Owls' Court

Music by Which to Write

I'm better today, thanks to my selfless husband leaving during Smallville last night to pick up DayQuil/NyQuil for me.

Since I didn't get out yesterday, I made sure I went out this morning. It felt so good to be outside in warm weather instead of grey overcast damp world in which I usually end up travelling. I went downtown to deposit a cheque and pay the next three months on the post box I rent with a friend. At the bank I discovered that my money has apparently thawed, since I was able to transfer a chunk to my other account and then access it via debit. Huzzah! Bills to pay! Costume elements to pick up! Groceries to buy!

Tonight Skippy's coming over to do the final modem switch between my current computer and my brand-new-used-to-be-Scott's computer. So if all goes well, tomorrow I'll be using a new system. (It's never that easy; I know this well. Let me be optimistic, okay?)

During today's writing jam, t! and I listened to various 80s rock and 70s punk albums. No one will ever believe that the first half of Chapter 7 was written to "Holiday in Cambodia" -- either of the versions we heard. (1.5K today. Not great, but not bad.)

I mentioned to t! today that I feel like a traitor spelling words like "color" and "emphasize" a la American in this text, as opposed to good solid UK/Canadian spelling. He assured me that I was traitorous. Such love and support.

And I've somehow missed this Memphis Slim song up till now, but thanks to the new Susie Ariloli album it's firmly entrenched in my brain:

MOTHER EARTH
(words and music by Memphis Slim)

You may play the race horses
You may own the whole race track
You may have all the money to buy anything you lack
I don't care how big you are
I don't care what you think you're worth
When it all comes down we got to go back to mother earth

You may own half the city wear diamonds and pearls
You may have a jet plane and fly it all around the world
I don't care how big you are
I don't care what you think you're worth
When it all comes down we got to go back to mother earth

You may have a great army at your command
You may have some politician eating out of your hand
You may have some servant who'll do anything you say
But mother earth is waiting, it's a debt you gotta pay
I don't care how big you are
I don't care what you think you're worth
When it all comes down we got to go back to mother earth

It is so not fair

It is so not fair that it's finally sunny outside, and I'm inside with a headache and a sore throat and a cough and a box of Kleenex shackled to my side.

Well, it isn't fair.

Damn it; I've got another

Damn it; I've got another spring cold. I think my body is making up for how healthy it was all winter.

Books I've Read

Found via Muse:

Literacy Test: Highlight in bold those books you've read.

(Ed. note: Hunh? Since when has literacy been indicated by the number or calibre of the books you've read? Those books might have had an influence on your literacy, but it certainly isn't directly correlational. Whatever. My comments are scattered throughout in italics.)

Author - Title

-- Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice and everything else
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre and everything else
Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno and the two smash sequels!
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities and just about everything else
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss but not Middlemarch? Wha? Who developed this list?
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust in two languages!
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame but not Les Miserables?
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man thank you for not listing Ulysses
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet and just about everything else
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone in two languages!
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse and plusieres autres titres
Wright, Richard - Native Son you know, I honestly can't remember

This list is obviously American, because it doesn't ask if you've read Two Solitudes or Kamouraska. And where's Fahrenheit 451? I find it interesting that the list is fiction and poetry, with Emerson and Thoreau thrown in, but doesn't include important philosophical works. Apparently philosophy (Aristotle, Hegel, Kant, whoever) improves the mind but not the literacy rate. I think literacy evaluators ought to sit down with Kant and try to follow the a priori theory. They'd understand just how much philosophy rests on the ability to read and comprehend.

I took a couple of American Literature courses at university, which is how I came to read things like Theodore Dreiser and Henry James. Most of the rest of my score here is attributed to the double BA in Liberal Arts and English Lit. (That and a decidedly anti-social streak since late elementary school.) And yet I've managed to reach the age I am without reading the high school classics Catch-22 and Catcher in the Rye. Go figure.

Have fun.

