Happy birthday Karen! I'm so glad that Par is making sure that you remember to take a little time to celebrate you, in the midst of all this baby-ness. :-) But I wouldn't expect anything less from him...
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!
Image Notebook
yesterdaythe snow over
the sun bright
everything melted
just enough
icicles on the trees
fields of crystal
a world
refracted
in quartz