but brutus is an honorable man

Today was bizarre but lovely. I spent most of the day watching Shakespearean theatre in Dutch, which is not what I usually do in ye olde Iowa (or anywhere else). It's likely that none of you recall my blog post from 17 March 2017, when I went to a six-hour play in London called ROMAN TRAGEDIES. However, I recall it - it was a v. inventive, interesting piece of theatre, mashing together Shakespeare's CORIOLANUS, JULIUS CAESAR, and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA into a six-hour play set in a 21st-century newsroom, replete with tickers counting down the minutes until major characters' deaths, tvs and cameras all over the stage filming and reproducing the action as it happened, etc.

So, since that production was amazing, I've followed the acting troupe on Instagram ever since, and so I discovered they were doing a one-night-only livestream of the play today. Of course, evening in Amsterdam (did I mention they're Dutch? so it's English subtitles) is morning here, and so the play started at 8am. I didn't bother to get up for Coriolanus, but I settled in just in time to watch Coriolanus die and segue into Caesar.

Watching it on TV was definitely a bit different - the audience piece of the live performance was really cool, because for most of it you could actually mill around onstage, buy a drink at the onstage bar as the play was happening, and sit in the middle of the action. But I also got to really see the actors up close, and that brought its own delights. And I could stay in my pajamas and then shower during a longer intermission, so that was a bonus as well.

Another bonus was that I somehow tricked [censored] into almost five hours of Dutch Shakespearean theatre - he came into my room to find out what I was doing just as I was settling in, and he ended up hanging out and watching. Since he got sucked in, we used a scene change to move my Chromecast from my bedroom to the bigger tv in the downstairs living room, where we were able to watch in some bit of comfort (not total comfort, since it was -5 degrees out and the heat in the basement is not totally keeping up).

Needless to say, I quite enjoyed the play, and it was a very welcome break from the same-old-same-old. However, spending five hours basically watching subtitled tv was not how I usually spend my days and it somehow took a lot out of me. So I spent the afternoon recovering a bit, and then I cooked supper - I tried a new sausage and peppers recipe from Barefoot Contessa, along with mashed potatoes, and they were delish.

My mom also came home from the hospital somewhat early because it's so cold and the roads are so bad - the road outside our house is not a priority for the country road crews, and she barely made it, Luckily it's #smalltownlife and she knows who grades our roads, so she called him to find out when he'd be starting out in the morning to clear at least part of the road. So, fingers crossed she can make it back to the hospital tomorrow or else my dad will be quite bored.

And now, I really need to sleep - goodnight!

i could wait a year, but i couldn't wait three

Luckily I have tomorrow off, so the possibly epic post-holiday case of Sunday Scaries has been postponed to Monday. That meant today was some semblance of relaxing/productive. I'm still wiped out from the drive yesterday - I slept for more than eight hours last night, and still had to take a brief nap this afternoon.

But I managed to make breakfast, shower, talk to Veronica, order lunch, talk to my parents, and then do a bunch of stuff around the house in the afternoon/evening. I still haven't bought groceries, so that's a task for tomorrow - but thanks to my freezer, I had some bolognese sauce (on top of freshly-cooked pasta) for dinner, and it was delish.

I also spent some quality time this afternoon / evening considering my goals for the year. I feel like 2020 was pretty aimless, although the main task was surviving with my sanity mostly intact, and I am happy that I accomplished that. And the year wasn't all bad for me personally - despite all the challenges, I'm grateful that I've had quite a bit of time to reflect on my patterns and habits, think about how I can live a healthier and more joyful life, what I want and how I want to get it, etc. The challenge right now is that I feel ready to set some seriously ambitious goals, but it's hard to set seriously ambitious goals when so much of the world around me is more uncertain than usual.

But that's a problem that I can't solve tonight - instead, I think it's time for bed so that I can be ready for whatever happens when Sunday Scaries turn into Monday Melodrama. Goodnight!

shut up and dance with me

Programming note: I intend to blog for the next few days as per usual...but there is a snowstorm bearing down upon us, and there is a chance we will lose power (perhaps for days), which may mean internet disappearance. Also, my phone is working somewhat sporadically and I may not be receiving all texts appropriately - so if you texted me since I've been in Iowa and I haven't responded, pls try again. Thank you for your understanding.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled content!

Today was quite fun, although I should have saved the title of yesterday's post for today, because 'all I really know is I don't want to know' is all too appropriate for recapping a family game of Cards Against Humanity. Uncle Mark, Aunt Kathy, and Drewbaby came down for the day, and we spent it playing games and eating leftovers (and the chili I made yesterday). First up was Balderdash, which we hadn't played in years (decades?) - it involves making up definitions for super obscure words, and then trying to guess the real definition rather than picking someone else's made-up definition instead. Unfortunately, everyone in this group is super smart (well, once we figured out that initialing our cards with 'w's didn't work in this group), so it made for a highly challenging and mentally taxing game. But it was still fun to play it, and I'm glad we dug it out of the games closet after so many years (but I may be biased, since I won both rounds - that's not even a #humblebrag, that's just a #brag).

