1 December 2002

Woo! Now, that's a nice way to start a month: a sale! Twin Cities Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy bought "Glass Wind." Which is one of a series. Right now it's a series of two (the other one is "MacArthur Station"), but it'll be a series of more when I sit my butt down. Some of which will be set in Minnesota, so I can send them to Lucas at TCMSFF and see if he likes them, too. This one has the Snow Queen in it, and it's essentially set in St. Pete. It was a lot of fun to write, and I'm happy that it sold. So, beginning of Advent, beginning of December: a sale. If only the rest of the month will go this way....

So yesterday we drove down to Half Moon Bay for the traditional fish tacos. Yum. We went to San Gregorio Beach, because that's the one we know, and because I forgot that you have to drive the rest of the way down to Santa Cruz on 1 to get into Big Basin Redwood State Park, so I neglected the other options. We drove through miles and twisty miles of redwoods, but nobody tried to kill us this time, which was an improvement over the time we took Ceej. We called Timprov on the cell phone when we got within range, so the pepper beef with the plum sauce was almost ready when we got back. Then he (pangs of jealousy!) went to a Blues Traveler concert, and I'm looking forward to hearing how it went. Mark and Dan and I watched "Men In Black II," which I really never need to see again. My mom and dad said that you had to just watch it for fun. Well, I tried. But it just wasn't that funny, and they'd put most of the decent lines in the previews. (I hate when they do that.) So...well, we were going to see it sometime, and last night was as good a time as any, but also no better.

I wrote in a bunch of Christmas cards, and I am still of the opinion that we like too many people. ("Who's we?" said Mark. "You like too many people. I don't like anybody.") I also did a little work on the novel, wrote some e-mail, and read some of Richard Garfinkle's Celestial Matters. Which is interesting, but...mehhhh...I think I'm too steeped in physics for it. Because I find it astonishing that things like vision and hearing would work pretty much indistinguishably in a world with Aristotelian physics. Chickens and wheelbarrows aside, so much depends on post-Newtonian physics. The reason we didn't keep Aristotle's stuff is that it was a really bad approximation of our actual experiences. And while Garfinkle hasn't screwed up the big stuff yet, the small stuff keeps nagging at me. My suspension of disbelief has not been happy with this book, is the short version.

Lots of stuff on the agenda for the day, so I'm going to go get myself decent and then read the paper. Have a good Sunday.