Read 'Til You Drop

I have resigned from my day-job, so that I can be a full-time writer.

I won't bore you with the details - suffice to say that as of June 13, I'll be writer first and librarian somewhere-much-further-down-the-list.  I'll be doing some freelance editing and writing, in addition to the novel writing, and I'll likely be doing some library consulting.

You won't see any changes here until after June 13, but I wanted to share the good news with all of you :-)

Mindy (excited and nervous and overflowing with writing ideas, all of a sudden)

After a, um, challenging morning of writing (that pesky, pivotal Chapter 15 of THERE'S THE RUB is now going to be two chapters...), we headed down to Nationals Stadium for an afternoon game against the Pirates.  My sister- and brother-in-law picked us up and drove us to the park (we've taken the subway to the other games that we've attended.)  Let's just say that there's a lot to be said for parking in a season's-ticket-holder lot one half block from the park entrance....  There's even more to be said for a quick getaway at the end of the game - we were home less than half an hour after the final out!

The afternoon was lovely, and the game was a good one - the Nats won with relative ease (which was a nice change from the last game we saw!)  My only complaint is that the park is too loud - music plays constantly, and the volume is so loud that you can't hear family members two seats away.  I'm not a great judge of noise, though; I almost always think that ambient sound is too loud.  I hope that they'll tone things down a bit as they settle into the season.

Back home, I got the morning chapter edited, caught up with my parents by phone, and worked a little on the newest quilt (my own version of a fairly simple pattern that I was too cheap to buy; it's a "market quilt", with various fruits and vegetables in market "baskets".)

Somehow, it's already pretty late on Sunday night, and there's a full work week ahead of me...

Where does the time go?!?

Mindy,

I'll spare you the long explanations for where I've been and what I've been doing.  Suffice to say that life on the non-writing-front has been "interesting" (in the Chinese fortune cookie way...)

I'm back, though.

And I've completed final edits on MAGIC AND THE MODERN GIRL, which will be in stores near you in October.

And I have about 15K words left to write on THERE'S THE RUB.  (Yeah, that's the novel formerly known as ANY OTHER FLAME.  It's gone back to its birthname :-) )

And I haven't read LJ for a week, and I don't see my way clear to getting through my friends list, so please point me toward anything I need to know about.  (I tuned out around the tail end of the Open Source Boob-and-Other-Sardonic-Responses Project.)

And Mark, the cats, and I are well...

Mindy, getting back into the swing of things

Thanks to all who emailed, with sympathies about my airport stay.

I got home last night around 11:00 - we boarded the plane about three hours late from my original take-off, spent literally an hour taxiing to the start of the runway (grinding snow and ice beneath the plane wheels, alternately revving engines, and sending many passengers into white-knuckled conniption fits), and then had an uneventful trip home. 

I'm attempting to catch up on email, Internet, and writing, with two cats on my laps, shoulders, chest, and feet.  (Yes, there are only two of them.  Yes, they somehow manage to cover all those bodily regions and more :-) )

Oh - and when I picked up the newspapers this morning at the back door, I found a lovely package waiting for me - three copies of the German edition of The Glasswrights' Apprentice.  Alas, French is my language (and I can limp very awkwardly through not-actually-reading Spanish and Italian), so I have no idea if the translation is any good.  But I now have my own copies of the books!

Today is writing day in the Klasky household.  Would you eat a burger at a place called Mephisto Mike's?  Kira Franklin would...

Mindy, glad to be home!

So, I've been traveling to Chicago at least once a month for the past year.  This winter, as many of you know, has been the snowiest that Chicago has seen in years.  Prior to this trip, I have had the luck of the Travel Gods - I have repeatedly arrived just as one storm ends, and left just as another begins.

Until today.

Greetings from O'Hare.

I tried to outsmart the Weather Gods, by cutting short my work day and going stand-by to head back early.  I got on the stand-by list for the 1:50 flight without any problem, but then I learned that 34 is a Very Bad Number.  My 4:35 flight looked free and clear - we had a gate, we had a plane at the gate...  And then they announced that our gate had been changed.  Whoops - no plane, no crew, no captain, no gate.

Supposedly, we're all lined up for 7 tonight, but I'm not holding my breath.