After we tired of Balderdash, we switched to Cards Against Humanity, and we played that until it was time for the northern branch of the family to go home. As per usual, we learned far too much; it's slightly awkward to play with two sets of parents and their children, and I learned something about my physiological inheritance that should either make me feel #blessed or #nauseated (I'm going with #blessed, but others at the table may feel differently). There was also some discussion of a sex dungeon involving Barry Goldwater campaign buttons that I will never be able to bleach from my mind, but c'est la vie.

sssanyway. After the family left, I downloaded some books to my ipad in preparation for possible power outages, and I've got everything charging, etc. I also drank some tea and watched some fine CBS programming (mostly the news and its dire predictions for snow). And now, I'm going to sleep and hope that tomorrow's winter wonderland is heavy on wonder and light on winter - goodnight!

the piano's this melancholy soundtrack to her smile

First things first - unless you're reading this in your email, you may have noticed that I changed the template. I haven't changed the template in approximately six years, but there was something janky about the sidebar that had bothered me for a long time, and so I finally decided to fix it. Since I'm probably the only person alive who blogs like this every day, I decided to go for broke and make it pinkish-purplish. You're welcome.

Now that that's settled...today was precisely as lazy as I wanted it to be. I got ten hours of sleep again last night (I think my UP band thinks I've got some terminal disease that's keeping me bedridden), and so I had a v. leisurely and desultory breakfast long after the rest of my family was awake. Then I did an hour or two of work for the day job, which I spit on. When that was over, I went to the (former) state park and walked around for forty minutes. The pros of going to the park were that I wanted to go for a walk after being cooped up in the house and the park has a paved road instead of the muddy mess of gravel outside my house; the cons of going to the park were that it was only 37 fucking degrees and the sky was attempting to spray a wintry mix all over my face (that sounds vaguely dirty). Also, I was the only person there the whole time, which was mildly disconcerting given my hectic city life. But I saw two deer while I was walking, and I nearly killed some wild turkeys on the way home, so that was a great brush with nature!

After getting home, I showered, made and guzzled coffee to combat my sudden, splitting caffeine-withdrawal headache, and generally hung out. I was v. sloth-filled tonight and didn't write or read or do much of anything else, but I was trying to avoid looking at my ipad screen before bed, so I'll take it. And then I undid all my good work by staring at my laptop for the last half hour playing with my blog. Oops. But now I must sleep so that I can wrap gifts and continue my general slothfulness tomorrow - goodnight!

i am an idiot walking a tightrope of fortune and fame

I was in a truly foul mood for most of the day, which was unfortunate; somewhere in the tangle of what I desire and what I demand of myself and what I can realistically achieve and what I actually achieve, there lurks a monster that occasionally tries to eat me. Sadly, the monster is not a raccoon, although I admit that I don't particularly want to be gnawed on by one of those either. And I know that my staggering ambition is one of my biggest strengths and one of my most fatal flaws - I would probably be a warlord if I enjoyed riding ponies across Asia, or a serial killer if I liked to collect ears. But since I'm less bloodthirsty than that, I'll have to settle for wanting to write a lot of kickass books and occasionally having dark, despairing days when it seems that the words will never come and I can't get anything done in any area of my life, save for making tea and putting on pants (towering achievements).

C'est la vie. Today got better in the end; I spent most of the day despairing and moping and trying (and failing) to get stuff done for the day job. But sometime around six, I flipped over the 15-minute timer on my desk (I just bought it at CB2 because they finally had a color other than lime green for the first time in years, and I'm in love), and I forced myself to write in my journal for the fifteen minutes that it took the sand to fall through. And I actually came to some pretty calming realizations that enabled me to pull out the cards for Thorington's book and work quietly and calmly for another hour. Then I talked to Terry, ate some peanut butter, I read all of a pretty terrible young adult fantasy novel straight through - it was probably a waste of five or six hours, since it really wasn't very good, but it did help to clear my head.

And now I'm going to go to bed to the sound of the foghorns, and hopefully wake up tomorrow with a clearer heart and the drive necessary to walk out and seek the story at a cafe or on the water. Goodnight!

i fell into a burning ring of fire

I really wanted to go to bed three hours ago, but as usually happens with me, I got a magical second wind that kept me working even when my eyeballs felt rather Saharan and my back curled up like a burning piece of paper. No, that second wind is not meth - ask my dentist for proof that I'm not a methhead. But wherever that second wind came from, it enabled me to take care of some minutiae for my romance writer career, write a much-belated journal entry, and generally get myself organized.

And really, that's what my day was - an attempt to get organized in the face of overwhelming task lists and self-inflicted pressures. I woke up earlier than I wanted to, which was still later than I should have, and took care of some tings before going upstairs and scrounging for the breakfast I had missed. Then I spent the afternoon taking care of more tings, including wrapping all the presents I needed to wrap, going with my father to Chariton to check out walkers for my grandmother (never thought I'd be a walker model, but since I'm only two inches taller than her, it turned out that it was good that I went along since I could test drive them), doing some more wrapping, watching some fine CBS programming, etc.

