So, from today, I have one month to perfect the formula for the Famous Tzatziki or face Hobbit-wrath. Can it be done?

Some things I discovered while working on the latest batch the other night:
- The juice of one lime is sufficient per one large container of yoghurt. More than that results in a slight citrus overkill. Not awful, but not perfect.
- You always need more garlic than you think you do. Always always. The same is often true for olive oil, but not to the same extent.
- The cucumbers are actually a little better chopped fine by hand than pulverized in the Cuisinart. It gives the sauce a nice texture and sustains interest. (I never thought I'd say that. This is actually the only way I even like raw cucumbers. Weird.) I may yet have to weigh out the merits of peeled-vs.-unpeeled, but for now, unpeeled and diced very small seems to work just fine.
- I've been pondering experimenting with the vinegar. I've been using cider vinegar for as long as I've been doing this particular recipe, even though every "official" tzatziki recipe I've seen calls for plain old white vinegar. It's such a small amount - just a little splash per batch - that I wonder if it makes much difference. (Balsamic vinegar is a great big no-no, though, as I learned some time ago to my distress.)

Food obsession? Not me. Not Italian at all.

Hopefully, this weekend will bring a new computer and assorted toys. We've been throwing around the idea of ordering one, but receiving packages at home from anyone but the good old postal service is such a major pain in the ass that it hardly seems worth whatever bargain we'd get on one. (Last thing we need is to have FedEx drop off our nice shiny new Dell outside our door and have it vanish before we get home.) So I think we're going out tomorrow and having a look around, and then jump on whatever deal seems least sucky.

And Tuesday, my birthday present from Stacy came in, one month late exactly. But that's okay, because it was this. My wife is the best.

Things are looking up these days. We're at something like normal now; our bedroom has been de-holed and cleaned and almost doesn't smell like smoke anymore, and we got new sheets on Friday and slept in there again for the first time in days. Life goes on, in its inevitable way.

Still getting the shakes every so often, especially seeing it was only a week ago tonight we were stumbling out through snowdrifts to escape disaster, and it still kind of feels like we beat the devil somehow and don't deserve our good fortune. But, as I'm wont to tell people, nobody really deserves their fortune, good or bad; you just deal with what life throws at you. And Stacy and I are probably closer because of this, and that's a good thing.

As of last night, the kitties are no longer resident here (as they were all week, not being able to go to the hotel with Angie). It was nice to have them here, even though we never really saw them. (They hid in the closet all week while we were awake, the poor scared things. My closest contact was getting scratched and bitten by Spike as I tried to extricate him from the spare-room closet where he'd wandered in sometime in the wee hours of Wednesday night; I sustained some well-deserved wounds from that, which should serve as a warning to anyone thinking of trying some cat-wrestling in your underwear. Not recommended.)

So now we're having a nice Sunday-night relax, and I'm oddly enough not feeling as terrorized as usual at the thought of going back to work tomorrow. Maybe a return to some kind of routine is not such a bad thing now. And even the snow is much less of a pain in the ass than it was a week ago. I feel relieved about a long list of things.

And today is Spyder's birthday; she came into the world on this appropriately Illuminated date way back in dystopian 1984, almost two months after I saw Dune in a cold little theatre in Parkersburg, WV. (The fact that I have a friendship with an adult who was born after the release of Dune is very weird to me, and a little depressing. But anyway.) So go on over to her website, and give la mia sorella some hits and some loooove.

Wooch. What a week. Here's hoping they get better for a while.

Disaster. Relief.

Sometime after ten o'clock last night, the apartment building adjoining ours caught fire.

We don't know why. Someone being stupid and careless, in all likelihood. It hardly matters. We ran outside while our bedroom filled with smoke and with hardly more than the clothes on our backs and watched the fire fighters do everything they could, in two feet of snow, in the driving sleet, hardly feeling anything through the adrenaline and sick fear. When we heard the water was frozen in the lines, we prayed like anything they could get it to flow. And, eventually, they did, and we cheered and lost sight of the whole scene in clouds of steam and smoke.

And when we were all sent down to the rental office, I thought I'd hear by the end of the night that we'd lost everything, that the roof had caught, that there had been too much smoke, that we'd be out of a home. I thought of the irreplaceable artwork in our apartment, and the unfinished writings, and my countless, precious books. I felt like William of Baskerville watching the Abbey library burn. And Stacy and I sat in the office with all the other refugees from two apartment buildings for the unbearable long hours we had to wait, and hugged each other, and mostly felt glad to be alive.

