I was riding on my boat, boat, boat...

January 26

Mid-morning.

Good morning. Yesterday I read Northern Gothic by Nick Mamatas, and it's a cool book, interestingly written, brutal, odd. I'm glad to see good novellas getting published by the small presses (In addition to Soft Skull Press, Gothic's publisher, PS Publishing in the UK is doing amazing things in that regard). The novella is such a fun length, and I expect I'll write several of them in my career... it's nice to know that seeing those works published won't be a total impossibility, as it seemed to be a few years ago. After I finished that book I started Smoking Poppy by Graham Joyce. It's so well written! It's astonishing! Joyce has a lovely website, too, at www.grahamjoyce.net. I point you especially to his bio (which, unlike most author bios, is neither flip nor superficial, but funny and wise), and to his very-occasional-but-absorbing journal, Lately.

I read slush this morning; basically rolled off the couch, put on my robe, and sat down at the computer. [Hmm. I see this requires an explanatory aside. So, Heather has trouble sleeping with me in the bed sometimes. Not usually a problem, especially if I get in after she's already gone to sleep (which is what usually happens, as I nearly always stay up later than she does), but she's been running a serious sleep deficit this week, and so, to help insure that she would get a better night's sleep, I crashed on the couch. Which is actually quite comfy. And when I sleep on the couch, I wake up at a reasonable hour, unlike when I sleep in the bedroom, a dark and comfortable cave, where I sometimes wake up at 1 p.m. on weekends, which is a terrible waste of my free time. So everybody wins. And I went to snuggle Heather in bed after I finished answering slush, so I even got that bit of the weekend pleasantness) I got such good poems! I accepted, like, five! And some of the ones I rejected weren't bad, but since I have a few of months before I have to have a finalized line-up for my first issue, I'm being even pickier than usual. My in-box isn't totally empty -- ran out of steam with a few submissions outstanding -- but I should clean it out by the end of this weekend. So keep the poems coming!

I played lots of Diablo II last week. Previously I'd only played it on Heather's mac, which is fun... but it looks so much better on my big monitor. I'm playing a barbarian, the character without pretense -- he's all about wading in and hacking up monsters. So so fun. I named him Thog.

Today is Heather's Birthday Treat, which I'll tell y'all more about once it's over...

Quite late indeed

So I took Heather out on her birthday shopping expedition today. See, I knew there would be things she wanted that she didn't get, or things she wanted to do that she didn't get a chance to, so, in an attempt to short-circuit at least part of that disappointment, I offered to be her genie for the day. I would drive her around, do whatever she wanted, and buy her what she wanted (within certain financial limits, of course). So we went to Berkeley to many little shops and boutiques, and Heather tried on various dresses, and after about two hours... she found a drinking glass she liked. For $2.17. So then we went to a bookstore, where I bought several books by Graham Joyce (I expect it won't take me long to devour his backlist). Heather didn't find anything she wanted there, so we walked around a bit more, then drove up to Telegraph Ave., where we eventually found ourselves in a shoe shop that was going out of business. And Heather got herself some nice boots. The remainder of her birthday wishes will go toward getting a massage, maybe sometime next week. She expressed happiness over her selections, so I'm happy, too.

Then home, where I read for a while, and quite inadvisably took a nap. Around 11 we watched the remainder of our Buffy DVDs. Then I read a bit of Three Men in a Boat, Meg's Xmas gift to me (she gave me an old hardcover from I-know-not-what-year, though I'd guess fairy early in the 20th century, and a paperback of the reprint from Tor, so now I have a shelf and a reading copy)... and soon I shall sleep, and sleep, and sleep.

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