Another dark, overcast day. I

Another dark, overcast day. I feel like I'm working in perpetual twilight. The prevailing gloom of the past couple of weeks is really getting to me.

Witches' Weekly has a new set of questions up:

Do you celebrate and/or perform moon magic on the Esbats? If so, why?

Depends. I view moons (full, dark, whatever) as an opportunity to commune more than anything else. I do use lunar energy to fuel spells when necessary (not that I do a lot of them), but magic is never the sole purpose of an esbat for me.

Do you feel that the phases of the moon affect the energies of the waves and people?

Yes. Duh. I'm female, and a Cancer Sun, Pisces Moon. I'm quite aware of how the moon affects people.

What type of magic do you best associate with the moon?

Depends on what phase the moon is in. I go on the fritz when there's a dark moon: I sleep badly, communicate badly, and don't remember what I've read or studied. If I do ritual around a dark moon, I tend to be quite emotional, and as I know emotion fuels magic I have to be very, very careful. I find that I use waxing energy more than any other energy; I just tend to do random workings during that phase more than any other phase. As a rule, I use lunar energy for gentle enhancement of whatever work I'm doing.

Maybe it's the greyness of the day, but I'm craving chocolate. And I'm so sick of tea.

Happy Birthday Cake

We had a wonderful birthday party for my goddaughter. She played with everyone, appreciated her presents ("Look! Look!"), handed round cake with style ("Happy Birthday cake!"), and we all got to spend time with people we don't see as often as we should. By the end of it, we all were ready for a nap; it seems that no one slept well on Friday night. HRH and I arrived home mid-afternoon, and next on my agenda was to pop by the MPRC Beltaine Fair downtown. I was so sleepy that I lay down and closed my eyes, figuring I'd have a quick catnap to get out of my zombie-like state, then bus into town... and when I woke up, it was six in the evening, and the phone was ringing.

Evidently my body decided to get back at least some of the hours of sleep it missed out on the previous night. Fine, except couldn't it have taken just one hour, then saved the rest for later? I would have gone to bed early. I really, really wanted to see what was on sale at the fair, and see how the workshops went.

Drat. And of course, because my body had stolen sleep during the day, I wasn't tired enough to sleep again until midnight. Grr.

On the good side, HRH and I sat down last night for an in-depth joint Tarot reading looking at the next twelve months, posing questions and reading for different time-frames (electional Tarot! - well, if you're an astrologer you'll get the joke), and our projected plans seem to have quite favorable outcomes. It did a lot to settle doubts and nerves.

Exorcism of the Undead Manuscript

I sent the Undead Manuscript back to the publisher at four-thirty yesterday afternoon. My deadline was next Monday. So there.

Then because I resented having my day's plans put on hold, I went downtown to shop and buy birthday gifts. It was odd to walk down Ste Catherine Street and hear most people speaking English. This is a phenomenon that occurs only during the Stanley Cup playoffs.

I was also reminded why I don't like people very much. They're rude and classless and superficial and self-centered.

Aside from gifts for others, to reward myself for a nasty day I popped into Lush and picked up two bath bombs, one a lovely rose-scent and the other the new Reynard dans les Fleurs scent - Fox in the Flowers. (For those who don't know, I'm as obsessed with foxes as I am with owls.) It's as close as I can get to new-mown hay, being severely allergic to all of Nature, and it felt heavenly last night.

Then in HMV I bought the new Susie Arioli Band album, and, er, the newly released Guns'n'Roses Greatest Hits collection. (You know you're an eclectic music-lover when you bring home two contrasting CDs like this.) I blame ProsperosDaughter and t! for the latter purchase; t! for my original immersion in this sort of stuff, and ProsperosDaughter for bringing the Motley Crue tape along on our last trip to Toronto and reminding me of 80s rock. I also managed to forget yet again that I have an HMV gift certificate left over from Christmastime.

