BH: 1023

Happy Birthday to my sister Debi!

So much to catch up on, in so many areas.

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Writing: Didn’t write when we got home from the party. Didn’t expect to get home at 2 a.m.! We sat in the hot tub for a few minutes to warm up (it was nippy on the bike, but the heated seats helped immensely), and then we crashed. I’m still chuffed about my progress yesterday and am looking forward to seeing how much I get to today, around all of the other projects we’re working on.

Received two rejections from Black Gate today; neither story was adventurous enough for him although he had nice things to say about both. I like John O’Neill; he’s a truly pleasant editor to work with, even if he’s had both of these stories for 10 months.

On a happier note, I was absolutely chuffed to receive an invitation to join the WebRats! It’s a writing journal webring, and many of the writers I read are a part of it (and I know a couple of them personally, like Vera Nazarian and Rob Vagle). My journal was recommended, and thus I was invited. I feel all warm and gooey inside. Now I have to come up with a one-sentence description of my journal. That’ll be a little harder. But whee! I feel like the cool in-crowd in high school has accepted me. Not the popular kids, of course. They’re boooring. The band geeks. You know, just like I _was_ in high school…

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Health: On the way to the party, going over the mountains, my left ear popped. I hadn’t even noticed any pressure in it. Sometime during the party, my right ear must have popped. I’m not sure exactly when. When we got there, taking off my boots made me stagger like a drunken sailor; when we got on the bike to come home, I was fine. So, I guess it was an ear thing all along. I should be grateful it didn’t involve pain!

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Party! So we hopped on the bike last night and went to Valencia for André’s 30th-birthday party. (Note to “Angel” fans—we went right by Pacoima, which is where Angel, Cordy, and Connor went to find the priestesses in this past weeks’ episode. I’d never heard of the town before I saw the episode.) André is one of our SCA babies; we pretty much ushered him in, taught him the basics of making garb, and have since watched him become a rapier don who proposed to his girlfriend Katherine in court at GWW VI. [sniff] We had a great time at the party, hanging out with them and other folks. We played Cranium and a 1974 version of Family Feud, drank good wine and potent Mudslides, convinced Katherine to change into her leather outfit (but she changed back fairly quickly [pout]), and generally had a silly and fun time. It feels like a long time since we’ve been to a party. I hope my birthday party is at least as fun! (But of course it will be—Sarah will be here to celebrate it with me for the first time since my 17th-birthday party. Holy crap, I just did the math on that one. EEK!)

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Today: I totally have PME today. It first became apparent last night when I started cleaning A&K’s kitchen as the party was winding down. Didn’t really think much about it; I was just chatting with K and I asked her where a trash bag was…

So today I’m having trouble concentrating. It’s taking me forever to write this because I’ll bounce up to do something else, or look something up, or answer an e-mail. Ah well. At least I’m accomplishing things!

We slept in, blissfully, and had a nice lie-in before the allure of food finally dragged us out of bed. So we had breakfast and then finally got started on our projects for the day, which were supposed to be making inkle looms and working on the library. Well, I sanded the dowels for the looms whilst Ken made a shelf to put all the long skinny pieces of wood (moulding, etc.) up off the floor. I finished and came in here to do computer stuff. He proceeded to cut up all the old plaster-encrusted panelling and throw it away, and now he’s fixing the side gate, which was made improperly and always drooped. It’s anyone’s guess if we’ll get to the looms; I’m confident we won’t be doing any work in the library. But that’s okay. Stuff’s getting done. I also scrubbed down the black metal table and chairs that Ken’s mom gave us for the back porch, so now they’re useable, rather than being bird-poo-encrusted. I keep telling myself I’ll sit out there with the laptop and work, and now I have no excuse. Unless it gets really hot or rains.

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Pentathlon: So this afternoon Meg called and asked if we were entering Pentathlon. Pentathlon is Caid’s big every-other-year A&S competition. If you score the highest total score with five entries in at least four categories, you’re Pentathlon Champion. Meg won a few years back. (Yes, we do know cool people! [g]) This year the event is at the end of March, and registration for entry is due at the end of this week. I’ve been planning to enter a velvet-and-silk banner. Ken had decided not to enter anything.

Well, it turns out that NO entries have been received. At all. By the time Meg and I were through with our conversation, the three of us had planned to enter as a team (she also has enough stuff to enter on her own, except she has to write a paper), and I may have enough stuff to enter on my own, except I’d have to make a second banner (note that the first one isn’t made yet) and write a paper—and the paper’s due by Friday. Eek. My mind is now a-whirl with possibilities. My best bet is probably a how-to paper; Ken suggested one on how to make a cotehardie from a mundane A-line dress pattern. Which I know how to do; it would be a case of writing up the steps. Very possible. Or I could write in detail how to make the banner (because the banner documentation needs be 2 pages max.). Hmmmm…

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Back to today. A good day. I called Debi to wish her a happy birthday and heard about how Baylee is doing in her training (fabulously well, thankyouverymuch), and I called Sarah just to talk and we discussed the novel we’re going to write while she’s here (which we’re going to start early, because there’s no way we can write the whole thing while she’s here, and we’d rather start early and try to finish it here, rather than lose momentum afterwards).

Ken and I got all of the loom bits cut out and sanded, and the knobs put together with bolts and screws. We had salad and pizza for dinner and watched “Charmed”, and then we worked in the study; you can see my productivity above. Right now my chapters are about 4K; if I wrote 2K/day, I would be done this week. I’m shooting for 1K/day, and we’ll see how it goes. I’m so close to the end of this one that I can taste it!