Just watched the first episode of The Tudors. It was...okay. Now, the main reason I wanted to watch it is for beautiful people in beautiful costumes having lots and lots of sex, and in that, I was very , very satisfied. (Seriously, there are no ugly people.) But everything else: the plot, the characters, the acting, was just okay, and even a little boring at times. I suppose it doesn't help that I know the ultimate outcome. But there are plenty more episodes to come. We shall see...
Lots and lots of hot Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. <3

For a random detail in a short story I'm writing, I'm trying to find out how an when non-government Cubans would have found out about America's first landing on the moon.

Just got back from a Clarion West party. Got to squee at Elizabeth Bear without feeling like an idiot! My formal meeting of her occured while applying my nametag* and introducing myself to various Clarionites. "I'm Elizabeth--not Bear..." at which point she walked in the room and said she was, "Just Bear."

*I copied one of the girls there and applied my nametag to the front of my upper arm.** Many hours later, this proved a bad idea, as I now have an angry red patch on my skin.

**Hey, I have a sexy new dress, and I didn't want to ruin my silhouette. Or attract attention to my boobs.

Oof. Planned on walking to a place I'd never been, but ended up not doing that. Too hungry from putting off lunch so I could buy a sexy dress on sale. But I did manage to do a lot of walking down hot, breezeless trails with no bathrooms. Fortunately, I achieved my goal of sitting in the shade in a breezy park while reading Ray Bradbury and drinking cold drinks. Bonus cute puppy who wasn't jumpy or barky!

Dude! spencimusprime thinks I'm at the Black Drop.

This is from a Philip K. Dick story I'm reading. Nasha's a woman who, until this point, has mainly just put her hand over her mouth and said, "oh, that's horrible.", Dorle's a man. They've just crashed on a dead planet. It came out in 1952.

>>Nasha glanced at him.

"Listen. The Captain is dying. No one knows except the two of us. By the end of the day-period of this planet he'll be dead. The shock did something to his heart. He was almost sixty, you know."

Dorle nodded. "That's bad. I have a great deal of respect for him. You will be captain in his place, of course. Since you're vice-captain now—"

"No. I prefer to see someone else lead, perhaps you or Fomar. I've been thinking over the situation and it seems to me that I should declare myself mated to one of you, whichever of you wants to be captain. Then I could devolve the responsibility."

"Well, I don't want to be captain. Let Fomar do it."

Nasha studied him, tall and blond, striding along beside her in his pressure suit. "I'm rather partial to you," she said. "We might try it for a time, at least. But do as you like. Look, we're coming to something."<<

Why can't she just say, "hey, I don't want to be captain, you do it." Why does she need to screw a man so he can take charge? I mean, it's wonderfully kinky and all, but seriously. And why doesn't she want to be in charge in the first place? Why be vice-captian if you didn't want to be captain?
What weird, backwards logic. "single = in power, girlfriend=defers power. Therefore, if I want to defer power, I must be a girlfriend."

I dreamed I watched a tv show that started out as an alternate universe Deadwood. As a result, there were loads of children running around, and everyone was very nice. I think Swearengen was the new schoolteacher ("I'm so looking forward to working with families!")
There was also Ryan Stiles in a wheelchair, and groups of new people arriving every day, all of whom wore black hats.
Despite the premise that this was a world where everyone grew up differently and took different paths and were different people, there were logic flaws, like the fact that the widow whats-her-name was dragging around her husband in a radio flyer wagon, since he'd only been crippled by his fall in the regular tv series, but that only happened because Swearengen was a bastard and not a schoolteacher who looked like Mick Jagger.
Then, after a few episodes (hey, it's a dream, episodes went by fast) it turned out there were people who remembered the old Deadwood. Two of them were old henchmen, who were clearly gong to be villains. mcjulie had put herself in charge of gathering up those who remembered the old ways, because in fact, something had happened ("You remember the red buoy and the blue buoy?" she asked. "Umm... yes?" I responded.") and the entire town had been whisked into happy land.

Hoorah, my short story, "The Fairy Gulch," was lauded and required only a few tweaks to get in shape. Every critiquer gave me useful feedback, and not only that, submitted some pretty darned good stuff themselves. You guys rock!

