12 December 2002

I finished the Chinese book last night! It's printed, sealed in an addressed envelope, and ready to go. Yay! I also put together the boxes I'd bought to send presents to people I'm gifting but not seeing, and I put the boxes together and wrapped the presents and addressed the boxes and crumpled up enough old manuscript to shield the presents from the post office's tender ministrations. So. Good then.

Now I get to spend an hour standing in line at the post office. If I'm lucky. Wooo! Seriously, there's plenty on my list still. It's only five days until I leave for Omaha, and there is much to do in that time. Muchly much.

We're hoping Timprov gets to leave on schedule on Saturday, since they're claiming there'll be about fifteen inches of rain this weekend. Uff da mai.

I've been frustrated with the server not grabbing our e-mails off Mark's computer. It queues up for a long time, just past the point where we can do anything about it. Ah well. It gets out there eventually, I suppose.

Last night I talked to the folks, and there was an echo on the line, so I kept hearing my own voice repeated a second later. Which would be bad enough if I'd been talking to anyone else, but I was talking to the folks. So I kept hearing a voice that sounded like mine, a second after I started talking, so I kept stopping, so that Mom could say what she wanted to say. Only Mom wasn't talking, it was my own voice in echo. I told them what was going on, and we laughed at me, but it was still a surreal experience.

Other than that...I read Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief, which I liked until the last chapter. The last chapter did not hit me well at all. Poor form. No. And it almost retroactively tainted the rest of the book for me. Ack. But I'll still look for the next one, so I suppose it couldn't have been too bad. I started reading Nancy Kress' Probability Space on the train, and...I don't know, it's a nice action story, fun and all that, but I'm kind of glad it's the last in this trilogy so that she can do stuff I like better, maybe. (I think mostly I just want her to write short stories, though. I'll read and enjoy her novels, but what I really love is the short stories.)

Last week, someone said to me that she really couldn't do what I do with this journal, that my whole life is "out there on the web." Hah. The timing of that comment was particularly amusing, since I don't really want to talk about who said so, because if I do, I'll need to talk about why I was talking to that person in the first place, and it's not time for that here. I feel like yesterday can be classified into three groups: stuff I can't talk about here, stuff I don't want to talk about here, and working on the Chinese book. With a few other little details thrown in. And, guys, I only did about 2800 words on the Chinese book. It didn't take that much of my time. They were easy words. They came easily, I mean. So...yeah, no way, not my entire life by a long shot. Ah well.

Every time I turn in a contract project, I'm terrified that the editor will hate it. Now, I know that there's space in my contract for that. If Jim wants edits/rewrites on this thing, he has a time frame in which he needs to give me a chance to do them. So there's no way that he can contractually just say, "No, I hate this! No money for you!" But still, until I get the money, it'll be at the back of my head. It should be fine, though. I really think so. I can write to spec. It's my job.

Well, one of them.

I'm trying not to feel too paralyzed by little tasks and big worries. I have fun things interspersed with those little tasks, though; that should help. Tonight I get to go meet Jenn's foster kitties. I believe the phrase I'm looking for here is "neener neener." Other than that...well, running around, getting little things done, trying not to stress about the big things. They tell you not to sweat the little stuff, but the big stuff...that's quite sweatable. Ah well. We'll get through it one way or another.