My break is going far too quickly, and I'm really not looking forward to going back, if only because next year is shaping up to be a crazier repeat of this year - I'm already signed up for as many or more trips than I took this year, and I want to write three books instead of writing one and releasing two, and I will probably have more work to do at the day job, and I want to see my friends at some point (and in this one instance, 'friends' means the people I knew from college/work, not the fine fellows at my favorite French bistro). Oh, and I want to keep working out and get more focused on my health. Soooo...that's all totally doable, right? But only if I get the year off on the right foot by getting in some deep, deep relaxation this week, so maybe I should put the laptop down and go on a tech moratorium. Ha. Something close to that wouldn't be a bad idea, though. Goodnight!

when i hear those voices at night

I should have gone to bed a million years ago, but I'm living the hip NYC life. The hip NYC life in a capsule hotel, which may make a little claustrophobic, but it feels v. hip nonetheless. I spent the day at the NYC office, which is in a massive building that takes up an entire city block and is super confusing to the uninitiated (or those who can't read maps that say which floors each elevator bank stops on, since we have parts of a bunch of different floors, none of which you can access from wherever you happen to be). But the pieces of the building that I saw when I wasn't utterly lost were totally nice. So nice, in fact, that I had a moment of wishing that I could move to New York. That moment stabbed itself in the face when I remembered that NYC's version of waste management is for every building to pile trash bags on the street until someone comes along to pick them up or the mythical Rat King of New York (tm) turns them into his fiftieth summer palace. I don't think I could handle that level of squalor nearly as well as I handle my liquor.

But I digress. Work was fine, and then I took the subway back to my hotel, where I was theoretically going to work until I realized I had no interest in working. Then I was theoretically going to write, but I had no interest in that either. So I read a lot of stuff on the internet, took a nap, and then went out for an unnecessarily-late 10pm dinner with Terry and Annie. Annie is in town from Australia and Terry is in town to see Annie, and they invited me out for dinner after the show they went to see. The food was excellent (steak, can't lose) and the company was also excellent, and it was all worth it even if I didn't get home until midnight. I spent the last hour doing work because I'm a stupid, uncontrolled addict, and now I'm going to go to sleep so that I can be worth a damn in my day of meetings tomorrow. Goodnight!

book birthday

And so, in an utterly surprising, rather anticlimactic turn of events, my latest book came out today. Color me shocked. Also, color me exhausted. My agent uploaded to Amazon and Nook this morning, and both systems have gotten faster, so they were live by noon or 2pm. Yay!!! And now begins the waiting game of seeing how it does in the rankings, and waiting for the first review, and hoping the first review isn't from someone who f'ing hates it. I'm a little nervous because I don't feel like I had enough time to promo it, and I have virtually nothing lined up...but what I do have lined up is good, so hopefully I can pull some more stuff together and go into overdrive to get people to read it.

And if nothing else, it's done. So if you were sick of hearing me bitch about Nick and Ellie, get ready for the names 'Prudence' and 'Alex' to burn themselves into your retinas - I apologize in advance for the next eight or nine months.

Anyway, I was nonstop-on today, which is probably when I'm at my happiest, so that was good. I spent the whole shuttle ride updating my website, uploading to Apple, taking care of business, etc. Then, I slogged hardcore all day; I'm done with training and starting to answer customer questions, which is actually kind of fun, even if it's something I did nine years ago and had long since graduated from. I also had lunch with Ziv, whom I managed back in the dark ages, and coffee with Alana and Joy - Alana is a longtime blog reader (yay) and Joy used to work for the big boss with me, so we all go way back. And then I caught a shuttle to the evil city, dropped my backpack off at home, took a taxi to the movie theatre, and met up with Lauren (aka Subz) to watch 'Argo'.

The movie was totally awesome, although I feel just a little weird that the last two movies I've seen have involved me eating tasty snacks while watching regime change/torture in the Islamic world (although this was way, way less intense than 'Zero Dark Thirty'). But, go 'merica, right? The real revelation in this movie for me was Ben Affleck -- not that he can direct (although the movie was fantastic), but that he's so freaking hot. When did that happen? The beard and the slightly world-weary look in his eyes makes a huge difference. Or maybe it was half a bottle of zinfandel (although I maintain that the zin was medicinal and an attempt to disinfect my stomach while eating movie theatre ceviche). But seriously, dude can rescue me from Tehran any day of the week. Also, did the Argo crew find Kyle Chandler asleep in the CIA set that they borrowed from Zero Dark Thirty and ask him to play a bit role, or was it the other way around?

And now actually seriously, I'll say that the movie was v. satisfying (well written, well paced, well directed) and also made me deeply, deeply wish that I had grown up in the seventies. Also, I wish that I were Alan Arkin - Subz told me that I could pull off his attitude, but I think that while I may have the wit/sharp tongue, I don't have the killer instinct to tell someone to go fuck themselves. Perhaps this would be a good area for development for me. Or perhaps I like having friends. But then, if I told people to go fuck themselves, I wouldn't end up getting my breasts massaged in India. This is a tradeoff that will haunt me, I'm sure.

Enough of this nonsense - it's time for bed. Clearly I'm giddy and irrational because my book is done and I can contemplate not writing for two or three days - yay. But now, I must sleep; hopefully my dreams are a little less psychotic tonight, since last night I dreamed that I was a hostage on some tropical island, which turned out to be the tip of a peninsula that developers wanted to take over, and Seeley Booth, the sharpshooter/FBI agent from Terry's beloved show 'Bones', came in to rescue us, which was super hot. Also, the guy holding me hostage really liked my glasses, so that was nice, but he was a total dick and not really a good person, so I'm glad Booth came in to rescue me. So maybe I do hope my dreams are psychotic again? We shall see, we shall see. Happy book birthday to me, and hopefully tomorrow I'm a little less insane (unlikely, right?). Goodnight!