Apart from nasty insomnia last night, I'm feeling pretty okay today. There's a friendly celebratory brunch for my goddaughter this morning, which I'm looking forward to immensely. Life may get bumpy, but there's always two-year-olds with birthdays to make things better.

Does it get any more

Does it get any more exciting than this?

Great Moments in the History of Solar Physics

Farewell, Angel

MSN has a good article mourning the loss of Angel.

It’s easy to appreciate fans’ inability to let Joss Whedon’s “Angel” go quietly into rerun heaven. Some of the sting of last season’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” finale was lessened by knowing that the characters would continue to fight the good fight on “Angel.” But now that the “Charmed”-gets-renewed-and-“Angel”-doesn’t network went all Mister Pointy on the lovable vampire and his team, audiences are about to be completely Jossless for the first time in seven years.

Aye, there's the rub, folks. We're Jossless. Charmed gets renewed; Angel doesn't. Perky girls with funky witchy powers in a soap opera versus a darker good-vs-evil-and-which-is-which-anyway show with better writing. Of course it got axed.

Don't mind me. I'm just bitter. Bitter about Angel and this wretched manuscript.

And of course, Track Changes

And of course, Track Changes has just crashed Word.

Aaarrgh!

Ah, yes, I remember this headache slyly insinuating itself between madness and reason...

La la la, I can't Hear You

You'll never guess what I'm doing.

Yes, indeed. Editing the manuscript of that damned project which has landed in my inbox yet again. This time I'm answering the copy-editor's final questions on the ultimate rewrite.

La la la, I can't hear you -- mainly because if I do I'll say something very uncomplimentary that you likely don't deserve, because I have about this much patience today. (Imagine me holding two fingers touching each other. Yes. Touching.)

I keep thinking a grim mantra which goes something like this: My book will be different... my book will be different... when I finally get around to working on it again, which was originally on today's agenda... my book will be different....

I chose today as the

I chose today as the inaugural day to begin typing the spellcrafting book, it being International Creativity Day and all. I had a few point-form notes that I'd written down in a notebook on Monday, and as I typed them out I expanded upon them, just as I'd planned. And then, out of nowhere, I was writing pages about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and why so many spellbooks concentrate on basic needs like prosperity and love.

*blink* *blink*

No, I'm not sure where it came from either. It never occurred to me before, although it certainly makes a lot of sense.

International Creativity

April 21 is International Creativity Day, which gives you complete and total license to doodle when you ought to be working. The creative collective I belong to (tentatively named the Penslingers, pending any veto) has planned an evening meeting at HRH's studio to do art stuff, try out new techniques, and generally celebrate how creativity is cool.

I, of course, will be at orchestra, celebrating in a different way.

So enjoy a round of gardening, dancing across intersections, random poetry, web design, cooking, calligraphy on an address label, sewing, or rearranging your furniture. Everything is creative. Think outside the box, and congratulate yourself for doing it. The creative force fuels our lives, initiates evolution and progress, and besides, it's fun.

Damn. I'm out of antihistamines.

Damn. I'm out of antihistamines.

Owldaughter Update

Every couple of weeks I do something to the Owldaughter website to keep it current. I've just fnished a whack of spiritual stuff which you can check out if you're interested on the new Believe page, which also has links to the second page and the spiritual articles. I learned how to use anchor tags today. (Thanks again for my new book, Ceri!)

I have the front and back windows wide open, letting the incredibly warm wind through to air out the house. All the cats are plastered against the screens, wildly sniffing the outdoor smells.

Now it's lunchtime, and then I'll sit down with my chapter-by-chapter outline of my book and expand everything in point form. Who knows what I'll discover belongs in which chapter.

Witches Weekly

Last night's barbecue reminded me that Witches Weekly asked spring-related questions which I haven't yet answered.

What do you take as the first sign of spring's arrival?

The first warm breeze; the change in the light quality; the appearance of potted hyacinths in the supermarkets, and their subsequent appearance on my mantelpiece at home. Mmm... love the smell of hyacinths.