The only good thing about all this is the people-watching element.  It's fascinating to me to see how people behave - some rally, some become truly obnoxious.  One family, at the outlet next to me, has turned the exercise into a study in democracy, as they inform each other of basic information then make decisions.

I'm more or less content to wait - as long as they don't cancel the flight, I have a chance of getting home before Monday.  Otherwise, I'll likely weekend in Chicago, courtesy of NCAA tourney and Easter sucking up every available seat for the duration.

::shrug::

Mindy (who has a thumbdrive with ANY OTHER FLAME on it, and might as well get to work!)

P.S.  Apologies for no posts the past couple of days - my wonky right wrist decided to act up, and I've been punishing it in a brace.  All seems to be well now!

P.P.S.  I was determined to make some post today, to point out that I don't think a strike is the appropriate means to communicate with a business - which *is* a business - that is trying to make money by selling ads for free accounts.  Yeah, they should communicate better, but there's no such thing as a free lunch...

Hmm....  Not all that surprisingly, my friends list is relatively quiet about March Madness.  Let me just say that the NCAA tournament is a Big Deal in Klaskyville.  (No.  I never watched a college basketball game before I was married.  Why do you ask?)

In an online chat today, a Washington Post sportswriter delivered the essential truth that NCAA pools are not about winning money; they're about being *right*.  Well, here in Klaskyville, we push the limits of that statement. 

One of us (not me, as if I needed to tell you that) will complete a number of brackets with a number of friends, placing relatively minimal bets.  We will, however, prepare one bracket together, going head to head with my sister- and brother-in-law, owners of one extremely privileged wheaten terrier.  Our familial brackets are completed on behalf of our pets.  The in-laws must choose teams with dog names (and, where no dog is playing, things similar to a dog, like, say a wolf.  Or, in some really trying rounds, a bear.  Or, if you really have to push it, something that dogs answer to like, um, a patriot.)  We will choose teams with cat names (or cat prey, or something vaguely feline in some way, shape, or form...)  Where two dogs or two cats play, we can choose who will likely win, but otherwise, we are honor bound to make statements like "the 15th-seed Belmont Bruins (remember, they're dog-like) will beat the 2d-seed Duke Blue Devils".

What can I say?  I find our animal brackets amusing...

Mindy, who will consult with Poppy and Christina on their choices (which mostly involve chicken and ice cream...)

Last night, we went to see the 25-year-old Chinese pianist, Lang Lang, perform at the Kennedy Center.  The evening was incredible - Lang Lang has been criticized as a showman, and he's never met a theatrical flourish he doesn't like, but the music (all piano solos) was riveting, and the interpretations left me smiling most of the time.

I started taking piano lessons when I was in second grade.  The classes were taught through school, in a music room in the library.  I skipped my science class once a week to take the lessons.  Ultimately, I decided I liked science more than piano, so I stopped taking the lessons.

Later, my parents enrolled me in lessons with a woman who taught out of her home.  She wrote notes for me, regarding my work from the past week and my assignments for the next week, on a steno pad, using a fountain pen with peacock blue ink.

I hated to practice and found that I would cram in my practice sessions the day before my piano lesson.  I thought that I was making progress the day my teacher gave me Beethoven's ODE TO JOY to learn.  I mastered the bold chords and loved playing them - until I visited my friend, Paula.  She, too, was working on ODE; she had a different piano teacher, and a different practice ethic.  I looked at her music, and it was infinitely more complex than my own.  I was ashamed that I'd been plunking out my chords, while she was playing actual *music*.

I don't know how much longer I took lessons, but I somehow suspect it was a matter of weeks...

Mindy, who has never had a strong musical sense :-)

Once again, I dropped off the face of the earth, but I had all sorts of good reasons - really!

First, Mark and I spent a long weekend down on the Outer Banks (barrier islands in North Carolina.)  We ate way too much beach food (ah...  chocolate and peppermint and cinnamon salt water taffy...) and visited the Wright Brothers Memorial (amazing to think how rapidly air travel advanced!) and drove to the Cape Hatteras light house (or "light station" as they called it in all official publications) and walked on the beach and read and slept and generally hung out without Blackberry reception.  (My favorite restaurant:  The diner-y dive where we ate breakfast two mornings, called "Bob's Eat and Get the Hell Out."  (They were actually much more hospitable than that!))