don't you worry, don't you worry child

Um. So, I have news. And the news is that I started back at my former place of employment today. I didn't share any of this because a) from what I've read (in a book), it's ill advised to share information about pending job offers, interviews, etc. on such a public forum (to all four of you who read this), and b) if I didn't get the offer, I didn't want to feel all weird and embarrassed about it (although I would have been seriously miffed).

sssanyway, so what happened was that someone I used to work with contacted me in December about a role with the books team related to self-publishing, which is obviously right up my alley (or 'in my wheelhouse', as the business people like to say these days). So I interviewed for it approximately a day and a half after I finished the previous draft of my book (ill-advised, since I hadn't slept) and four days before I went home for the holidays. I got the offer while I was escorting my writer friend around SF, accepted it, and started today. This has all been mind-bendingly fast, and I'm super, super excited about the job - an enthusiasm that probably isn't coming across because I sort of stopped sleeping in an attempt to finish all the things I wanted to finish before returning to the man. So I spent most of today pounding caffeine and trying not to fall asleep during videos I've already seen.

But today was great; I made it into work and into orientation in a reasonably on-time fashion (read half an hour late, but that was entirely due to an accident on 101, and all I missed was everyone else standing in line to finish paperwork), got set up with my laptop, etc., and sat through an orientation on a company that I had spent more time at than most of the people giving the orientation. Heh. Then my manager picked me up and showed me my desk, and I'm v. excited to actually meet the team tomorrow and get started with something other than learning what the health insurance provider options are, etc.

Post work, I drove back to the evil city (which feels more evil with every mile I spend commuting) and had dinner with Lauren (aka Subz), which was a lovely way to catch up and decompress after my first day of work. And now, at the ridiculously early hour of 10:30pm, I need to go to bed; I'm going to try taking the shuttle tomorrow, which means I need to get out of the house at a specific time, which means sleep is imperative.

Upon rereading of this post (I do occasionally skim for typos because I care about you guys!), I realize that I don't sound very enthusiastic. That's not the intended takeaway - but I'm not sure there *is* an intended takeaway. Today was just v. strange and surreal, because I was back in a place where I spent almost all of my adult life, and it felt like I had never left, and yet the last two years have been such a dramatically different experience that I think it will be an adjustment period for me to get used to business, working with people, wearing pants, etc. The truth is that I'm super, super psyched for the job itself, but the lifestyle changes around it are going to feel a bit surreal. But that's to be expected, and really, I'm kind of looking forward to wearing pants again. So yay to that. Goodnight!

the dog days are over

NICK AND ELLIE ARE DONE.

There are no more words.

Today was pretty brutal -- for all of you who are wondering, idly, why I don't write forty pages every day, it's because the first five pages are reasonable, the first ten pages are mostly manageable, and every ten-page increment is carved out of my brain in such a way that those processing centers are truly no longer capable of processing anything. I drove home last night in a daze, thankful that I could use cruise control (and, btw, I saw FOUR FUCKING DEER by the side of 280 at one a.m. last night -- if I had hit one in California, where I have never seen a deer on the freeway before, I would have been truly upset). I woke up this morning in even more of a daze. Everything felt foggy and weak...and yet I had to rally because I had lunch plans that required me to be coherent and presentable.

So I showered, put on a cute skirt (old) and some brown sweater leggings (new) (oh, and a top, also old - I didn't go to lunch like a bare-breasted fertility goddess, although someone there apparently thought I left my job to have babies rather than write books, so maybe I'm exuding some pheromones). And then I drove down to the water to have lunch with Gretchen, one of my former directors. She was in fine form, and it was good to catch up with her and talk about life. Then I had a second lunch, which just consisted of drinking a diet coke while Katrina ate her first lunch. Then Katrina made me a latte (fancy), I came home and took care of some calls and errands, and then I stared stupidly at my laptop trying to figure out how I was going to think clearly enough to finish this book. Clearly that didn't go well, since when I decided to make a piece of toast with peanut butter, I dropped the bread on the kitchen floor, then picked it up and rinsed it off before putting it in the toaster. Weird.

By the time Terry got home at seven, I was basically nonverbal and unable to tell her anything at all -- so I stopped pretending and came upstairs, where I slogged, successfully, for five hours. And now, the book is done and off to my agent, and I am going to sleep the sleep of the just, then get up tomorrow and try to tackle everything I need to do before I leave for Iowa in five days. And maybe I'll celebrate the book being done -- or maybe not, since it won't feel real until my brain is functioning again. Goodnight!

i belong with you, you belong with me, you're my sweetheart

Hello! I had too much eggnog.

But I will continue to write this blog post as though I've never imbibed any alcohol in my life, since I like to pretend that I'm sober and see whether I can make it through the post without typos. Today was less productive than I had intended; I was out of bed around nine-ish, and I made myself an awesome breakfast (three slices of bacon, one egg, and one slice of gluten-free toast, where the limiting reagent was the toast; I only had one slice of bread left in the freezer, and runny eggs sans toast is a tragedy, so I had to cut back on the eggs this morning). Then I thoroughly cleaned the kitchen because I am turning into my mother. Then I reread what I wrote yesterday, did some light edits, and pronounced myself satisfied with what I had produced (miracle!).

But I had to go to the glorious south bay today, which interfered with everything. First it interfered with my writing; I had to shower, get dressed, dry my hair, and do all those other things grownups supposedly do. Then, I went to my optometrist, who pronounced my eyes to be wonderful, but not before he dilated them, which made the drive home and most of this evening just a little odd. Then I drove home during the beginning of rush hour (not really a good thing to have done, since I'm considering getting a job, and rush hour reminds me how wonderful my current shindig is). And then I had to work on my Christmas list, since I knew that if I didn't send it to my mother today, she would kill me...