And then, sometime in the small cold hours, someone told us that the residents of the 2221 building could go home. Yes, even the ones in the third-floor units. The building was safe. The damage was contained.

We wandered home and took stock. We saw where the firemen had liberated a small bookcase to use, I assume, as a makeshift stepstool, spilling its contents on the floor; we saw where they'd broken through our bedroom ceiling and scattered drywall and insulation across the carpet; and we so, so did not care.

We slept in our spare room. About four o'clock, our neighbor Angie came, who lived in the basement unit of the building that burned, and slept on our sofa. (We met her for the first time last night, standing underdressed in the snow, terrified for her cats; they lived through it, and are around here somewhere too, terrified and hiding but okay.) We couldn't believe we were home. We couldn't believe we had one.

What would we have done if we'd been burned out and lost everything? Where would we have gone? I don't know. We're snowed in, and will be for some time.

Did the foot or more of snow on the rooftops make the difference in delaying the fire? Did it do more good that way than the harm it did freezing the pipelines? I don't know that either.

I know that I look at the gutted remains of the 2219 building, through which the sky can be seen, and am filled with queasy horror, knowing that we came within quite literal inches of sharing its fate. I know that every time I try and talk about this, I end up speechless and babbling incoherently, unable to frame what happened in words, unable to even figure out how I feel about it. I know I'll be damn glad when the maintenance folks clean up the mess in our place (Such a little thing! So cosmetic!), and when we get our gas and hot water back. I know that I ache for normality. And I just can't, can't believe how lucky we were.

I laugh at inappropriate things. When we walked in to see our computer gleefully running its idiot screensaver as if nothing unusual had happened, I almost had a fit of hysteria. Almost everything is unbelievably surreal.

I'm okay. Stacy is okay. Poor Angie will be okay eventually, and rebuild her life as best she can. I'm fighting the urge to crawl off somewhere and wait for the world to go away. The adrenaline has run out, and I feel incredibly numb. This should have been a weekend to relax and enjoy being snowed in, enjoy the unexpected extra time off tomorrow. Instead, I sit here and shake my head and sigh and don't know how the hell to feel.

My world went very briefly nova last night. I hope and pray, if there's anything worth praying to, that it may yet collapse back to something like its former shape. In the meantime, I'll be here, looking in wonder at the wreckage around me, insensate and uncomprehending. Counting my blessings and my good fortune. Waiting to not feel like such a shellshocked wreck.

Oh, my. Well, it's good to be popular.

Went to the Jammin' Java's Open Mic on Monday night and had a grand time. It's a really nice venue for playing music as well as seeing other people play - almost exactly the kind of pretentious coffeehouse atmosphere that I suspected the Moonlit Port aspired to, back in its day. I did "Master Van Rijn" and "One of Those Nights" to a receptive crowd, and didn't even feel too outclassed by the many talented folks who also did their thing, and did it well, all the rest of the evening.

Met some nice and friendly people that way, including a very talented guy named John who spent the last eight years in China (and thus may be the only person I've met in a decade who knew who Cui Jian was when I mentioned him) and an extraordinarily nice woman named Kris who had glowing things to say about my material, which always makes me happy happy. Also got reacquainted, after two years (!!), with IlyAimy's ubertalented Rob, who since I last saw him has done something odd with his beard that makes him look vaguely like a young Steven Brust. And so I step, ever so tentatively, back into the waters of a musical community, and it was pretty good.

Stacy's home sick today, hopefully not with what I had, which I wouldn't wish on anyone. Bleah.

I hear that, against all precedent, my brother may be making the trip for our big party next weekend. Whee! If memory serves me right, this will be the largest gathering we've hosted in all the years we've been here (if most of the invited show up, anyway). This is what comes of the demise of the Purple Penguin, I suppose; the payoff's that no one will find themselves at midnight with a sword at their throat, as was once known to happen from time to time with some of Jeff's more unruly guests. I guess that's a good or bad thing, depending on your tastes. And speaking of tastes, I'm making my Famous Tzatziki for the occasion, and that's always good.

Only the third post of the year. Gods and powers, but that's pathetic.