Then, I was back in town for a few days of work craziness.

Then, Mark and I headed up to New York.  Our accountant is in Manhattan, and we needed to get the dreaded taxes done.  (Suffice to say, they weren't as dread as feared - we missed a higher tax bracket by $700, meaning that we actually get a small refund rather than owe thousands that I was afraid we'd owe.)  Before that business meeting, we saw the new Aaron Sorkin play, THE FARNSWORTH INVENTION (about David Sarnoff, Philo Farnsworth, the invention of television, and man's inhumanity to man - great language, some very interesting staging, not perfect, but well worth the price of attending.)  We also went to the BODIES exhibit down at South Street Seaport - a collection of real human bodies, dissected and preserved, to illustrate various body systems, diseases, etc (eerie, gory, fascinating, surreal, and the root of a couple of new stories...)  Then, we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge - a stunning excursion, with the cables changing the view around us with every step (after we finally *got* to the pedestrian walkway, which took some meandering across roads where peds were never meant to X.)  We ate some great meals, enjoyed the Club Level at the Westin (where I'd received a discount room due to the huge amount of work travel I've been doing - further discounted when the hotel couldn't check us in until 3.5 hours after check-in, due to other travellers stays being prolonged unexpectedly), and generally remembered why NYC is a great place to visit (but still wouldn't want to live there!)

Then, I met with my agent to discuss my Super Secret Project.  I've got a few more details to pull together, and then we'll be submitting.  It's hard to type with fingers crossed!

Then, I worked in our NY office for a couple of days, including attending a high-end seminar on law library management.

And now, I'm home.  Home, with cats glued to my lap.  Home, with tons of writing projects piled up.  Home with tons of to-be-reads piled up.

But home.  Which is a good place to be.

Mindy, sorting out the towering pile of email

Thanks, all, for your duck, duck, grey duck insights!  (Well, all of you but findlaech - Mark must have paid him off :-) )

Consensus:  Duck, duck, grey, duck is a Minnesota thing - strange, considering that I moved from Dallas *to* Minnesota, but a transplanted Minnesotan must have taught us the game...

When I was in college, a friend collected thousands of clapping games ("Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack...") for an anthropology course.  Maybe I have to start doing the same for children's circle games!

Mindy, convinced that there is adjectival superiority in the grey duck version of the game...

Growing up in Dallas, we played a game on the playground:  a group of kids sat in a circle, and one child walked around outside the circle, touching peers on the head, saying, "Duck", "Duck"... until the kid reached the target, and then the kid said something - which led the target to jump to his/her feet and race around the circle, trying to be the first to get back and sit down in the empty space.

Now, I knew this game as Duck, Duck, Grey Duck - and the kid walking around the circle would often extemporize, tapping heads and saying, "Blue Duck", "Red Duck", "Gr......een Duck", "Grey Duck!"  And then the chase would begin.

Mark, like most people, played Duck Duck Goose - no grey ducks, but "Goose!" was the trigger for the chase.

Did anyone else play Duck, Duck, Grey Duck?  Was I just creative ahead of my time?

Mindy, pouting at being mocked about her childhood rituals

About 8 days ago, I realized that I was going to be out of town for the Virginia primary - an election that I increasingly cared about.  I'd never voted absentee before, and I started to shrug off the opportunity, thinking that it was likely to require me to jump through many, many hoops.

Turns out, it's yet another thing that my county does with great efficiency.  Last Wednesday, I walked down to the County Building.  I approached the counter on the third floor, and the Assistant Registrar handed me a form, explaining quickly but thoroughly how to complete it.  I wrote in my name, checked the "business travel" box as my reason for absentee voting, and signed my name (affirming that I would actually be traveling.)  He took the form and my Voter Registration Card to his computer, typed in some magic, and returned both to me.  I walked down the hall, handed in the form, stood at a standard voting machine, and voted.

I even got a sticker that said, "I voted absentee today!"

Yesterday, Mark went to our standard polling place.  His name is right next to mine on the rolls, and he could see the designation "AB", letting the poll workers know that I had already voted, so that my candidates (Obama) couldn't get another boost from me.

I love it when systems work the way they should!

