Blech

26 August 2001

The short version: I'm sick.

The long version: I have been throwing up this morning and consequently did not accompany Mark to church where he is playing his solo and I am missing it. I sigh. He doesn't play solos that often. I'm not happy with my body for making me miss it. And now I don't know if we'll be able to have David down this afternoon for movies and Catan. Both movies and Catan are acceptable sick-person activities, but I don't know 1) how contagious we are (Timprov is also feeling less than stellar), or 2) how much we're feeling up for company. Luckily, this does not feel like a long, drawn-out sort of illness. Which is good, because we get on the plane very early Thursday morning.

(You know what the legacy of Baby Boomer parents is? I have a very much dulled sense of when people are trying to shock me with gross-out humor. Sometimes I'm grossed out. But I'm rarely, if ever, shocked by it. I am reminded of this because Trent said he thought the beginning of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was trying too hard to be shocking with bodily imagery, and I thought, "Huh? Was I supposed to be shocked? His mom had cancer, and he had an 8-year-old brother. Of course there's bodily stuff in there.")

Luckily, I finished this weekend's agenda yesterday afternoon before I left for Avi's party, so I don't feel like I have to get stuff done today if I don't feel up to it. I finally got the story drafted that was kicking my butt all week, among other things. Good stuff.

Avi's party was very nice, though, and I got to meet a bunch of people and spend time with a bunch more people I'd met before. The only problem, if there was one, was that I talked a lot to people I knew well before, and a fair bit to people I'd never met before. But there were several people I'd met before but don't know well -- Sean, Sam, and Zed, is who I'm thinking of -- and just didn't get around to talking to before we had to leave. Ah well. There'll be a next time.

Sam amused me, though. I introduced her to my Mark, and she got the weirdest look on her face, like, yeah, why are you telling me this, I know who he is. And then she made some comment about journal people -- he's been in my journal, both in visual form and in stories, so she "knows" Mark. (I felt a bit the same way about her Mark, too, so it's not like Sam's psycho. In that way. She's just the one who said it out loud. Although Tim said there's a reason her journal is Ling The Merciless and not Ling The Demure. Um, duh.)

And I think my favorite story and metastory of the evening -- although there were others that made me laugh harder -- was when Susan was talking about a friend she'd made from a class once (it's Susan's story if she wants to tell it in her journal, not mine), and Heather said, "Oh, this story! I love this story!" and immediately turned to listen, and to laugh -- sincerely -- at the appropriate moment. That's friendship, is what that is.

Of course, it was a pretty short story, as Heather pointed out.

And speaking of short stories, I've heard people talking about their rejection rush before WorldCon. Where's my rejection rush before WorldCon? Why is nobody clamoring to tell me that my stories just didn't grab them? Or that they were too long, too short, too much the same length as everyone else was writing? Or that they were murky, or lacked depth? Here I am! Reject me!

Editors are a perverse bunch. But I don't think that reverse psychology would work, in any case.

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