The confirmation of spring is the first barbecue!

Do you plan to take on any new personal activities/duties this spring? If so, what?

Usually in spring I choose to drop an activity. It's part of my unofficial spring cleaning process: I clear out the stuff that doesn't benefit me any more, things I'm clinging to just because.

What's the first word that comes to mind when you hear "Spring?"

Depends on what time of year I hear it. If it's any time in winter, it's "Please." If it's mid-to late-March, it's a phrase: "Thank God." I live in Montreal, the Land of Extreme Temperatures, sub-arctic to sub-tropical. By the time spring rolls around, we're all heartily sick of winter. (And yes, the opposite is true by the end of summer.)

Teaching

Our level 3 students led a fabulous ritual yesterday, aided by four brave level 2 student. My new favourite must-have ritual tool is a shredder. (You just had to be there.)

I enjoyed the afternoon immensely. For once I wasn't stressed out about packing too much into the day, so I could relax and actually appreciate the school ritual. Before the rit, I was cornered by two of my level 3s so that they could apologise for the chaos of the oils & incense class two weeks ago. I tried to reassure them, reminded them that I was ill that weekend, pointed out that there's a reason why making oils and incenses are supposed to be held in two separate classes; but they insisted that no, the class as a whole has to remember that the teachers have a ton of information that we're trying to get across to them in a limited amount of time, and that class isn't a social event or a place to kick back and relax. By the end, they had convinced me. (They weren't going to take no as an answer anyway, so it's a good thing I agreed.)

See, I believe that class does have a social aspect to it, and that it is a time to relax a bit. However, these students do have an excellent point: there has to be a balance between the enjoyable aspect and the discipline and respect necessary to work within a time frame and with educators.

So I'm very proud of all of my students this weekend, for a variety of reasons. My Saturday class hit upon a comprimise that allowed them to participate within discussion of modern religion at last, and it was fantastic; the ritual was marvellous; and there were several private exchanges on Sunday afternoon that impressed me with how mature and determined my students are.

And after it all, I got to spend a wonderful evening with my husband's family. No one barbecues inch-thick pork chops with homemade sauce like my father-in-law!

Tuesday, March 9: almost to

Tuesday, March 9:

almost to bonneville. i've now driven 314 meters, and i'm finally getting into some interesting terrain. lots of rocks. it's getting kind of steep, too. if i fall over i know i'm never going to hear the end of it.

who can recommend some good 'cresting the rim of a crater' music? nasa's selections are getting kind of weird...

Yes, it's the Spirit Rover LJ. Riotous.

Shoes!

It's been a while since I updated my reading list. I'm now enjoying Zodiac, a vintage Neil Stephenson. I really like his early work. I'm the only person I know who's read The Big U.

I'm currently munching rice cakes. While people might surmise that this might have something to do with shaping up my physique for my annual body-skimming superhero costume, it's nothing so health- (or fashion-) conscious: I just like the little spiced styrofoam disks. I'm weird that way.

Speaking of superhero costumes, I found the wickedest satin spike heels with ribbon lacing today at the Le Chateau outlet. I also found the perfect top and skirt to kit-bash to make my costume, which I will pick up when the bank thaws my money at the beginning of May. (Yes, "thaws;" Ceri and t! came up with the term as an alternative to "unfreezes"). Hey, if it cuts down on the amount of sewing I have to do, and the cost ends up being approximately the same as material plus sewing-machine hours would be, I'm all for pre-fab costume elements. I'll actually be picking up two skirts, one to wear and the other for extra material to with which to do other nifty costume stuff. Everything will require modification, but modification will take significantly less time than kit-bashing a pattern and sewing it from scratch.

The shoes are just so damn funky. The heels are hilarious. The idea of me in spike heels just makes me giggle helplessly, especially woven satin spike heels with ribbon lacing all the way up the calf. I'll never wear them again, but for nine bucks, I couldn't resist.