Now, if the snow will stop falling in Chicago and the freezing rain stop falling in DC long enough for my plane to get from one to the other this evening, I'll truly be a happy girl...

Mindy, heading up to the 80th floor of the Sears Tower, for another day of watching the snow fall *up* due to prevailing local weather conditions...

This afternoon, I mailed all of the packages that I have had sitting around to be mailed.  Yes, some of them have been here for far too long, and for that I sincerely apologize.

Note to self:  The local post office closes at 1 on Saturdays, not at 2.  (At least I could get new mail from my PO Box.) 

Second note to self:  The staff at the big regional post office is as friendly as the staff at the local post office.  Even when they have to walk you through a customs form.  And an insurance form.  And the ridiculous "flammable, breakable, terrorist-created?" questions, after you've explicitly said that you're mailing books.  (They were actually really good - and fast.)

Third note to self:  Write a story about the guy who was mailing a large white 9 x 13 envelope by pasting dozens of two cent stamps on the front of the envelope, lining each one up precisely.  (The Navajo jewelry stamps are pretty - even moreso when seen in row after row after row.)

Mindy, back from successful errands (except for grocery shopping, where she could not find a parking space after driving through the entire lot three times - silly Super Bowl!)

Sorry to have dropped off the face of the blogging world...  Here's where I've been, in a bit more than a nutshell:

• Parents came to visit, resulting in comic attempts to clean house, get new furniture situated, supervise installation of new blinds, etc.  Visit was lovely, fantastic, wonderful, and needful of being repeated far more frequently.
• Trip to National Building Museum, parents in tow.  The former Pension Administration building is mostly a giant empty space, with columns that remind me of an Egyptian temple.  The ground floor is given over to play-space for kids, with giant building blocks, smaller wooden construction tools, etc.  The specific exhibit we went to see, drawings by David Macaulay, was less interesting than I'd hoped, but the museum itself was great.
• Trip to Renwick, mother in tow.  The "craft" arm of the Smithsonian, the Renwick was hosting an exihibit on quilts and community.  There were two types of quilts that I'd never seen before, both created as fundraisers, and both represented by many examples.  The first takes names of donors and embroiders them on patches (as petals of flowers or as other design elements); the patches are then pieced and minimally quilted.  The second takes name of businesses and embroiders them, often with design elements.  There were also some traditional quilts, with some of the most detailed stitching I have ever seen.
• Kirov Ballet's performance of "La Bayadere".  For years, I've carped about the endless procession of 32 dancers in the Dance of the Shades, but this production won me over.  The company was superb, and I lost myself in this classic ballet.  (Not so much, surprisingly, in the Dance of the Golden God - which was good, but not as breathtaking as I've seen it in the past.)
• MAGIC AND THE MODERN GIRL.  Final edits are in, in, in.  Yea!
• SUPER SECRET PROJECT 2.  I am researching like a fiend, and I've started drafting chapters.  My agent is leaning on me rather heavily to get him something to submit sooner, sooner, sooner.
• Writer Weekend.  I got together with three other writer friends this weekend.  One had sold her first novel (go, Nancy!), so we were ostensibly getting together to discuss book marketing and promotion.  In reality, though, we ate a lot of food, drank a lot of wine, and talked, talked, talked...  I truly enjoyed the company of Maria V. Snyder and Jeri Smith-Ready, and I look forward to future get-togethers.

And those are the highlights.  My friends-list reading has been a bit ragged - point me toward treasures I've missed, if necessary!

So, I was in Chicago on business this week, and I lost my cell phone.  I've had a phone now for a decade or more, and I've never lost one before.  I tried to tell myself that this loss was not my subconscious, suiting me up for an IPhone replacement, now that I've joined the Apple Cult.

I tried to find my phone.  I called it a half dozen times.  I left myself a voice mail, telling whoever listened to phone me at home.  I retraced my steps, going to the restaurant where I'd met a sales rep for breakfast.  (Lou Mitchell's - site of an amazing feta omelet, a welcome-greeting donut hole, and a mini box of Milk Duds! - who could ask for a better breakfast?)  I checked my office.  I called the hotel, on the offhand chance that I'd left the phone in a cab, and a driver had found it soon enough to connect it up with picking me up from the hotel.

 No phone.

