small but very charming, and the diversity panel went very well. People accused me of being a control freak, but only in the nicest way. :-)
Sunday, Jed and I headed back over to Karen's (the photos on her page with the pink t-shirt are from that day) to visit for a bit. It was his first time seeing Jeremiah. And he didn't even drop the baby! :-)
More later...tired now.
9:30. I was going to give you some more travelogue; I spent Sunday evening at David's, and the day in Berkeley, but I find that looking at the photos makes me mopey. I am just too fond of these places, these people. Briefly, then -- that's Jasmine, David's cat. Jupiter Cafe, where the Berkeley SFWA meets, on Shattuck. The courtyard leading to Panini, a hidden treasure with some of the best sandwiches in Berkeley. Games of Berkeley, which used to be a terrific games store; I hear it's not as good now. The Other Change of Hobbit, which is still a terrific bookstore. Karen's walkway. Anna's, where she and I met for coffee and conversation and supposedly 'work'. Au Coquelet, which has terrific desserts. Oh, and that's David's hand.
I miss the Bay Area.
This whole camera thing is changing the way I look at things. I was in
class just yesterday, and somehow we got on a related subject, and the
next thing you know, I was pulling the camera out of a pocket and asking
Francois (professor) if he'd mind if I took a photo. He said that that
was always okay with him, but that he wouldn't pose. Fine with me; I
really dislike posed people shots for the most part. (Well, I don't like
taking them, not yet, anyway. They seem boring.) I like this shot; I
think his steel briefcase is cool, and that book, The Subject of
Semiotics, feels almost painfully apropos for this photo (we're
moving into Camera Lucida next, which I suppose will be even
more so). I'm still not sure I understand camera etiquette; are
photographers allowed to just pull out cameras at the end of class and
start snapping pictures? Writers can certainly take notes on anything and
anyone, but that's far less intrusive; the person you're observing may not
even realize that you're doing so, whereas the camera, even with the flash
off, is much harder to miss. And that, of course, changes the nature of
the photo, doesn't it? It's always at least a little bit posed once they
know...unless you can get them to forget. It's interesting; a whole new
series of questions and challenges that I've never had to deal with as a
writer. Confusing too, but still fun. :-) One plus of the digital
camera is that I can immediately show the subject the photo and ask for
permission to use it/post it/publish it. Francois did give permission for
this usage; I was pretty sure he would. He's far more of a photographer
than I am, so I expected him to be pretty free about being photographed --
although perhaps that's not a necessary correspondence. I do rather feel
an obligation now, myself, to other photographers -- if I'm willing to
take pictures of people, then it feels like I should be willing to have my
picture taken. I'm not quite ready to grant blanket permission to anyone
to photograph me at any time...but on the other hand, I don't think I'm
likely to say no to a photo being published either. Well, as long as I'm
dressed. Naked photos are a whole 'nother category, with their own rules
and oddities. At any rate, I'm still trying to figure out what the
ethics are of all this; it's fairly easy to ask individuals for
permission, but what about parties? Crowd scenes? Strangers in the
park? Does there come a point where you lose the right to object to
having your picture published? A writer can write almost anything
about you, as long as it's not actively slanderous/libelous. Are the
rules different for photos? And what if it's just that you think you
look awful in that particular photo, and you want every picture of you
that's up on the web to be beautiful? I know lots of people who would
prefer it that way, including quite a few journallers. :-) Heck,
including me, really. I'll tolerate the non-beautiful ones...but I
wish I could sneak around the web replacing them with more attractive
images of me.
I suppose my ethics/practices on all this will develop as I go. Mostly, I'm just having fun with it right now. I love my camera.
Oh, before I forget, Kevin's job appointment is all official. He'll be starting a tenure-track job at UIC in the fall; here's the journal entry I wrote the day I found out. Reading it over, I realize that it sounds like I'm definitely moving to join him when I finish grad school. Ummm...that's more up in the air than it sounds in that entry. Long-term plans are a big hazy spot in my life; too many variables and not enough definites at this point. There was a time when that would have driven me crazy, but somehow, I'm okay with it these days. I'm not sure why, but my best guess would be that I love the work I'm doing, and that it gives me a sense of groundedness that I don't think I've had since I was a kid. I like it. (Sorry the photo of Kevin is so dark; I didn't take it, so you can't blame me. He generally avoids having his picture taken; the only other good ones I have of him are a) one rather overexposed one, also from the day he graduated, and b) one of the pair of us, dressed up for a wedding; he looks reasonably sharp, but he's got this little goatee and mustache thing that he had for a year or so back then, and ever since one of my guests commented that he looked like Hitler, I haven't been able to get that comparison out of my head. So you get the dark one instead. :-)
I'm going to go back to reading Emshwiller for a while; the plan for today is to finish the book of short stories, catch up on the academic work (I got a little behind over this weekend), and write my book review for Chris (yes, it was due last week, but Michael came in at the eleventh hour and saved my butt with another review). Oh, and get groceries. I have all sorts of grandiose plans for what I'll do with the rest of the day, but you and I both know that they're about as likely as...as a very unlikely thing. Yeah, that's right. I'm a writer, I am.
Maybe I better go take some more photos.