I took a rebellious break, though, and had dinner with Lauren (aka Subz, aka the bride in that epic wedding I went to last month) and Terry (aka my long-suffering roommate who came home to discover that I was singing to the same song over and over and over again, as is my wont). The food was tasty (fish tacos), the wine was also tasty (a pinot grigio that was more of a rose (row-ZAY, but I'm too lazy to find the little accent to go over the 'e'), and a pinot noir), and the company was tasty (I refrained from licking either of them). Then, Terry and I dragged Lauren back to our place, and I made a small batch of egg nog to get in the holiday mood (not hard, since you'll be in the holiday mood just mixing the stuff up - even the fumes are potent).

But Lauren left long ago, and Terry went to bed an hour and a half ago, and I'm just quietly rocking out alone with my last glass of eggnog and the feeling of satisfaction over sending my Christmas list before [censored] did, thus winning yet another skirmish in our interminable sibling rivalry. [censored] will win the war when he takes excellent care of our parents someday while I just throw money at the problem, but for tonight, I reign supreme. I shall go rest on my eggnog-soaked laurels now...goodnight!

it's the way we sing that makes 'em dream

This chapter of small town life is coming to a close, but another will be opening in about two weeks, so there's nothing to be sad about. Today was mostly productive, if you consider crossword puzzles productive. Ha.

Actually, I really was productive, just not maximally productive. But then, I woke up at eleven a.m. after having dreamed some of the strangest dreams in recent memory (a Helm's Deep-type battle against millions of orcs suddenly turned into my wedding ceremony, which took place in a castle to one of my high school classmates -- not sure whether killing orcs or getting married is more horrifying right now). So, I suppose maximal productivity wasn't in the cards. But I spent a few hours catching up on business stuff, exchanging emails with my agent (nothing noteworthy), sending many emails to the poor woman who took over my volunteer position with my local romance chapter, and otherwise organizing my thoughts about the edits for Nick and Ellie.

I took a break in the late afternoon to run into town and buy some sweet potatoes for my mother (Merry Christmas!), and I ran into one of my old high school classmates - luckily not the one I married in my dream, as that might have been super weird. Instead, I ran into Dusty and his wife Jessica (who was a couple of years behind us), and we caught up for five or ten minutes while blocking a key aisle in the store (I guess when there are only six or seven aisles, they're all key). They seem to be doing well, and we shared whatever info we have on our other classmates (which isn't much, since I only ever talk to Katie and Hannah and Dusty seems to be just as hermity as I am). Then I came home, ate supper with the parents, watched some fine CBS programming, and then came downstairs and went through the whole manuscript again, inserting notes about what I want to change where so that the direction for my revisions is as clear as possible.

And now that you're caught up on my day, I should go to bed; I need to write tomorrow, and I also need to pack, which is not a particularly daunting prospect since I'll be back in two weeks to pick up anything I forget. Goodnight!

long nights, strange men

If I were to draw a picture of my blood alcohol level for today, it would look like a two-humped camel (aka Bactrian, although perhaps I shouldn't have reveal that I know that). Or, perhaps my picture of a Bactrian camel would look like my alcohol consumption - I'm such a bad artist that any squiggly line could be meant to stand in for any other squiggly line. Sorry.

sssanyway, I was actually productive today, despite that inauspicious opening paragraph. I woke up, did a bunch of work, typed ten manuscript pages into my laptop, and had just started writing new stuff when the cleaners showed up. Yes, this is a first world problem. But since they seem to prefer if I'm not here while they clean, and I have no desire to hang out and watch them and feel guilty about my overly posh life, I immediately left. I had to go to the post office anyway, so I did that...and then I was walking back toward my place, with the intention of going to Starbucks and writing. But I got seduced by the vision of an outdoor table at a bar, since it was a legitimately warm day in the city (not 60 degrees, but like 80 degrees - unheard of). So I got a glass of white wine and intended to sit there and write while nursing my glass. Instead, I had three glasses of wine and some ceviche, and I overheard the most ridiculous conversation ever from an unemployed 47-year-old who seems to enjoy sleeping with married women with low self esteem (his 'friend' turned to me as soon as the guy went to the bathroom and said that he hadn't seen the guy in years, which is a clear sign of how ridic it all was). But, I still managed to write four pages, so I'll take it. And really, days like this come v. rarely to San Francisco, so I have no regrets.

Or rather, I would have had no regrets if it had ended there. Instead, I came home at 7 and made the brilliant move/mistake of texting Adit, who promptly said that he could have dinner at nine p.m. (I'll chalk this up as research into how Regency people lived, since they ate/drank/partied nonstop). That gave me just enough time to sober up for a bit before I met Adit and had another two cocktails + some truly delicious food at Delarosa. Even that might have been survivable, but he missed his bus, and so we had another cocktail at Mauna Loa, which was definitely not advised. But it was good to see him on his own, since it's been months and months since we've done a proper catch-up. And I got home at midnight, which is an hour earlier than Terry estimated, so I'll count that as a win. And now I should really sleep so that I can write through my hangover tomorrow -- goodnight!

there'll be peace when you are done

Sorry for not blogging last night; I was already in bed when I remembered that I hadn't blogged yet, and as nothing particularly exciting had happened, I didn't feel the need to get out of bed just to tell you that I am boring. And that sad fact continues to be true today - I only left the house to check my mail and to sit up on the roof, and I spent the whole day alternating between writing, cooking, and obsessing over natural disasters. I fully recognize that cooking and obsessing were merely attempts to procrastinate from the writing.

