Happiness is a Warm Goat

April 8

[Today's title has nothing to do with anything. I've just been wanting to use it for a while, and today seemed as good a day as any. And I'm happy, so, you know]

This has been the socialest weekend ever, y'all. On Saturday I got up fairly early and went to Hayward for a morning visit with M'ris. We went to Krispy Kreme (which was a staple of my high school years in North Carolina; it's a bit surreal to be sitting in a smoke-free Krispy Kreme in California) and I had a lemon doughnut and hot chocolate. We talked about all the sorts of things me and M'ris usually talk about, which is Ideas and People and Stuff. It's easy to talk to M'ris. I like doing it.

Then I went to Oakland to see Heather. We went to the Rose Garden, which is really very pretty, with fountains and columns and such. Not many roses in bloom, but some, and the place smelled very good. Clean and fresh and sweet. The weather was glorious, which was a pleasant surprise, as Friday was a Rainy Hell. We read poetry to one another. We're very different poets, but she's so good, and she thinks about poetry in some of the same ways that I do; she uses it in some of the same ways, for some of the same purposes. And she loves Anne Sexton and Sharon Olds, as do I, which is nice. Neither of us is Sextonish or Oldish, though. We're just... us. Which is good, because we're cool.

Hmmm. You know, I've never written much collaborative poetry. Me and the lovely Seanan (to whom I must write soon! I am a bad friend!) have been doing call-and-response poetry for years. She writes a couplet or a quatrain, and I respond, and so on until we decide a given piece is done. That's very much a dialogue, though; the poems tend to be Song for Two Voices kind of things. But I've received a couple of really nice, seamless collaborative poems for Speculon , and that's got me thinking about doing collabs. Hmmm. I'm not sure how such a collab would work, actually, but it could be worth thinking about. I don't know if Heather'd be interested in doing something like that or not, and our poetic styles are really different, perhaps so much so that such an approach wouldn't work... Hmmm. Again with the "Hmmm"

Then I went to a nice housewarming party, and saw many lovely people, none of whom I see often enough! I had apple pie and pear cider and sat on a cushion on the floor in candlelight talking to people. It was pretty groovy, and the house was really nice. I had a great time; I haven't been to such a good party in a long time. Lots of people I didn't know, and lots of people I knew slightly, and so it was a great pleasure to get to know them a bit better through conversation. And, of course, there were some well-loved friends there, too. Mmm. There's good people out here.

Today I meant to Be Productive, but it didn't happen (sorry, Speculon poetry submitters! I've read my whole inbox and have made decisions on almost everything therein, I just haven't had a chance to write responses yet! That should happen tomorrow, god willing and the sky don't fall!). I played basketball with Scott and Lynne (part of that time spent in the rain, which was quite nice, actually). Then they decided the weekend had been too short and declared today an Honorary Saturday, so we got pizza and hard lemonade and ice cream and videos, and I've been doing that all night. I'm going to have to go into full-on hermit mode for a couple of days and really crank on some stuff, though. There's lots of little scribbled notations that will become poems, and a story I need to write, and submissions that need replies, and I promised Amily I'd help her with a thing, and I promised Meg I'd help her with a thing, and now I'm feeling all overwhelmed. Which is silly, because most of this stuff is going to actually be fun. Being social is good, but (as always when I'm really social) I find myself just about ready to withdraw for a few days. I like spending time with myself. I'm going to tomorrow, and Tuesday, too, at least.

Talking to you guys is okay, though. That doesn't count as being social. Not unless y'all come over and bring me some beer.

Happiness is the achievement of a desired stimulus.

-Cynthia Brezeale, AI researcher