Me and Eustachian

March 3

Another weekend slips away. It's been mostly good. Friday night we finally went grocery shopping (Safeway's busy at midnight on Fridays...) and bought a ludicrous amount of food -- all part of The New Frugality. We're trying to save money (going to the Nebs is expensive, by our standards), so we've decided not to eat out at all this month (exceptions being for celebratory stuff when Susan finishes her exam, and if either Heather or I make a big sale). We spend an astonishing amount of money on restaurant and take-out food every month, and I think eating at home will help a lot. It's comforting, too, having plenty of food in the house, knowing a club sandwich is only a few moment's work away at any given moment... And so ended February, and the Short Story dare. I didn't do all that well, but the stories I finished are actually good (and one of them is already in the mail!), so I'll try not to complain. I'm going to finish up the Sigmund story in March, maybe do a couple more stories, and start my next novel later this month or in April.

Saturday I rose early and tried to write, without much luck -- managed about 200 words. I've been plotting-impaired all weekend. I really should be writing poetry, probably; I'm not having any trouble writing beautiful sentences, I'm just having a hell of a time giving forward momentum to stories. So I worked on Flytrap layouts, and cleaned up around the house, and finally filled out my Hugo nomination form. In the afternoon Heather and I took our usual promenade. She got a massage, and I got a caramel apple cider and read some of Nalo Hopkinson's upcoming anthology Mojo: Conjure Stories. Really first-rate stories by Andy Duncan, Neil Gaiman, and Barth Anderson. I'm looking forward to reading the rest. Also read John Kessel's story "The Invisible Empire" in Conjunctions 39 -- good, though I didn't like it as much as the story that inspired it, Karen Joy Fowler's "Game Night at the Fox and Goose" (that's one of my favorite of Karen's stories, though). Read a few other stories in both anthologies, but they didn't stick as much in my mind.

Saturday night we went up to my boss's house to have dinner -- a social occasion! My boss is an amazing cook. He plied Heather and I and my other boss (the executive editor) with wine and cheese and olives and yum, and we talked and listened to jazz. My boss showed Heather all his new toys -- a fossil, some very old pottery. For dinner he made chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, absolutely divine, and he was nice enough to make fish for Heather, since she does not eat of the poultry. Great wine, too, and after dinner he gave us some marvelous brandy. It was quite wonderful -- good food and good conversation pretty much fulfils my requirements for a successful night.

Today I woke up almost completely unable to hear out of my left ear. My eustachian tube is blocked. I took some decongestant, and I've been trying to blow it out all day, but it isn't helping much. This is just an unpleasant side-effect of my annoyingly ongoing cold, but it's frustrating. Anybody know of any remedies that don't involve going to the doctor and having them shoot high-pressure concentrated jets of water into my ear or something similarly unpleasant? I suspect I just have to wait for it to get better...

I tried to write again today, but I had that same inability-to-plot that troubled me yesterday. I did some Star*Line stuff, but otherwise, didn't do any work. Heather was feeling kind of cruddy, and I was annoyed by my ear, so we decided to have a lazy-Sunday. I went to the video store and rented the first two discs of 24, mostly because Susan told us it was so good. 8 episodes, about 6 hours -- and we watched 'em all! With occasional breaks to wander around, make food, do dishes, etc. We really liked the show, and put the rest of the discs at the top of our Netflix queue.

Now it's 10 p.m., I have a cup of decongestant tea, and my ear is still clogged. Guess I should put up the couple of writing-related things I have going on... got a rejection from Andromeda Spaceways on a story that made it to the last round, alas. Cheryl Morgan over at Emerald City had this to say about my Nebula-nominated story: "Another good place to look for short fiction online is Strange Horizons (www.strangehorizons.com). One of their 2002 stories, "Little Gods" by Tim Pratt, has made it onto the Nebula ballot. And very splendid it is too. Quite Gaiman-esque in its portrayal of supernatural beings."

Whoo! I'm Gaiman-esque! I can add that to my other noms de review: Gorey-esque, Ellisonian, and Pseudo-Ballardian! But all I really want is to be Prattastic...

Now I need to write a bio and a short essay for an upcoming issue of SFWA Bulletin highlighting Nebula nominees. Whee! And to update my publication information for the Cambell Awards website. Fun fun fun...

Ah, late-breaking stuff -- go fill out the Strange Horizons Reader's Choice Awards!

Thank you. And good night.

Words written since February 1, 2003: 9,600

Words written since last entry:
200.

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