I flew home last night, and when I walked in the door, I had a message on the house line.  My not-really-a-cousin-but-I-call-her-one-because-we-have-the-same-last-name, Sister Ann Marie, had phoned.  She's a nun in the Felician Order, and she lives in Chicago.  We had dinner together on Monday night.  She had called my cell to wish me a safe trip home, but instead of reaching me, she got Bill.

Bill, the guy who runs the pizza joint in the Sears Tower, where I grabbed a forgotten slice between meetings on Tuesday afternoon.

Bill, who had found my phone, but had not answered any other calls to it, because he was afraid he'd be invading my privacy. 

Bill, who answered a nun's call out of the blue, and told her that he had the phone waiting for me in the Sears Tower.

Sister Ann Marie was going to drive over and get it then and there, but then she realized that one of my coworkers could just take the elevator down from the 80th floor to retrieve it.  My phone is winging its way back to me, even as I type.

It's enough to make me turn to St. Anthony , the next time something goes missing!

Mindy, pleased that her silly little cell is heading home.

Some of you might recall my grousing about Horn Man, our French-horn-playing neighbor.  (I live in a townhouse; the walls have never seemed as thin before...)  My relationship with Horn Man came to a head about three weeks ago, when he decided to serenade us at 12:30 in the morning.  I left a furious note on his door the following morning, threatening to contact his landlady and the police if he ever repeated such a concert.

As luck would have it, that was a parting salvo - Horn Man's lease was up on 12/31.  The landlady is back, visiting from her retirement residence, several states away.  She's deep-cleaning (apparently Horn Man did not clean once for the year that he lived there), replacing the carpet, painting, etc.  Today, I hear the carpet crew in there, banging away with their knee-kick tools to complete the installation.

So.  The place goes on the market on 1/18.  I only hope that our perma-neighbors are good ones.

Mindy, typing with crossed fingers

Here in Klaskyville, we're looking forward to getting a new couch for the living room.  Last night, at around 10:00, I realized that we needed to get rid of the old couch to have room for the new one (duh!)  I made Mark take out his digital camera, and he fired off a few shots.  For the first time ever, we logged on to Craigslist and posted the couch for sale.  (This is a couch that we bought from our neighbors last year.  While it's lovely, it fit much better in their mirror-image-to-ours townhouse, and we've been naggingly dissatisfied with it for the year that we've had it.)  We set the price at $250 for the sectional - the same price that we'd paid our neighbors.

We posted the sofa at 11:00 and went to bed.  This morning, there were five inquiries about the couch.  The first was from someone offering "$150 or $200"  - um, if the choice is up to us, we'll take the $200, please.  The other four were from people ready to pay full price, and one woman was ready to come pick it up this afternoon.

Sure enough, she arrived with brother and U-Haul within five minutes of the time she said that she would.  She handed over her $250 in cash, and she and her brother pretended they were professional movers, handling our narrow stairs, our immovable iron bookcase, and other obstacles as if they were nothing.  Along the way, the woman noted that she had owned the exact same sectional last year, before her apartment burned down.  (It's still for sale, at Macy's, for around $1500, new.)  She was thrilled to be able to replace a missing piece of her life.  I was thrilled to be able to help.  :-)

So, from posting to out of the house in less than 18 hours.

Wow.

Mindy, off to find more things to post on Craigslist :-)

The writers' strike is looming near in Klaskyville.

We watch a lot of TV.  A fair amount of it is sports - baseball, college basketball, some pro basketball, hockey, football....  But a lot of it is series TV - mostly dramas - Grey's Anatomy and Ugly Betty and House and Numbers and Shark and Heroes and Chuck and probably a couple of things that I'm forgetting.  We Tivo almost everything and watch through without commercials later in the evening or week.

As the strike has gone on, we've watched our stock of shows get closer and closer to their end-points.  Tivo lets you see what's coming up in its recording, and we've seen "two weeks left of ___" and "one week left of ___".  We've now gotten to the end of all of our shows, except for Numbers, which will "end" this Friday.

I have very mixed emotions about this.  I enjoy the shows that we watch.  (Shows that I don't enjoy get relegated to the "watch 'em without me" pile - a few shows that we Tivo and that Mark watches while I travel.)  I usually do something else while the TV is on - solve the Sunday paper's Samurai Sudoku, or quilt.  I am usually tired when I get home, and it's nice to have a mindless evening activity.

