Thursday, May 24, 2012

working too hard will give you a heart attack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack

I didn't blog last night, not because anything was wrong, but because I am a lazy wench and didn't feel like blogging. So, to briefly recap (since I must go to bed immediately)...

Yesterday was lovely, albeit unproductive. I spent nearly three and a half hours catching up with Lorena, our neighbor who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nigeria back in the '60s, was my Talented and Gifted teacher in junior high/high school, and is married to the town's Presbyterian minister. I took her a box of caffeine-free herbal tea, and we discussed life and books and small town goings-on, etc., which was all v. nice. Today, I vowed to get stuff done, and I did some of the stuff that has been weighing on me for ages - in particular, I waded through three email inboxes (although there's still a lot of stuff left to answer in all three of them) and did a bit of stuff for my SF romance chapter (namely inviting a speaker for this summer).

I also had lunch with [censored] and my nephew Zane in Millerton; [censored] and Zane put up more electric fence to expand the miniature cows' pasture, and my dad watched from the window and occasionally called them with instructions. When it was time for them to break for lunch, I went with them even though I hadn't showered or put on any makeup - usually not a problem for Millerton, since it's predominantly farmers/construction guys, but I ran into my old bio teacher turned principal turned superintendent, so that's slightly unfortunate. But my cheeseburger sans bun was good, and I was pleasant even when [censored] and Zane ordered pie and ate it in front of me.

My mom made a delicious supper (fajitas), and I got sucked into an episode of "Criminal Minds", which I usually find disturbing, but I turned off the kitchen tv before the second one started so that I could get back to work. I had to pull together my notes and handout for a talk that I'm giving tomorrow at the Cedar Rapids Public Library - Cedar Rapids is 3.5ish hours away from here, which is a long ways to go for an hour-long talk, but my mom's best friend moved there several years ago. Her daughter is a director at the National Czech and Slovak Museum in Cedar Rapids and set up the talk through a friend of hers at the library, and I'm excited to go - it will be good to see them, and it's also a good chance to talk to some writers whom I don't know. But, as usual, I ruminated/stressed about it for weeks, then pulled together the talking points and handout in <90 minutes - it's a shame that I always do this to myself.

So anyway, I should really sleep if I'm going to get up and make myself pretty and drive to Cedar Rapids (and then drive back in the dark through deer infested roads). It's a toss-up on whether to take my beloved old Sunfire or my dad's truck - the Sunfire gets better gas mileage and is easier to park, but if I hit a deer with it, it's much more likely to kill me, so I'm torn. Wish me luck either way - goodnight!

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