So yeah, this is the first short story I've written that I have any confidence in.
It was edited in the bright sun, with the ocean and buzz of bees in my ears, and a zebra-striped jumping spider at my shoulder, a thin wooden bar away from a hundred foot drop. I totally got a sunburn.

Just got back from a magnificent weekend writing retreat on the coast. Loads of adventures. Pictures may be forthcoming.
In no particular order there were:

A vertical wall coated in sea anemones, sea stars, fish eggs, gooseneck barnacles and other stuff, all topped by a pair of bald eagles.

Caddis fly larvae.

Certain notorious personalities drawing on other notorious personalities' notorious underpants.

Surviving Aberdeen.

The Star Wars Store.

No internet for four days. When we got there, someone said, "Michael Jackson died," and we had no way to confirm if this was true or an internet rumor. For four days, he was Shroedinger's Jackson.

A bunch of people groping up a hill in darkness.

A broken couch/futon.

A highly scientific study to see if whipped cream applied to a nettle rash lessens swelling.

An incredibly ghetto Twinkie.

Last night, I dreamed I was in Yakima for some reason* I had to get from the bus station, which was by the highway, to a coffee shop to meet people (my family, I think. Sorry, Drew and Mindy.) I looked it up on a map, but ended up dawdling enough that the sun had almost set, and I was upset that I wouldn't be able to enjoy seeing Yakima.
I ended up flying home with San on Georgian Airways.** This was a budget airline, and only half the plane was filled with airline seats. The rest (the default, which we'd paid for) were just convention-style chairs, not bolted down, not provided with seat belts. In my dream, I made up kinky D/s fantasies to handle this as I sat in a tiny chair that slid around the cabin.


*Most likely because I read about Eastern Washington in my Roadside Geology book right before bed. I fell asleep meditating on how the longest period of time I spent in the east was a few days for conventions (a Catholic youth convention at Gonzaga, a Washington Alliance for the Mentally Ill conference when I was a kid, and Radcon, to be precise).

** Of the Asian Georgia, not the peach and Coca-Cola filled kind. I've also been reading a highly romantic book about Shamyl of the Caucacus.

A sentence I just wrote, of which I'm rather fond:

"Rory remembered when Vitali got to the point in his necromancy skills that he could liberate his pale, fine complexion from the vast field of freckles that had so long oppressed it."

Today we saw an accident en route to our weekly get together at anghara's. A pickup with an untethered husky in the bed made a left hand turn without yielding, and got clipped by a lady in a van. We saw it and turned around to help her. No one else did, and she was a little rattled, if unhurt. Coming back from Alma's, we passed the intersection, which was littered with bits of broken headlight. We discussed the accident and how awful the guy with the husky was. Just beyond it, we stopped at a light under the overpass, we saw a husky lying on the sidewalk, unmoving. We all freaked out, but then the dog lifted its head, and revealed itself to just be a dog who thought the sidewalk was a great place to sleep. Its leash was firmly in the hands of a bum, curled up asleep, and hidden by the concrete freeway supports.

With all the Iran Twitter stuff going on, csinman has been getting really excited about using Twitter for the forces of good. Immediately after the accident, he noted that the cops could have a local Twitter feed where they could send out notices a la Amber Alerts. Someone down the road who never saw the accident could get the notice to look for a blue pickup with a husky in the back and take down the license plate number.

I finally got a Twitter client that doesn't piss me off. The first one I tried was convenient and discrete, but for some reason didn't have scroll arrows.
Anyways, I got TweetDeck, and proceeded to add a bunch of people on Twitter. Now, I can sort everyone into convenient groups. Yeah, sorting! I also got a book cataloging program and spent last night watching the Clerks cartoon and typing in keywords. Mmm... keywords.
Now if only I had shelves to put all those books on...

What goes, >jingle< >thud< >jingle< >thud< >jingle< >thud< ?

Princess the cat having sex against our front door!