Recovered lately from a week-long sickness of mysterious origin, which laid me up for many days and filled my head with unpleasantness. Had one of those visits to the doctor where the medical professional says "I don't really know what's wrong with you, have some antibiotics" and sends you back home to drink fluids. I'm much better now. Also more or less recovered from my recent bout with depression, which got a lot worse before it got better, but resulted in my decision to look into some good honest medication for this, something I think I've put off for as long as I can. I'm fighting the weird nagging feeling that doing so means I've failed somehow to beat this by my own devices, even though I know that's just dumb; I've spent the last three years really, really not wanting to, I don't know, "resort" to that. I think, though, that I'm beginning to resign myself to it being a bigger enemy than I can face down naked, as it were. And it's very possible that three years ago I hadn't learned enough of the things that I got out of a year and a half of therapy, and drugs would have been a bad idea anyway. I don't know. I'm going to talk to the professionals about this and see what happens. But the idea that something might give me an edge over the ... irrational, crushing despair that looms over me gives me a lot of hope for the future.

Last night I had a semi-unexpected treat of going to see Jim's Big Ego at the Jammin' Java in Vienna (and it's a measure of how airheaded I am that, after four and a half years of living here, I had no idea Vienna is as close as it is), which is a great venue and has an open mic I'm now determined to go to; it was an excellent show, and JBE got some new local fans, I think, as is right and good. And I also became an instant fan of the opening band, The Dreamscapes Project, who are quite awesomely good and a bunch of nice guys to boot.

Currently reading The Man Who Was Thursday, one of those books I can't help but feel I ought to have read by now, and it's as good as its publicity - one of the few "classics" that I'm not finding to be a fight to get through. It's odd - I can do Shakespeare, and Marlowe, easily enough, and I do alright with a decent translation of Chaucer or Dante, but works in English from about 1800 to 1920 are frequently like fighting taffy for me. But Chesterton's very nearly as good as Neil Gaiman says he is, even if you have to get past his respectable Edwardian Christianity at times. Also nearly done with Mieville's The Scar, started the night before my birthday and even better than Perdido Street Station. Mieville, despite being occasionally as big an opinionated pain in the ass in his own way as Chesterton, is a brilliant and visionary writer, and fantasy is lucky to have him. Were I James Lipton, I'd say he was "delightful," but I'm not and I won't.

And finally, after the long silence of all Muse-ish energies, I'm getting the urge to write again myself, possibly tooling around with something new for a while before taking up old projects. About time, too.

Okay, off to clean now. Matt's coming up to visit from the District tonight, and it's always useful to have a clean slate on which to write the evening's inevitable debauchery - a word I'll use in the absence of one which more accurately reflects the kind of classy reveling one gets up to with upwardly-mobile gay professionals. Hard to really feel comfortable describing a bottle of wine and a plate of crackers and feta as "debauchery," but it messes up the coffee table just as bad as hot wings and beer, so I'll let it stand.

And now I'm just rambling. More later.

Today, we are told, is the coldest day around here for seven years. And I believe it. It's brass monkeys out there. So cold, and windy, that I broke out the big leather trenchcoat this morning, though putting it on often makes me feel as though I should be singing "Tomorrow Belongs to Me." So it goes.

In two days I turn twenty-nine, which is a little weird, what with never really having felt like a grownup at all. Mostly I feel like it's just a number, except that small part of me that's sad to start the last chapter of my twenties. But I'm probably feeling more melancholy than usual about these things. The first few weeks of the year have been very... well, weird, and stressful for a number of reasons, none of which really matter much in the long run. But I haven't felt myself for a while now. Stacy asked my a week or so back when I'll be working on finishing A Thousand Thrones, and my answer was "When I'm not fucking depressed all the time," and I don't think I was quite aware of it prior to saying the words. But, hopefully, that will get better soon.

Unfortunately, having started what seems to be my annual beginning-of-the-year-dropping-off-the-face-of-the-planet, I've ended up unfairly neglecting a lot of people. I owe letters to my brother, and to both Rebekahs (I disappeared so successfully, and for so long, that Spyder sent a note asking if I was okay - and for causing such worry, mia sorella, I am most heartily sorry) and Heaven knows to Pat and Bernice and probably a host of others I've failed to recall. So if I end up spending part of the birthday weekend catching up on my correspondence, it only serves me right.

