Jeanne, again.
05 November 2004
Jeanne died about the time I wrote the last entry. 🙁
I just didn’t know that for a few days.
Sounds Like Weird
05 November 2004
Jeanne died about the time I wrote the last entry. 🙁
I just didn’t know that for a few days.
30 October 2004
My friend Jeanne is in the hospital dying from liver failure. She’s been in a coma for two weeks, partly because her oxygen levels are so low. I don’t know if she made it through the night, but given how much she’s suffered, I hope she doesn’t suffer much longer.
She was on the liver transplant list for some time, but her heart had weakened so much that they took her off the list.
28 October 2004
Stuck in San Francisco this morning enroute to the World Fantasy Convention.
It’ll really be great to go to Phoenix when the weather sucks less than it did in July.
Never been to WFC before, so I’m looking forward to it.
Oh, and I should finally get to see (and hopefully sign) some copies of Turn the Other Chick.
More news when I arrive.
Man, I’m tired.
Cat update:
Scruffy ate a small bit of dry food this morning, the first non-forced food in days. He also seems a bit perkier, though still quite sluggish. Those antibiotics are working, even though it took 23 tries (not an exaggeration) to keep the pill down last night.
Best luck to Mom on pilling the cat today….
19 October 2004
You wondered when I’d post about writing, didn’t you?
I wouldn’t let you down.
1500+ words today, though not on fiction. More later on that topic.
11 October 2004
There’s something harder than average about returning to work after a week-long writer’s workshop. My mind is still thinking about ancient Egypt, robot monsters, the future of aliens in San Francisco, and Jax’s rendition of Henry V with a Texas accent (it worked!).
It’s very odd to have to suddenly focus on where in the world Tlalnepantla is and whether Mexico City is the best approximation of Tlalnepantla’s location.
11 October 2004
11 October 2004
11 October 2004
I just found Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s blog comments on VP.
My personal favorite is a comment about the previously-mentioned (by Your Humble Blogger) game of Thing:
As for my supposed ruthlessness, I acknowledge that I behaved wickedly in one game of Thing; but when you’re assigned the role of an evil soulless shapechanging extraterrestrial, what else are you supposed to do?
Her comments on Thing game strategy are indeed interesting.
And to her comment:
I will admit that Thinging a research scientist one night, and then next morning leading the lynch mob that killed him or her, was an awfully good way to allay suspicions about my own Thingitude.
I only have one thing to say (no pun intended): “You set me up!”
It’s all good.
09 October 2004
It’s tiring having to tell people all the time, “No, I can’t have that, it’s probably got wheat in it.” Bread they understand, pasta they sometimes do, but items such as Rice Dream (a rice milk), they’re less likely to. Nor do most people have any clue that soy sauce almost invariably contains wheat.
Friday night, I went to a restaurant and, after looking at the menu, asked if I could have lobster scampi served on potatoes. He said they only had french fries. I asked them if they cooked the fries separately from the fish and seafood they also served — they did. What else did they cook in that fryer? Only fries.
Fine, I said, I’ll take the scampi over fries.
“The chef said it wouldn’t be very good,” the waiter offered. “We could put it over pasta.”
“Look,” I said, “eating wheat causes internal bleeding and destroys my intestines. I’ll take it over fries.”
Waiter said OK, then went on to take the rest of the table’s order.
A few minutes later, he comes out, apologetic. Chef has refused to make said order because it “wouldn’t be any good.” Waiter says there’s a lot of other seafood they serve with fries, I could have some of that.
“It’s all battered in wheat. Eating wheat causes internal bleeding and destroys my intestines.” Repetition is sometimes necessary.
“Well, you could have steak tips.”
Right, at a seafood place. Not. (I’m glad I didn’t, it looked incredibly dull)
Instead, I had a shrimp appetizer after verifying that it wouldn’t contain any flour of any kind. I also ordered potato skins.
Despite the chef’s assertion about “it wouldn’t be any good,” the two of us who ordered potato skins found ours to be BLACK they were burned so badly.
Ugh.
But it took three go-arounds and about 5 minutes of interaction with the waitroid to even get that far. I’ve literally been brought to tears because I’ve been so frustrated about food (and so embarrassed by the problems food causes me).
If someone says they can’t have wheat: believe them. It doesn’t matter if they’re imagining it, chances are they’re not.
06 October 2004
Today’s group grope consisted of two shorts from Geoff. One of them I especially liked, despite the bobbles in the piece. It really had a mythic feel to it and I really liked the premise. Suffice to say it was a story that I read, thoroughly enjoyed, and only then my hindbrain went “wait a minute….”
Then the day’s lecture from Laura Mixon on The Care and Feeding of your Beast. After lunch, I had my one-on-one meeting with Laura, which was very productive. By the time I got there, I’d managed to come up with some ways to solve some of the problems I saw in the piece, so we discussed those, as well as some other issues no one had pointed out yet. Afterward, we discussed some elements of career strategy (based on a comment she’d made earlier and I wanted to follow up on).
Much of Wednesday was open for a mental break from the pressure, which was truly welcome at this point. I took a three-hour nap, then went to dinner at Lola’s, the southern seafood restaurant adjoining the Island Inn.
Afterward, I found the room too dingy (in lighting) and warm, so I went down to the class area, where I sat in front of a fan. Teresa Nielsen Hayden came in, wearing a bear mask, followed by a bunch of other people not wearing masks.
While they went on to play Thing and Mafia, I wanted to continue writing, so I didn’t join in.
I started working on a new story that Jim had encouraged me to write, as well as a different story I’d been intending to work on. When I say “started,” I mean the opening paragraph is written for each. Typically, I don’t change those much. I couldn’t find a place to be comfortable, so I moved around several times in the antechamber outside the main VP room.