Got my 2003 SFWA member directory in the mail yesterday and I’m not in it. Grr. Their membership process could stand to be streamlined.
Also, the new automated MPC process for Critters that Andrew has implemented still has some bugs in it. When I used my MPC for the story that went up last week, it appears to have knocked the other story I had in the queue into the holding area. So when it should have gone up this week, it didn’t. Grumble. I fired off a note to Andrew.
And finally, I’m having a Lupus/MCTD flare-up. I’m still on the Prednisone! What the hell am I doing having a flare-up? I should have noticed the warning signs over the weekend. I was all achy and tired on Sunday, but I thought that was just from an excess of fun at Fantasm. Now my temperature regulatory system is completely on the fritz and I’ve got a rampaging fever, my brain feels like it’s trying to smash itself out of my skull if I move, and everything hurts. Fuck. Calling my Rheumatologist as soon as his office opens.
Not my favorite day of days, all things considered.
Forty-one critiques at Critters for my Chinese-flavored fairy tale, with the possibility of one or two more trickling in before the week is up. And today my traditional fairy tale goes up. Ack. I’m so behind on my thank you notes! (Thank you britzkrieg and prosewitch, btw. More detailed email will be coming to you soon, but wanted to let you know that I got your crits and greatly, greatly appreciate the insightful feedback!)
I think I miscalculated the amount of free time I’d have these weeks. dude_the and Nick are still here (hurray!), and I’m still recovering from Fantasm. My correspondence (and writing) time has taken a rather substantive hit.
Urk. But urk in a good way. Life is better overfull than empty.
Still recovering from Fantasm so I took today off. dude_the and Nick greatly enjoyed their first Fantasm, and I expect they’ll be back for next year’s.
Yesterday, we thought about going in for the “Con in Review” panel, but by the time we dragged ourselves into a semblance of wakefulness, we decided we’d rather go out for breakfast and then come back to soak in the hot tub. I’m sad that we didn’t get a chance to make our goodbyes, but we did make some goodbye noises as we were leaving on Saturday (technically Sunday) to folks like Zwi and Hugh & Melanie, so that’s something.
All of us are suffering from various aches and pains. My feet still feel like the soles are one big bruise. The hot tub helped a lot. Then we spent the rest of the day watching the last three episodes of Angel (dude_the hadn’t seen them yet) and the first six or seven episodes of Firefly in order, starting with the proper pilot. Seeing the Fireflys that way makes me want to sock Fox in the mouth even more. When I saw that show for the first time, I was beginning to think that Joss had lost has storyteller’s knack, but my faith has been restored. Now I’m just pissed that the questions I have about who characters are and where they’re going with the storyline will never be resolved. Dagnabit. Firefly, shown in the proper sequence, was top notch entertainment. Going to watch the rest of them today after breakfast, which will probably be lunch as everyone is still asleep and gives every indication of remaining in that state for several more hours. Even Hobkin.
Fantasm rocked. Again. The Ms. Fantasm pageant, despite my stressing before the contest to get everything/one organized and coordinated, went smoothly. All hail the new Ms. Fantasm! (*sniffle*) And many thanks to my panel of judges: Jay Lind, redwitch, Zwi (Ms. Fantasm 2000), greysonwolf, and alladinsane.
Although Iron Bartender went a little less smooth, IMO. There were apparatus issues. When we asked for drink trays, the hotel provided us with a pair of these super-sized platters that I could barely lift, much less serve drinks on, and we had to wait for something more suitable to get rounded up. The stage was maybe half the size of what it had been in the past, and I didn’t have any way to move between the Iron Bartender side and the challenger side, so I could only interact with the challengers, which toned down what I did a lot because I didn’t want to give the Iron Bartenders TOO much of an advantage. Plus I didn’t get to jiggle with bardiva. Pook. But still, it seemed like everyone had a good time, which is the important thing. Even Matthew, who throughout judging the whole competition managed to emerge unscathed until the very last shot (mixed by 9jack9) which was very pretty (flamey goodness), but after blowing out, the flammable alcohol hadn’t been all burned away. Poor Matthew. I believe he said it was much like doing a shot of lighter fluid.