Though I did manage to shake off my lingering despair long enough to polish off Part Four of The Last Dark Art and send it in just under the wire, and it's now up.

Tomorrow I'm off, making today a kind of Friday, and I'm taking myself to lunch and Borders and then meeting Martha A. for coffee and grrl-talk. And hopefully on my birthday proper I'll be off to a third viewing of T2T (the fact that it's only my third makes me feel like a most unworthy geek indeed) and something spicy and Chinese. So the weekend looks to be an improvement in any case. And that, dear readers, is all we can really hope for.

A Happy New Year to all and sundry. Me, I'm tired and melancholy to be looking back on the last day of my vacation (one which was pretty good, all told, with some minor pitfalls). Had a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch New Year's dinner of saurkraut and pork tonight, or I had pork at least, and Stacy had sausage-esque Boca links, which we trust the Powers will look as kindly on in weighing our fortunes for the coming year. (You must eat pork on New Year's Day, according to my PA Dutch ancestors, and not poultry, because, y'see, pigs root forward, but chickens scratch backward. And if you think that's wacky, you should hear some of their home remedies.)

Not much more I have the heart to report yet, my spirits being where they are, but all the same my good wishes go out to all my loved ones near and far. I sure liked 2002 heaps more than its predecessor; here's hoping this one's even better. Slainte.

Quickly, quickly:

Rolled into P-burg two days ago and have already bounced from Rockport to the in-laws', where I now sit (no Internet at my mom's. Eep) preparing to do Xmas Eve-y stuff.

A couple of hours back, I finished my annual reread of Hogfather, which was very nice and lifted my floundering spirits a bit. This year's been wretched for December depression. I'm not sure why. I NEVER get the holiday blues. Not like this.

Maybe it's Spyder's voodoo curse. Like a bad mojo grenade. I shudder to think.

Nng. I better go be sociable. I have lots of people to write and no time to write them in. Feh. Bloody holidays.

But Stacy and I go see T2T tonight, and that will be very very good. I need a break from my vacation already. How fucking sad is that?

Okay. The time that my watch says it is can't possibly be right. That would mean I slept until ... gaaaaaah.

I write this from Jeff Miller's cozy flat in historic Morgantown, midway through my Appalachian holiday odyssey. It's chilly here in the town of my alma mater, and pale and wintery up there in the sky. Which is only right. Wooch. Happy Solstice.

I showed up much later than I'd planned on last night, which is the pitfall of packing at the last minute and playing a kind of Tetris with the bags of presents in the trunk of the car. But it was a pretty good trip, and I got to listen to Nature and Organisation while going through Cumberland (Michael Cashmore = fuckin' genius) and even managed to stay up waaaaay too late doing four years' worth of catching-up. Aiya.

Now matters of food must be attended to, and the commencing of the last leg of the quest. Back in a bit, hopefully.

Oh, yeah, and The Last Dark Art #3 went up today, only a month behind. Whoohoo!

Wooch.

So - Xmas shopping very nearly done. Week about to start the downslope. Weather not acting up for a week now. Things are pretty good.

I've been so fucking out of it ... I owe lots of people letters and phone calls and whatnot, and I spent all weekend not able to make myself do anything. Gaaaaaah. Think I got a bit of the holiday blues this year, for the first time in memory. Dunno why.

I depart for P-burg on Saturday, with a possible stopover in Morgantown that night for a long-overdue reunion with Jeff Miller ("the other Jeff, the vegan one"). Stacy will be in Texas, of all godsforsaken places, attending her friend Rachel's nice upscale Jewish wedding, and won't make it to WV until Sunday, so I get to make my odyssey to Appalachia almost as drawn-out as I like. This looks to be a nice change of pace from the rush-madly-home holiday trip of previous years, and I look forward to't. Been making sure I have lots of tunes for the road; why my office ever let me near a computer with a CD burner in it is beyond me, but waste not, want not.

Plus, At Nearly 29, I Discover I'm a Lesbian

Had a long drawn-out heart-to-heart with Martha A. on Friday night, wherein I confessed all sorts of odd things about my sense of self that I'm only recently coming to terms with, including how strongly female-identified I feel very much of the time, which is not an easy thing to say out loud, though Martha's one of a handful of people I can talk about that with and there's not even a hint of judgment. And she told me after I'd rabbitted on about it for some while that she sometimes thinks of me as a woman, which is one of the nicest things I can imagine hearing after putting my heart on the plate like that, even if she was just making it up. Erm.