But the cooking was excellent - I made home fries with andouille sausage for breakfast, with two eggs over easy to enjoy with them, and I was v. v. happy as a result. And the disaster obsession was...interesting. I recognize that I'm a little OCD about being prepared for stuff, and my current level of preparedness for earthquakes is less than I would like it to be. Google gave me an earthquake kit once, and it's still in my car, but it's like five or six years old at this point, and I'm sure some of the stuff has expired. And I have shoes and a first aid kit under my bed, and a bunch of year-old bottled water in the storage unit, but that's not really a plan. I was randomly adding stuff to my Amazon cart as I thought of it, but then I scaled back and just bought a disaster preparedness guide (trying to find one that is reasonable without trying to convince you that you need a second way-off-the-grid home deep in the woods + a beater truck converted to run on biodiesel + two years' worth of beans is surprisingly difficult).

And, despite my decision to hold off on buying anything until I have a plan, I also bought a really cool solar-chargeable AM/FM/NOAA weather radio. While we never have weather in California, it feels strange to me not to have a weather radio given the reliance on them in my hometown, and this model is particularly cool because you can also charge your smartphone from it, which seems like an incredibly useful feature. If you want one, you can get it here.

In other news, I wrote several pages of zee romance novel, so that's good. And I hung out with Terry, which was also good. And now, I must sleep so that I can continue being productive tomorrow, hopefully without being convinced that the world is going to end (which may just be wishful thinking on my part, since if the world ends I don't have to finish this book). Goodnight!

no words, no talk, we'll go dreaming

I'm flipping exhausted - ridiculously, unnecessarily tired, and I think it's because I've burned out the word processing centers in my brain, and without words I totally lose my shit. Yes, I'm that crazy.

Today was lovely, really, but it was alllllll talllllkkkkkinnngggggg, which I haven't done in ages because I am a hermit and have been trying to focus on Nick and Ellie. I think my jaw is tired, even. And my neck hurts like someone stepped on it with a stiletto, so it's probably a good thing I'm getting a massage tomorrow. The day started with a 9:30am call with the younger sister of someone I didn't know at my old company who happened to see the flyer for my Authors@Google talk and asked if I'd be willing to talk to his sister about romance writing since she's attending the RWA convention for the first time this year. Yes, a tenuous connection at best - but I remember being young and having dreams, and I wanted to help her to realize hers. Or, feed off her youth like the Evil Queen in Snow White and the Huntsman. Either way.

Our conversation was lovely, though, and we'll likely get together for dinner or something during the conference, so that's nice. After talking to her, I made some coffee and took care of a couple of hours of romance career stuff - namely developing this Regency gaming hell workshop idea for a conference I'm attending next year, since the proposals are due tomorrow. That's actually going well, and I've lined up a surprisingly high-powered cast of supporting characters, so yay. Then I left my lovely fog-ridden neighborhood and drove to the south bay, where I had lunch at my favorite cafe with two of my favorite writer friends, Becky and Christine. We caught up on all sorts of life stuff over an hour and a half or so, but then Becky had to go to work (boo). At that point, I was going to go to the library or a coffee shop or something and feign productivity...

...but instead Chris offered to buy me a drink as congratulations for all my book stuff, which turned into us spending three hours at the Nut House, where I nursed a vodka cranberry and a Diet Coke (consecutive, not concurrent) while we discussed self-publishing, the writing life, etc., etc. She's going to Portugal with her husband this week - lucky bitch. So it was good to catch up, since I hadn't seen either Chris or Becky since before I went to Iowa.

Post Nut House, I went to Mountain View and had my semi-regular Friendship Renewal Dinner (tm) with Tolu, Jane, Joann, and Sarah (a rare five-person Friendship Renewal, since we usually lose somebody - usually Sarah). We had sushi, which I had been craving...and I suppose it was good to see them too, although all I really needed was some tasty eel and a bowl of agedashi tofu. I kid, I kid. We had a lot to catch up on, or at least I did, since I hadn't seen them since Iowa either, and I hadn't seen Sarah in even longer. So we hung out for quite some time, and then I gave Sarah a ride back to the evil city, which prolonged both the fun times and the talking.

And now I'm all talked out. Poor Terry got the briefest hello-how-are-you I've given her in quite some time, since the thought of talking any more made me a little ill. Then I came upstairs, sent some emails, and then proceeded to write this unexpectedly long blog post - I guess I'm not out of words after all. Sigh. Goodnight!

we might be laughing a bit too loud but that never hurt no one

I was told that my blog has been bad lately, since I'm mostly incoherent and semi-crazy (or vice versa) -- and for that I would apologize if I could remember the words. But it's not going to get better this weekend, even if there is a light at the end of the tunnel (yes, I'm using cliches -- sorry). I was too tired to work particularly effectively today, so I'm going to go to bed at the v. early hour of 11pm and hope that sleeping in my own bed rejuvenates me enough to continue the war tomorrow. We go over the top at dawn, as they say (or as they said in World War I, which I realize was almost a century ago, which seems crazy -- although why it seems crazy I don't know, since it's not like it was in my lifetime, but there was a time in my lifetime when there were still WWI veterans around and now they're all gone, like the WWII veterans soonish will be -- anyway, sorry, will cut off the tangent now). Luckily I don't face mustard gas when I emerge from my trench to go over the top (sorry, tangent came back!), but I've probably had enough caffeine to pickle my innards anyway.