The party battles were fabu, as always, but we were disappointed that F.A.G.G. didn’t have a representative party. Last year, their’s was just amazing and got my party judge vote. And, of course, they’re hella fun people. After wandering around checking out the various party battle scenarios (were there really only three official ones this year??) I had overwhelmed my pathetic alcohol tolerance and had a hard time keeping my balance at the N9 party with the strobing lights, the drumming, and the dancing people. I was trying to drink enough so that I couldn’t feel the shooting pains in my feet (Fantasm is not the place to break in a pair of 4-inch heeled boots) and had failed, despite my lack of equilibrium. So we retired to the Bendovaho bash where I commandeered a spot on the couch that was next to the door and could see, wave, and chat with everyone that walked in, while at the same time had a good view of the various and sundry entertainment. To the chick in the blue plaid Catholic schoolgirl outfit: you made the party for dude_the! (Anyone have pictures of dude_the and this worthy young lass?) Also had a fantastic chat with Zwi, whom I adore. I wish she and her hubby lived closer to Atlanta so our conversations weren’t limited to once a year!
Matthew didn’t bring along the digicam as we expected we’d be too busy to want to keep track of it. We’ve already got a promise from Al to send us his pix, and Remy took some amazing shots of Starchild and me. I hope at least some of the people who snapped pix will email me.
One thing which I didn’t expect was meeting fellow Mensans at Fantasm. yakdog brought an attractive young man to my attention, and his first question to me was “You’re an active member of the local group?” It being Fantasm and all, a number of “local group” possibilities went through my mind, but Mensa wasn’t in that selection. As it turns out, there were several more Mensans attending Fantasm. Gotta love it when social interests overlap. Think that’s my cue to become more active in our Mensa local chapter.
Hope the Slave Auction paid for the damage to the elevators. Remy (going for $400+ has to have broken a record for highest bid for a male EVER–which absolutely tickled me. He’s totally worth it.) and the hypnotized chick in the red dress were doing their very best to raise enough money all on their own.
Today, I think we’ll take it easy. We need to go grocery shopping, and we might zip into town briefly for a bit. Nick has expressed an interest in refilling his tea supply from Teavana, and we’re almost out of Empress of China ourselves. Or maybe we’ll just veg.
Woke up at 8:30 this morning, and that’s so not good. We retired early from the Fantasm revelry last night. Probably left the hotel at around 1:30 AM. Got home to a very unhappy Hobkin at 2:15ish. Crashed out after feeding skunk at 3ish. Five and a half hours of sleep is not gonna cut it. Especially after only having four hours the night before.
Agh. Stupid insomnia.
But thus far, the convention is a blast! Matthew’s run a bit ragged getting the Ink Trak situated. And the attendance to the panels is not sterling. But Caitlin R. Kiernan is here. She’s absolutely fascinating. And Cecilia Tan and Cherie Priest (wicked_wish. There’ll be many more really cool panels today. Hopefully the word will get out and more people will eschew the spanking and electricity play demonstrations and come see . . . oh.
Well, maybe.
Passed on my Ms. Fantasm mantle to a lovely lass with amazing piercings in her back. I feel confident that my title is in worthy hands. But . . . *sniffle* . . . I’m no longer the reigning queen.
dude_the just woke up so I’ll continue my update later.
Oh. My. God. I can’t believe that Fantasm is almost here! So much to do, so little time.
We gave Hobkin a bath. Now there’s a damp, somewhat traumatized skunk hugging my lap.
I need to try on various outfits and decide what I want to wear for the convention, and assemble the various Ms. Fantasm stuff. Laundry needs doing. dude_the is flying in tomorrow, and Nick is flying in on Saturday. The house needs to be cleaned, the upstairs needs to be set up for guests. We should have gone grocery shopping. Um, maybe we still will before dude_the‘s plane arrives.
Yikes. What am I doing on LJ? 
Woke up at 2 am today for no reason and now can’t get back to sleep. Took a mega honker prescription-strength muscle relaxant prescribed for my TOS and now I feel light-headed and a bit giddy. Hoping that will knock me back into sleepyland soon.