Anyway, once it was out there, it sort of explained a lot. Lynx told me about ten years ago that it's obvious I actually like women (as opposed to the sense most guys mean that, which translates as "I like to fuck women"). That really meant a lot, and it's maybe become even more true as I've discovered how little I connect with men, even most of the ones I'm close to. (There are exceptions. Andy for one. Jeff Miller for another.) My real soulmates tend to be female, and somehow that's where my deep self resonates, like that's what it recognizes. Or so it seems to make sense to me.

So there you have it. Underneath it all, I'm a chick. There are worse fates.

(Which is probably also why I recoil so strongly when Stacy explains some marginally undesirable behavior on my part as "Well, you're a guy," which is the kind of thing that causes my inner c*nt to bristle with indignation. Oh, gods, that's a dreadful image. But nonetheless.)

Oh, and Martha also gave an enthusiatic thumbs-up to the sex scenes in A Thousand Thrones ("You can tell it's not just porn because there's all this lesbian drama"), which was sort of the acid test to see if I've actually done my job, and I felt unconscionably proud. So there you go.

Something too much of this, as Hamlet the Dane said once when he was about to go too far. Le sigh. Nothing to be done.

Hrm. I suppose I'll go burn some more CDs now (The Highbury Working seems appropriately Solsticey, somehow) and await the arrival of my Nature and Organisation disc, which I ordered ages ago when it was out of stock, but I'm told should show up any time. Mmmmmm. Cashmore guitar.

Oh, yeah, and get some work done too. Feh.

The second week of December has little to recommend it. It's neither close enough to Christmas to be really exciting nor soon enough on the heels of Thanksgiving to sustain the warm turkey-flavored glow, and besides, there's no LoTR movie opening this week. It's just gray and cold and, as of this morning, covered in a layer of ice from the freezing rain.

Ack.

Last weekend was full of much holiday shopping, which was good, and fruitful; only a few left to take care of now. Discovered that the Montgomery Mall has a Hot Topic, which is a fine thing indeed, although when I finally picked up my longed-for "Not All Who Wander Are Lost" sticker and brought it home, I found I'd at long last run out of room on my guitar case. Very sad. It had to go on my comics box, which is not quite so appropo, but what can you do.

Also managed to see Treasure Planet on Sunday, mostly with my mouth open and making small noises, and thinking "Aha - this is why Spyder's seen it like forty-five times now." A fine offering from the Mouse, and a great concept well-executed. Highly recommended. And not just because the cat-chick space captain has Emma Thompson's voice, though that doesn't hurt things at all, at all.

Not much else in the offing this week. Martha A.'s coming over on Friday (other Martha's out of town, and we get second pick, which is pretty nice). No writing has been done. It's been that kind of month so far.

Not looking forward to braving the icy wastes in Wheaton tonight. Damned weather. Feh. Bollocks.

I need a drink.

Ai ya! SNOW!

The Fimbulwinter, which seemed to pass us by this year, has returned in earnest, with a vengeance. It is white as anything outside. Very Solsticy. Really a very lovely day out there, once you get past the cold and the hazardous driving/walking/standing around conditions.

I am, somehow, at work (though let us make the distinction right off between "at work" and "actually working"), drinking mint hot chocolate and listening to a few of the shitload of Porcupine Tree CDs Tony burned me over the weekend, anticipating that this will be a short day if the University has any damn sense - not that the latter is anything to bank on.

I should very much like to be home, bundled up in something warmish and comfy, perhaps having a pipe. It seems the thing to do.

Got a lovely package from Spyder yesterday, in the form of a way supercool Jenny Haniver poster with the lyrics to "Cocteau, Goya, Blake" on it. It made my week; many warm fuzzies. As I said to Stacy, I am very lucky to have such wonderful friends.

Some of whom I owe letters to, I think. It's that sort of time, in any case.

Speaking of time, have I really just blown my first hour on nothing but slack? It seems so. Well, alright. Sweet.