By the way, go to CBC's Great Canadians contest and vote. Canadians are cool. Molson says so, but we knew the truth long before the commercials told everyone else, didn't we.

Grudgingly Strauss

It appears that I only hate Strauss when I can't play it. Once I'm comfortable with a Strauss piece, and I can settle into the rhythm of it, it's actually fun to play. The only problem with it now is holding the celli back - we keep wanting to spin the waltz faster to keep it moving!

I'm also guilty of being very pleased that the incredibly disturbing twit who sits behind me hasn't been to rehearsal in two weeks. It upsets me that he affects my enjoyment of playing with the orchestra so much. He's a bit hyper, and he can't stop talking; he also plays too loud. Three rehearsals ago he drove me right to the edge, forcing me to grit my teeth through the first half. I couldn't hear anything but his voice and his mishandling of the rhythm and dynamics. When Douglas called break, his cello was down and he was out like a shot for his cigarette. My old stand partner turned around and smiled at me, asked me how I was, and I did something I rarely do with acquaintances: I said, "If he doesn't stop talking, I'm going to kill him. I'm going to turn around and plunge my bow right into his chest."

"Qu'est-ce-qu'elle a dit?" our principal cellist asked. My stand partner relayed the information, laughing, and the principal turned around to look at me and say with all sincerity, "And I will sharpen your bow."

It wasn't nice, but it felt good to know that others were just as fed up as I was.

Now, I know that words have power. They hurt, or they heal. Sometimes, though, words have to come out so that they stop hurting you. And yes, he hasn't been at rehearsal for the past two weeks now. No one has said anything, but I know that we're all relieved. And the dynamics are better, both musically and otherwise.

Just Because

You can't tell me that Dan Radcliffe as Harry Potter doesn't look like Tim Hunter.

Please, please, someone do a Books of Magic film just so I can see Radcliffe play Tim...

Dear Everyone:

To everyone who has asked, "Series editor? That's great, but when are you publishing your own book?", I say:

Spring 2005.

Yes. My book on spellcrafting in the For Life series will hit the shelves around this time next year. My contract arrives sometime this week.

Trish Telesco, the first choice for author, was unfortunately occupied (I love you, Trish, and not just because you were contracted elsewhere; after two strikes while trying to contract you, I promise we will work together during this series eventually!). My two in-house editor colleagues at the publisher looked at one another and said, "Why not Autumn? She knows her stuff, writes well, writes quickly, and it just makes sense to have the series editor put out one or two books in the series." (As in, more than one? Sure!)

They called me last Thursday and asked if I'd be interested in drawing up a proposal for it. Thank goodness Ceri was here to witness it and to confirm it had actually happened. After random dazed moments of "This isn't real," I mulled it over on my short Easter jaunt to my parents' home, and wrote a dynamic proposal Monday morning. It went through a publishing board meeting today, and the whole pub team is terribly excited and wants me to do it, with no revision to the proposal whatsoever. I just got the call.

I knew I would publish work at some point in my life; I just always expected it to be fiction first. After all, that's what I write more than anything else.

So, yeah. Me, a published author in twelve months, give or take a few days.

I know there's a celebratory Vanilla Coke around here somewhere.

I just sent a proposal

I just sent a proposal off to the publisher for a new book. If everyone could think happy thoughts, it would be much appreciated...

Editing Dreams

I handed in the finished, polished, done-with-it manuscript of the first book Friday morning at 6.30.

Over the weekend at my parents' house, I discovered that I have a whole new sort of subconscious anxiety-inspired dream now that I no longer have play dreams before perfomring in the theatre.

Now I dream about going through the galleys of the project I've just finished editing, dreams where I'm turning pages and freaking out about major errors and material I never saw, and thus didn't edit.

I have a new baby sister!

Her name is Cordelia, and I get to meet her this weekend.