Bought an electric lawn-mower today. Sigh. Cheaper than getting a service. And it’s nice and clean, environmentally sound, and fairly light. Matthew will probably sweep it over the yard tomorrow. He’s reading the instructions now. Hope he doesn’t mow over the extension cord.
Finished the daunting re-write of the that fantasy piece I’ve been laboring over. It ended up being around 7K words. That’s after a one-thousand words cut, and new words stuck in to replace them. After the re-write, I was up about 600 words from the zero draft. That’s not too bad as I wondered if the changes I was going to make would bump it into being a novelette. Apparently not. Glad to have the rewrite complete. Going to have Matthew read it again and then throw it up on Critters.
Hmm. I need another MPC.
Okay, now I’m dizzy. Going to go lie down.
Went to see the Cirque de Soleil show Varekai last night. There’s something about the Cirque de Soleil that appeals to everyone, from pig farmer to perfumed preppy. They’re amazing.
Although Varekai wasn’t my favorite of their shows (Mystere still wins out for me), they had two aerial acts that were so magnificent and beautiful that I actually felt that ache in my chest I get before I start to cry. One was the first act with “Icarus” in a sort of chrysalis/net/rope apparatus, and the other was with a pair of scantily black-clad male acrobats doing an Aztec-themed soaring act on a pair of bungee-rope things. Dang, but not knowing the names of the apparatus is really making this awkward to describe. Well, I wouldn’t be able to do it justice anyway.
The only thing that really marred my enjoyment of the show was that our seats were behind this big lighting tower which obscured a portion of the stage, and during the see-saw and contortionist act, the performers were squarely blocked from view for portions of the time.
But it was still an excellent show.
Matthew did first reader duties on my 6000+ word fantasy and my 2000 word Chinese-flavored fairy tale. From his comments, I think it makes more sense to polish the fairy tale and throw it up on Critters this week with my MPC instead of the fantasy. The rewrite on the fantasy piece is going to be a substantial undertaking–something I plan to get cracking on today. From his suggestions, I’m thinking of knocking off a third of it with at least that much needed in new prose. The story’s going to need to go in a completely new direction, which is good, as I wasn’t happy with the Macro at all. But I’m a little daunted by the magnitude of the rewrite.
Saw the Ophthalmologist on Thursday. I haven’t been able to wear my gas perm lenses for weeks without them hurting me. My eyes are very, very dry. He says I probably don’t blink enough since I work in front of a computer day in and day out, and when I’m not doing that, I’m reading. Glarg. So he gave me a prescription for a new eye-drop product which is supposed to be some sort of breakthrough on the dry eye front. Sigh. So yesterday I learned how to put drops in my eyes. Until now, Matthew’s always helped me if I needed to put drops in my eyes, but if I need to do it a couple times a day, it’s too silly for me not to learn how myself. So I did. And it was messy, wet, and cold. But I did it. I’m a big girl now.
Why is it that early morning insomnia always hits on the weekends? Dagnabit. Woke up at 5:30 totally alert and awake, and now I can’t get back to sleep. Hobkin woke up to keep me company (actually he woke up to go tearing around the house) so I fed him an early breakfast.
What is it about homeowners associations that they’re full of busy-bodies who don’t have anything better to do than to fret about what their neighbors are doing with their own homes? The president of our HOA was very upset because her neighbor was painting his fence white. Freaking white! It’s not like he wanted to paint zebra stripes or rainbow polka dots on his fence (and, personally, I’d be amused to see that), he wanted to paint his fence white!
And they’re upset about the state of our lawn. Okay, our lawn is pretty haggard, as is the lawn of a couple other people in our subdivision, so we’re not alone, but is it really worth all that much dwelling upon? Sheesh.
These people massively need to get a life. I hate that we have an association. Matthew has been a mitigating influence on some of their truly anal and intrusive proclivities, but his term of office ends in October. I shudder to think what sort of nazi committee we’ll end up with after that.
Damn neighborhood fascists.