Chelsea and I heard this noise, suspected the origin, but when we peered out the glass, we only saw an unfamiliar gray cat staring at us in terror. Chelsea opened the door, and Princess just sort of spilled in.
She's been howling all week, and she sounds disturbingly like Teisel.

>cue csinman saying, "I hate your neighbor"

Hey, I'm thinking of getting an iPod touch. However, my number one concern is how it will behave if I keep it in my pocket, like I do when I walk everywhere. Will it keep changing itself? Will it be easy for me to switch songs?

Anyone had one?

I went hiking with my dad today, in honor of Father’s Day. We hiked up into the Chuckanuts and got only a little lost in the winding labyrinth of trails up there. The first part of the trail goes like straight up the hill, and the second part meandered in these ridiculous loopy switchbacks down a gentle slope were you could literally get from one bit of the trail to the next in two steps, but no, they wanted to mess with you and make you go four times farther than you had to.
This is a hike that ten years ago, I could have just barely made, but now I can charge up the hill without too much effort. My dad actually commented on how much better shape I’m in than when I was a teenager, which just seems backwards to me.
Dad also brought me official documents giving me power of attorney if anything happens to him, as well as his will. He told me to make sure I pay myself for executing his estate, that that will make it feel easier. All this means it’s probably time for me to get a real, grown up safe deposit box.
Then I saw Up, while still in my hiking boots, having just returned from an adventure with my dad. <3 That movie totally made me cry, and I can count the number of crying movies on one hand. (Life is Beautiful and Brokeback Mountain are the only ones I can think of right now, but I know there’s a couple more.)

Oh yeah. There were two boys (maybe thirteen years old) at the mall, who, when I passed them, said, “I stepped on a cookie!” Having bought my movie ticket, I had only $3.50 with which to entertain myself for over an hour. I bought a notebook and pens from Target, and settled into one of the comfy chairs in front of JCPenney’s to write. The afore-mentioned boys eventually came over and threw themselves on the couch, announcing alternately “I stepped on a cookie! (He stepped on a cookie) (It was a mean cookie)” and the depth of their boredom. They said “I stepped on a cookie!” to everyone who passed by. I was truly impressed with their perseverence, and if I hadn’t been engrossed in my writing, i would have struck up a conversation about this cookie. What kind was it, after all?

I've had a couple dreams lately where I've tried to talk to guys I know (whom I've either dated or crushed on) and was unable to, either because the opportunity never came up, we just weren't able to understand each other, or, in one case, he was in a coma. I think this means I've lost touch with my animus, and I'm not sure what that means for me, or what I can do about it. But hey, I get to go mucking about in my subconscious, which I haven't had to do in a long time, and which I actually enjoy.

Other things I enjoy but don't often get to do: study at the university library. Having seen this awesome video on Youtube (see below) I realized I needed to study Georgia and the surrounding cultures for my novel. So I dug up books on the Scythians and Sarmatians, as well as more recent stuff. This is all to brainstorm the imaginary culture my characters are descended from. So I'll find awesome tidbits like how Sarmatian maidens supposedly had to kill a man in battle before they could marry. Sarmatian women were equal, Scythian women, not so much. My fake culture's women are somewhere in between, but I've filed it away to use for a neighboring culture. My evening was like that, skimming through books and mentally dealing out ideas like cards to different parts of the cultures. When I found something that was relevant to the culture I'm immediately focusing on, I copied it or checked out the book.

And then I found a knee chair on the way home, and I carried it to my work for my co-worker who's been looking for one. It needs some love, but Ryan's just the kind of fixer-upper to do that. Now my biceps hurt, but I'm happy.

We made it to Portland and back, though our windshield wipers broke in Olympia, and we had to depend on RainX too survive. Fun was had, and we only got a little lost coming back because Miki's GPS kept saying to turn left when we should be keeping right. But at least that meant we got to cross the Willamette, which I can't imagine not doing on a trip to Portland.

There were a lot of Grateful Dead references this weekend, and I've no idea what synchronistic meaning that could possibly have.

We finished the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders series upon returning to Miki's. I think a bit of my soul died.

Hey, is anyone else going to the China Mieville reading?

Third Place Books, Friday at 6:30.