Yes, my parents now have three Maine Coone cats. My husband joked about the value of their purebred cats almost paying off his remaining student loan. I responded with the observation that it would be difficult to fit three cats in an envelope addressed to the bank.

Well, it would.

Fresh Air

I love my second author. I really do. She's clear, concise, and handed in a polished, finished manuscript for us to work with. It's even been formatted already.

Good things come to those who wait.

Is it wrong to be

Is it wrong to be so excited about a new stainless steel garlic press?

The drawback to Daylight Savings

The drawback to Daylight Savings Time is that come spring, you think it's mid-afternoon when it's suppertime.

Exercising Patience

Yesterday started off so well, and gradually went further and further downhill as I overextended myself, thinking that this second spring cold was beaten. It didn't help that we had a very high-energy hands-on class on making oils and incenses on Sunday afternoon, which resulted in trying to rein in eight excited adults, and ended with someone saying, "Well, this was a great class, except...". I'm really tired of back-handed compliments. What's wrong with saying, "I had a lot of fun. Thanks! By the way, next time could you give us a bit more warning? I really had to scramble to assemble the supplies for this." I uncharacteristically physically turned around and walked away from the back-handed compliment because (a) it wasn't my fault, and (b) I'd spent the past two hours repeating myself because not everyone was listening when I imparted the original information. I lost my patience. Passive-aggressive feedback does absolutely no good at all, and I wish more people understood that. It's patronising and manipulative, and I see right through it. Coming from a student, no matter how they might think their five more years of age gives them an edge over their teacher, it's even more insulting, both to me and to the student. Unfortunately, they don't seem to realise that it damages them.

I missed a game last night because the afternoon's class wore me out. I took an over-the-counter sleeping pill, stuck my earplugs in to counter the thumping bass from upstairs, and woke up eleven hours later. I have even less of a voice than I did when I went to bed, which is making me grumpy. I also discovered that the two hour TV program t! asked me to tape for him taped the wrong channel. I am not in a particularly great mood.

This weekend did have good bits, though: for example, we had a terrific dinner with Tal on Saturday night, where we made Ceri's fabulous and eeeeeevil pudding. The second half of the Saturday class was fun to watch, after my whispered lecture on the very basic highlights of Mesoamerican, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian religion. (Note to self: your customary dynamism is completely sabotaged when you are forced to whisper, rendering the class lifeless and dull.) And I must say that the eleven hours of sleep last night were high up on the List of Good Things, considering my recent sleep scores, even if those eleven hours were drug-induced.

I have a Reiki workshop to attend tonight, which I'm very much looking forward to. And I think I'll spend the day researching and making notes for this Brid project, which seems to be evolving into a dialogue between contemporary views of the Neo-Pagan goddess and the attributions found in achaeological and literary work.

At least, that was the plan until the manuscript for the second book in this ongoing series just fell into my inbox with the request to write a foreword attached. I work tomorrow, and they want it by Wednesday, so it looks like I'm working for the publisher again today, as I did every single day last week. (I know I swore that I was taking Friday off - I lied. I worked on checking the first half of that manuscript that was sent back to me by the author.)

I just keep telling myself that this book is atypical, we're being overprotective because it's the firstborn of the series, and by the end of this week when I've checked his second half of the rewrites and sent it back to the publisher, it will all be over until I do a final galley read-through somewhere down the line.

All I want to do is curl up with a cat under an afghan, have someone bring me soup for lunch, and read books with my sticky tabs, a notebook, and a highlighter by my side. That's all.

Insomniac

Here I am at three minutes to one AM, doing what I do when I can't sleep: I go through LOTR costume pictures obssessively on the Internet.

A life? Why, no, now that you ask...

International Creativity Day is on

International Creativity Day is on April 21.

Yeah, I flipped too.

Many more cool holidays to be found at Earth Calendar, a site I am growing to know intimately thanks to The Chapter From Hell.