Painless

February 23

Had a fairly productive weekend. Saturday morning I revised "Helljack", the horror collab with Mike, which got about 300 words longer. Mike did the lion's share of revision -- I just added some texture and tweaked the ending. We're happy with it -- now to send it out!

Today I wrote two reviews, 1200 words. No fiction writing, though, alas. That's for next week.

Heather had oral surgery on Friday, so she's been on soft foods and painkillers, no fun for her. Friday for me was work, then home, then taking Heather to the pharmacist for her drugs, then sitting on the couch watching Beautiful Girls, a very charming movie from Natalie Portman's childhood good-acting period. I fell asleep on the couch. Heather was entranced by shiny things. Odd.

Saturday I worked, as I said, for most of the morning. Heather wrote a journal entry -- I read it, and told her that rage makes her eloquent. I don't agree with everything she said, but I think she said it well, and I agree with her central point -- none of the people I know talking about this "movement" are issuing manifestoes or anything, you know? It's just tinkering with organizing principles. But, anyway. Then we went up to Berkeley and ambled around. We ate noodles, and browsed in the comics store -- got the first issue of Optic Nerve, the only one we didn't have, and the next Hellblazer collection (both quite good!). I got a copy of Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers, the Datlow & Windling antho from a few years ago, now reprinted, whee! Good stories -- Joyce Carol Oates's "Broke Heart Blues" is beautiful, a very poetic story of small-town lust with a hint of the speculative. When Oates is good, she's very very good. Sweet Heather Shaw and I drove around with the moonroof open. We sang along with an old mix tape. We sat on a bench and ate gelato. We checked the mail -- various Star*Line submissions (I've got to have a poem-reading night soon!), and Greg sent me a sealed-in-wax copy of our collab, "Inclement Weather".

We returned home. I did housework and listened to the radio -- go, writing-avoidance-behavior! Eventually we got ourselves together and went into the city, to the Strange Horizons wine & cheese party in the Potlatch Consuite. I was applauded for the Nebula nomination, and Heather tells me I blushed. I seized control of some gouda and proceeded to drink a great lot of wine. Saw lots of nice people -- Ted Chiang, an island of smiling sobriety in a sea of inebriation; Eileen Gunn, who gave Heather & I some advice on editing; Cory Doctorow, who showed us the marvelous cover for his new book, Eastern Standard Tribe; Daniel & Wendy (I had a nice talk about poetry with Wendy); Sean Klein and Lori Ann White, two people I see far too seldom; Zed Lopez; and the Notorious Style Monkeys themselves, Jed & Susan & Mary Anne. As well as various others, too numerous to enumerate... I got drunk, a lot. Before midnight Heather and Susan and I all headed for the BART station. Riding BART while drunk is always so surreal... Then Heather and I went home, and watched X-Men, and slept.

Here are a few pictures from the wine & cheese party. (Do you like my clever technique of putting pictures far down in an entry, so the photos have time to load while you're reading the first paragraphs? Aren't I clever?)

Sunday -- which is, I suppose, today -- there was coffee, and review-writing, and errand-running, and wandering around on Piedmont Ave. We had lunch at Barney's, because I've been desperately craving cheeseburger, and because it was warm enough to sit out back in the courtyard, always a pleasant experience. Then Heather saw that the new hideous condos on our street were open for public perusal, so we wandered around in them. The two-story ones are actually quite nice, but not $400,000 nice! We especially liked the view from a master bedroom into the squalid, junk-filled back yard of an adjacent property. There were confused-looking yuppies wandering around on our street. Very amusing. Heather cut my hair today, too, rather adroitly -- lopped off six inches! But it's still long enough to pull back. Looks healthier, less fuzzy-and-ragged.

Then home, for an evening of... hmm... well, reading, mostly. Optic Nerve and Hellblazer, and three stories by Jay Lake, who is so unimaginably prolific and good he virtually constitutes a movement unto himself, and whose work is so unique he will doubtless someday have his own adjective -- maybe "jaylakeian."

And now I'm writing this entry. And another week begins.

Words written since February 1, 2003: 8,900

Words written since last entry:
1,500

Stories written this month:

• "Living with the Harpy"
• "Helljack" with Mike Jasper
• "Winter on the Pyre"

Poems written this month:

• "Nidhigg" (Bestiary poem)
• "Ts'its'tsi'nako" (Bestiary poem)