And yet, I am almost *excited* that the shows are gone.  We have Netflix movies to watch, and the PBS miniseries on The War that we recorded but have not watched.  But I find that I'm looking forward to evenings that aren't blocked out around shows.

And then, I ask myself, why watch the shows, if I'm excited not to watch them.  And I circle back to, "I enjoy the shows that we watch."

I know people who've thrown out their TVs entirely.  I don't think that's a solution - there's a certain common currency in entertainment, and I enjoy being able to discuss shows with friends.  But getting back some of my free time - that's not too bad either...

Mindy, working hard to define the word "ambivalent" :-)

Just a quick post before slogging through our inch of snow into the office.  (Yes, an inch can be slogging.  Especially here in Winter Panic-land :-) )

Last night, I was at a vendor's holiday party, talking to a former co-worker.  We caught up on gossip, and on professional lives, and on the preferred tidbits at the party.  And then, we started talking about what was going on in our personal lives.  About five minutes into the conversation, the penny dropped, and I realized that the woman I was talking to - the woman that I've known for more than a dozen years - was one of my online friends.

I'd never made the connection before.

Online life is weird.

Mindy, waving madly to her online friends, even when they're hidden in real life :-)

... for holiday parties.

I started the holiday partying season today, with the annual get-together with my writers' group.  Well, my former writers' group - I don't attend the regular meetings any longer, because I found that I wasn't able to give enough time to comment fairly on submissions, on a regular basis.  Still, I really enjoy seeing the people, and our holiday party always includes lots of food, great conversation, and a white elephant exchange.

I made a Mediterranean couscous - a recipe that I'll be repeating.  The grain was cooked in vegetable broth, which gave it a lot of flavor, and it was nicely rounded out by a lemon dressing.  Next time, I'll add some feta, but I didn't for the party because I wanted it to be vegan friendly for those of that persuasion.

I also made a soup today - a spinach and tomato soup that spent six hours in the slow cooker.  It turned out better than I expected - a *bit* watery, but with a nice spicy tingle from crushed red pepper.  Lunch this week will be a bit more interesting than my typical plain salad :-)

Oh.  I guess holiday parties make me boring.  At least in my LJ posts...  :-)

Mindy, gearing up for another work week

I hate it when electronic things don't work.

No, not like "it bugs me."  Not like "I really wish this would work."

I mean bug-eyed, swearing, ranting, raving, sobbing "I hate this."

I'm not really sure why electronic failure bothers me so much.  I know that my computer is just a machine.  I know that it doesn't have a brain, that it isn't *really* out to get me.  I know that the problems - no matter how undiagnosable they are or how random they seem - really get down to the levels of 1s and 0s.  I used to write programs; I understand all this.

Nevertheless, one sure-fire way to drive me mad is to break my computer.

I (read:  "Mark") recently installed a home access system, so that I can log on to my day-job employer's super-secret confidential network from home.  We have a tangled complexity of computers in our house - Windows and Mac, laptop and desktop - and now one of them is on my office system and all the others are "guests" of that system.

At first, my wireless desktop didn't work because the wireless connector that I use was too old to support the proper level of encryption.  We replaced it with a USB wireless connector, which we found out was broken after three weeks of use.  (Kudos to Circuit City, which accepted the return - with receipt but without box - without question.)  We replaced the USB wireless connector with a card.  We grappled with electronic interference.  Each of these stages was accompanied by my most unreasonable frustration - full-fledged "I'm going to go live in a cabin in Montana and live off the land with no electricity or running water" frustration.

As of this morning, I had connectivity, but I couldn't get out to the Internet for longer than about 60 seconds.  When I called my firm's Help Desk, the nice Help Desk Man walked me through his trouble-shooting sheet.  After a dozen yeses and nos, we determined that it was my cordless phone causing the problem.  The cordless phone in my kitchen, a floor away, not sending or receiving calls even though my computer was phasing in or out. 

The phone is now unplugged.  Connectivity is restored. 

And I got through the entire conversation this morning without melting down like an overtired toddler who has just crashed from a surfeit of Christmas cookies.

Mindy, not at all certain that she loves this everchanging technological world in which we live in...