Phew. Must rein in my thoughts and produce something coherent or you'll all leave me, and that would make me a sad panda. I woke up at 8:30 this morning, took care of a bit of stuff online, packed the rest of my belongings, talked to my agent for half an hour (nothing exciting, just going over logistical stuff around getting Heiress out to more channels, since we're out of the exclusive phase with B&N next week and it should go up onto Kindle on Friday!!), took a shower, and left Santa Cruz around 10:45. I was sad to leave, even if it's going to be great to sleep in my own bed. I drove straight to Palo Alto, where I had a salad at Sprout, then sat on a park bench (if it was covered in urine, it was at least dry urine) and talked to Katie for a glorious half-hour. Properly rejuvenated (okay, not rejuvenated at all, but I was in high spirits even if I was exhausted), I went to the stationery store and bought some silver Sharpies to use when signing bookmarks (since it's apparently all the rage to use metallic Sharpies at signings -- good enough excuse for me), then went to Stanford library and slogged until 9pm. It wasn't the most effective slog ever, and I took a break to leave campus at 5 and get some Chipotle (eating Chipotle three days this week probably wasn't wise either, but c'est la vie). But what I wrote was excellent, and if I buckle down tomorrow, I think I can finish the last scenes tomorrow so that I can proofread the last half of the manuscript on Sunday...

...and that means I have to avoid getting drunk at Adit and Priyanka's party tomorrow night, and as devoted readers of the blog know, avoiding alcohol in a setting like that is not exactly my strong suit. In fact, it was with Adit that I had a disastrous run-in with a bottle of port the night before my senior thesis was due. This feels all too similar to that, so may history not repeat itself (or if it does, may it repeat itself with something better than port). And now, I must sleep so that I can slog brutally tomorrow -- goodnight!

try to wrap your arms around a memory

Blehsdghad.fg. I'm sick of staring at my screen and sick of typing and sick of looking at letters and trying to rearrange them into some semblance of order. I mean, all in all it's gone really well the past few days, and I've gotten a lot done. But there's still a lot left to do, which means this weekend is going to be pretty hellish.

Anyway. Let's try to be upbeat here. I got up around eleven, putzed around, and eventually made it out of the studio by 1pm to find some food and start editing. The place where I had lunch was slightly disappointing; they are famous for their gluten free bread and so I was going to have a sandwich, but they were out of bread. Then I asked what their daily scramble was, and they said it had asparagus in it, so no go on that either. I ended up with two plain scrambled eggs (since I panicked and forgot to ask them to add anything) and some okay home fries. The lady was super nice and gave me a bit of the bread she had left over, which she toasted -- and, it turns out, I didn't love it, so I'm glad I didn't get a sandwich. The place was still really chill, though, so I sat there for an hour and a half and powered through a couple of chapters of edits.

Then I left, wandered down to the beach, and sat out on a patio in the sun for a couple of hours and edited some more while overlooking the water (and some people playing beach volleyball). It was quite lovely, but it perhaps made me less than optimally productive since there was so much loveliness to behold. So I came home, took care of some urgent non-editing stuff (namely booking tickets to writing events), and then went out to grab dinner at Chipotle. I was going to write at Starbucks after that, but I really wanted to get into my pajamas, so I came back to the cottage and worked for the past five hours. Fun.

As I said, it's going well, but it's going to be a really rough weekend. I would be tempted to find someplace here and stay if it weren't for the fact that I would love to sleep in my own bed again. So I think I'll go to bed now, even though it's only 12:30, and then get up tomorrow and drive up to Stanford, where I will work until they close (and hope the closing of the Bay Bridge doesn't totally screw me when I try to go home after that).

Okay, wish me luck -- as soon as I finish this book, I never have to write this book again, and I can move on to something else, which is super exciting! Yay! Crazy laugh! Crazy laugh turns into a sob! Sob turns back into a laugh! Brain explodes! Goodnight!

shadows

I didn't intend to stay up this late, but I started to read a book, and you know how that goes. I slept quite late this morning, finally waking up around ten or eleven so that I could accomplish something with my day. After I showered, I grabbed lunch at a cafe down the street since I had no food in the house, and then came back and unpacked and did three loads of laundry. My affairs thus in order, I wrote for an hour or two, with a brief interruption from my writer friend Grace, who wanted to talk shop about some business stuff.

I threw in the towel on the writing so that I could go to the grocery store; in a bit of fun or madness, I invited some people over for New Year's Day brunch, and I wanted to shop for food today so that I wouldn't have to deal with crowds tomorrow. So I went to Whole Foods and bought all the weird flours required to make gluten free baking flour (brown rice, sorghum, potato, among others), as well as a variety of produce, fruits, and cheeses. Then I stopped at BevMo and bought three bottles of champagne and some gin, which is a good recipe for a party.

