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| 2009-07-17 00:58 |
| [links] Link salad flies to California with a smile on its face |
| Public |
| books, california, conventions, cool, culture, green, links, personal, polls, pubishing, reviews, science, tech |
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Don't miss the upcoming Borderlands Books events in San Francisco on 7/18: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]
In the same vein, there's an open dinner in San Francisco next Monday: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]
The blog subtitle poll
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) selfavowedgeek reviews Green [ Powell's | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Borders ]
More on steampunk from the Onion's AV Club — A summary of the history and current state of steampunk as literature.
Letters to Myself with a dead cute poll
1930 Shell Gas Station — When architecture meant something, damn it.
The Motor Behind the Fun — 60 horsepower to move 200 tons of steel. (Thanks to tetar.)
To Sleep, Perchance to Analyze — A very smart alarm clock. (Thanks to my Dad.)
Cryovolcanism on Charon? — Centauri Dreams with some more planetary science so cool it's icy.
?otD: Friday again?
7/17/2009 Body movement: n/a (travelling) This morning's weigh-in: n/a (travelling) Currently reading: Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold
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Your Friday moment of zen.
Wasp on rose, photographed by me in Portland, OR.
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| 2009-07-17 02:02 |
| [travel] And so I am away (with bonus updatery) |
| Public |
| books, calendula, california, cancer, child, conventions, family, green, personal, portland, travel |
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For those playing along with the takehome game version of "Where's Jay?", I'm flying out of Omaha this morning, via Denver, to San Francisco. I will meet up with calendula_witch this afternoon, and the_child will join us this evening.
Tomorrow is the two Borderlands Books events [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ], one for Green, the later one for Footprints.
Sunday we're catching the King Tut exhibit, then putting the_child on a plane home to her mother. I've got medical appointments Monday and Wednesday to firm up the second opinion on my cancer treatment plan, then I'm back to Portland on Thursday. Friday I'm off to Seattle for a reading and signing at University Books that night, followed by the Clarion West party, I believe for David Hartwell. I'll be bringing the_child to the UBooks event as well.
Back to Portland that Saturday for some family time with my visiting brother, then calendula_witch arrives that Sunday because I have two more cancer appointments the following week, including what we expect to be the chemo prescribing appointment in 7/27. At that point I'll find out if I can make it to Worldcon or not.
More as it develops.
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Well, that's it. 2,900 words today in 90 minutes. First draft done at (a bizarrely short for me) 114,900 words. The whole novel is there, recognizably corresponding to the outline approved by arcaedia and casacorona. Ending needs work, but so do the beginning and the middle.
As mentioned before, I think I wrote short because Fred was running ahead of the cancer wavefront. If chemo goes well, I'll start revising sometime this fall, otherwise I'll wait til the spring and the end of chemo to revise. Either way I'll make deadline with plenty of time to spare.
I'll have more thoughts about process, manuscript length, what this implies for my upcoming revisions and everything else, after all this has had time to sift through my subconscious. For now, well, it's enough to be done.
( A final WIP )
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Unusually, I rented a car here in San Francisco. This is because the_child is arriving in a few hours, and the witchmobile is a two-seater ride. I don't think my kid needs to cruise around the City by the Bay locked in the trunk of a Miata, if you know what I'm saying.
The Hertz counter at SFO was like a refugee camp. Actually, all the car rental places were. (It's a big area offsite with a common waiting room.) Hundreds of people in there, many slumped over their luggage, wailing babies, the whole business. Being a frequent traveler, I smugly whisked my way downstairs to the Gold counter. Where my name was not on the magic tote board, necessitating a not-so-smug trip inside where about twenty people were in line. (This is very unusual.)
As I finally got to the head of the line, perhaps thirty minutes after standing in it, two women walked in the door and right up to the clerk who was about to beckon me over. This irritated the heck out of me. I put a big smile on my face, stepped close to them, and in my best passive-aggressive sweet voice asked, "Excuse me, but were you in line in front of me?"
The older of the women gave me a sour look and said, "No, but we just have a question."
I said, "Ma'am, we all have questions. And we've been standing in that line back there a very long time waiting our turns."
She looked away from me, so I added, still very nicely, "Think how you'd feel if I did this to you after you'd been standing in line."
"We'll only be a minute," she said. Her friend was looking everywhere but at me, deeply embarrassed.
I told her, "Well, you do what you think is right, ma'am. Thank you for your consideration."
As they were leaving, after conducting a fairly complex transaction involving the second woman as a driver on the first woman's contract, I leaned close again and said, still in a calm voice with a smile, "I really appreciate your thoughtfulness."
The older woman mumbled an apology and they slunk out.
Obviously it did me no good — the clerked still helped them, line jumpers or no, and they weren't embarrassed enough to give it up, forcing me to wait another five minutes or so — but I hope like hell they were at least a little galled by their sense of entitlement.
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