27 March 2003

I think that next time it's 3:00 a.m., I will be totally okay if no fax machines attempt to call me. Really. I'll be fine. In fact, I believe I will survive adequately into my old age if no fax machines attempt to call my home phone number again. BEEP BEEEEEEEEEP! Thanks, but no.

Also, someone has gotten wind of the fact that I want to get out of here, and they keep calling with fabulous vacation packages. I've decided that I don't mind talking over aggressive sales pitches as long as I'm being aggressively nice: "Oh, thank you so much, but I'm afraid we don't want any of that, but thank you for calling, and if you could just take us off your call list, I would definitely really appreciate it, that's great, thanks so much...."

I know that I don't owe them nice, but I knew a lot of people who did telemarketing. It was the job they could get. They don't write the scripts or set the company policies, and nobody ever says, "Oh, gosh, I wish I could be an outbound telemarketer when I grow up. Wouldn't that be keen?"

And it's Mark's grandpa Gritter's birthday today! Yay! We're very glad he pulled through surgery earlier this year and is perking up for another birthday.

Anyway, I ran a few errands yesterday. A few more made the agenda for today, for the simple reason that the avocado had gone south. Oh, and also I forgot to buy soda. I don't drink soda. It's easier to forget stuff I don't really want, especially if it's not special for Mark or Timprov, so I'm not being really sweet to them, just normally sweet. So out I go again today; it'll be better on the shoulders than if I just typed all day.

The end of The Impossible Bird is not one I recommend for only children, since it's very literally alienating: puts us-all on the side of the aliens fairly explicitly. Still a decent book, and I'll still probably look for his other stuff. But that aspect of it was less than charming, shall we say.

On the other hand, Bones of the Earth is not nearly so depressing as I expected. I read Jack Faust and wanted to go beat my skull against some bricks, a few years back, and if I recall correctly the other Swanwick I've read was not exactly Mr. Sunshine Perkyface sort of stuff. But while there's all kinds of mortality and gloom running around this book, it's still a lot more fun. Dinosaurs, you know. Evidently SF writers, like four-year-olds, perk up immediately when you bring in the dinosaurs. I don't have much to go on that one, and then I have to figure out whether I want to read The Scar before I make my Hugo nominations. Thing is, Mièville is trendy enough that I would be shocked if The Scar didn't make the ballot without my nomination, and I have another library book to finish off before I take them back on Monday. On the other hand, I do own it already, and as long as I own it and it's an eligible book, it would be good to read it just to see. Hmm. And I do read quickly. We'll see.

I don't intend to spend much time reading today, though, at least not reading other people's stuff. I'm going to type! And type! And type some more! I did one of the two major tasks left in this round of edits of Dwarf's Blood Mead yesterday -- which involved editing prophecies in the post office line, which amused me -- but left the other for when I get there in the typing, so that I don't have to have triply branching annotations in the journal. I think that's all for the best. I'm hoping to get the typing done this week, which essentially means today, as tomorrow is David's birthday. So tomorrow I'm heading up to David's and hanging out and then coming back here and Amber is coming straight from work, and I think we'll serve her Yucatan chicken. With fresh lime juice in both sauce and salsa. Mmmmm. I was pondering pepper beef with plum sauce, but chicken seems better, and the limes are still around here waiting to be used.

Only one of you cooks with lime, evidently! Ah well. I suppose that's what the internet is for. That, and making fun of Norm Coleman. (We saw a Wellstone! sticker on a California-plated truck on the interstate up to Marin on Monday. Timprov and I craned our necks to see the driver: "He's from Duluth!" "He's so from Duluth." "We should roll down the windows if he passes us again and shout, 'Duluuuuth!'" "'Duluth in the hooooouuuuuse!'" [There's this comedienne...never mind.] "And then he'd say, 'They're so from the Cities.'" "'Except for her, she's from Omaha.'" "Hey! Nobody who doesn't already know me has ever picked me out as Omahan. I don't have the look." "Okay, no, you don't." "What is he doing here?" "What are we doing here?")

Anyway, anyway. Typing, typing. I'm up through Chapter 5. Poised at the beginning of Chapter 6. We'll see. I found a page of Icelandic horse names, so if some of my first-readers want the horses to have names, I can oblige them. Yet another benefit of the internet. Rah, internet.