When I got home, I cleaned out the fridge, put away my groceries, and attempt to work some more, but it wasn't going well, and so I was happy to take a break and have supper with Terry and her friend Amy at Perry's. I was intent on trying the writing again, though, so I didn't hang out with them when we got home; instead, I came upstairs and toyed with my manuscript awhile longer. But when I hit the point where I was spending more time checking twitter than writing words, I decided to do what I've vowed to do more of -- stop wasting time on the internet and read one of the hundreds of books on my to-read list instead.

Tonight's book was OMBRIA IN SHADOW by Patricia A. McKillip; I've been slowly making my way through her backlist, for reasons that I can't even explain. Her plots are difficult to follow, so obfuscated by lush descriptions that you begin to wonder whether there is really a plot at all; the most powerful protagonists and antagonists are rarely described, never what they seem, and unsatisfactorily wrapped up at the end; and there's a quality of sameness to all her books that is both comforting and unsettling. However, there is magic in her books, too -- I simply can't stop reading once I've started, and it feels like I've fallen headlong into a different world, one where every word is a spell and every image is an enchantment.

So, needless to say, I read the entire thing, and now my brain is dazzled and I desperately need to sleep (and dream whatever strange and mysterious dreams will undoubtedly come). And so, goodnight; when I blog again, it will be 2012!

my kingdom for a fitted tunic

Today was the kind of day I probably needed to have, although I can't help but regret that I didn't write anything substantive for Malcolm and Amelia's book. Instead, today was all about catching up on all the things that had been piling up on my to-do list (or rather, lists) over the past few weeks as I've ignored everything to make progress on the stupid book. Yes, I'm calling it a stupid book; I'm feeling rather wistful and forlorn about how much I've ended up rewriting it, and Terry saw the wild desperation in my eyes when she got home -- she's being v. cautious around me these days, which is probably for the best.

sssanyway, I spent the whole day and night engaged in busy work, but I'm feeling much more caught up on my other responsibilities (volunteer activities, Christmas lists, my three main email accounts, etc.), so hopefully I can write tomorrow without feeling like I'm dangerously close to missing majorly important deadlines. I did take a wee break with Terry tonight; we picked up salads at Blue Barn and watched the latest episode of "Once Upon a Time", which I *adored* (adored adored adored). Since my brain is turning to mush and I was much punchier than usual, I think I amused Terry with my commentary (I don't always commentate, but this episode deserved it) -- or, see above about how she's being cautious with me. Perhaps she didn't want to risk getting shanked with a fountain pen, and so pretended that she thought I was hilarious. But the episode was great and I am having some serious fangirl lust for Prince Charming; if any of you know where I can find a dude like him, sans the stupid poncho he was wearing for three minutes of the episode, I would be most grateful.

After that, I came upstairs and worked until now. And now I really must, must go to sleep, before my precarious mental state tips me over the edge into outright insanity. I rather like most of my garments and don't want to start rending them, nor do I wish to tear out my hair, and I'm too attached the clean floors to cover myself in ashes -- so any mourning over the death and rebirth of Malcolm and Amelia will have to be done quietly and with minimal gnashing of teeth. Goodnight!

it's a thousand pages, give or take a few

I can barely remember the first half of the day because it was utterly consumed by the flames of the second half. I shall try to reconstruct it for you, though, like a shoddy arson investigator reconstructing a house fire and getting a dude executed for something that likely wasn't arson (see: Texas, several years ago).

I woke up around 10:15, which was actually early compared to when I have been waking up, although that fact didn't seem to be appreciated by my family. So I showered, got dressed, made my bed, etc., and went upstairs to find the entire Wampler clan gathered in the kitchen. I suppose my aunt's scandalous husband isn't a Wampler, but you can tell he wishes that he were (or maybe he wishes he were anywhere else -- it's a little unclear). sssanyway, Uncle Mark, Aunt Kathy, Drewbaby, Aunt Becky, Scandalous Uncle Brian, and Gram were all here, as were my parents and [censored], to belated celebrate Thanksgiving, so we all hung out for a few hours. My mother made another midwestern feast: hamballs (ground ham, ground pork, breadcrumbs, etc); sweet potatoes (with brown sugar but sans marshmallows - we're not savages); cheesy potatoes (self explanatory); pickled beets (ugh); apricot salad (canned apricots, orange jello, cheese - much more delicious than that incomplete description makes it sound); relish tray (carrots good, radishes bad); and rolls (gluten-filled). Aunt Kathy brought cranberry salad (cranberries, celery, cherry jello); Aunt Becky brought a lemon cake that looked amazing but that I didn't eat due to my gluten avoidance. We didn't play Rail Baron or anything else because everyone wanted to leave before dark, when the deer descend on the roads and make every journey a miniature version of Frodo and Sam toiling towards Mordor, where the orcs are replaced by unarmed but suicidal deer who thwart you at every turn.

So it was good to see them all. It's so hard to believe that Drewbaby is a senior (as is my nephew Zane), so I'm planning to come back in May for their graduations. I will see them all again when I'm back here in a couple of weeks, though, so I don't think anyone felt a lot of pressure to hang out. After they left, I basically worked straight through until now, with some breaks here and there to snack, watch bits and pieces of TV, catch up on bits and pieces of the internet, etc. I slogged through another 15ish pages -- good, but still never enough. I'm going to work like crazy this week, so even though I get back to California on Wednesday, expect hermity posts through the weekend.

And now I must sleep before the language processing centers of my brain utterly shut down; that last Mordor reference nearly blew them out. Goodnight!