Safely returned from PA late late Saturday (or early early Sunday - did you know 114 intersects with 15 at a really convenient place south of Harrisburg? I sure didn't, but if I had, I sure as fuck wouldn't have driven all over Creation looking for a sign marked "Gettysburg" for as long as I did, nor had to prop open my eyes with toothpicks for the last hour or so of the drive home. Live and learn, though).

Ah, family. Families, as Jed Walker says in The Wake, "do both - they rock and they suck." Yup. It was about 90% good, though, and we sure ate a lot. And spent an appropriate amount of time fawning over, and loving on, and bonding with, Babby Nicholas, who is about as cute as should be allowable by moral law. There are many photographs now, which if I'm smart I should not allow out into the world, lest it become known that I'm some kinda poufy sensitive guy who likes kids and stuff.

Oh - wait. Never mind.

Also got a sort of Christmas advance, first in the form of some grandmaternal spending money, which got mostly blown the next day at the Encounter's big Black Friday sale, where I got a shitpile of cool gaming & comics stuff. And second from my mom, who took me and Tony to Dave Phillips' music store, where we both left with new twangy things. Tony got a mandolin, which I promptly moved in on when we got back to the house and tried not to get too much drool on. And I got a Martin Backpacker, such as I've been lusting over for, oh, three years or so now, and am very, very happy. I will never travel without a guitar now ever again. Ever ever.

And the DC NaNo "Thank God It's Over" party is on Friday, where I'll go and see if anyone remembers me from a month and a half back. Whoohoo!

I fucking did it.

50,129 words, one day under the wire. I'd do a little dance if it weren't oh-God-thirty in the fucking morning.

Holy shit.

Now I must go and bask in the purple goodness of my "Winner" bar.

Hurrah!

Hump day of the short T-day week, and none too soon, either. I am feeling mighty goofy these days. All them words'll do that to a feller.

Not to mention probably still being in the red as far as sleeping-to-waking-hours ratios go, not that I'd change a thing in that regard.

This week's writing going slower than I'd like. Feh. Probably have to do work on it over Thanksgiving, but so it goes. Now I'm just anxious to close in on the ending just to see if Greg's got my number as much as he believes he does. I do it all for the fans, you know.

Hoping to do some recording on the weekend, even if just a bit of noodling around and trying to be Coil. My between-writing meditation the last couple of days has been to go and play lots of the cover tunes I know, or am learning; to that end, I printed out the lyrics to Current 93's "They Returned to Their Earth," which is a really lovely song, though whether or not I'd ever subject an audience to all six and a half minutes of surreal Tibet imagery without some nice backing violin or something is iffy. (But tempting nonetheless - some of those lines are really killer, even if I have no friggin' idea what old David is going on about, as with most C93. And I get a real kick out of an ambiguous opening line like "When serpents come/ They cover the Christ thorn.") And I'm in the process of learning "Pavanne," which makes me a happy bear indeed. Also for some reason got the urge to add some more Morrissey tunes to my repertoire, as if it's all not depressing enough, though when I looked up "Will Never Marry" and "My Love Life" I got that sinking feeling that came when I found out that the verses of Counting Crows' "Round Here" are in G - just G, no changes, and if you can't play that shimmery little arpeggio then it all sounds like aaaaass - they're like that, kinda. I'm probably being told, somehow, that happily married people have no damn business covering the Moz.

Gah. Morrissey songs. It must be November. Very nearly not, though. How utterly distressing. Now I'll have to go play "Everyday Is Like Sunday" anyway.

I Go, I hCome Back Again

Tired. Sore. Loopy. God knows, probably malnourished too.

I had a lovely weekend.

New York is, somehow, less intimidating in person. There's an awful lot of it, though. It's not the kind of place I now could have a go at alone. Considering the labyrinthine routes one takes just getting into the damn subway station, I can see myself quickly giving in to a gibbering disorientation very quickly. But anyway.

Busses are a really fine way of getting places if you're not wealthy or in a terrible hurry; they're about as comfortable as anything can be that has lots of people packed into a small space moving very fast. However, and this is critical: PEE BEFOREHAND. Do not be reassured that the Greyhound has a little bathroom in the back. If you're anything like me, trying to relax the requisite muscles while simultaneously hanging on for dear life as the vehicle pitches like a ship in a gale is well-nigh impossible. Yeah, I know you can just sit down, but at that point the loss to your dignity is just as bad as the motion problem, or has the same effect at any rate, at least if you're as neurotic as I am about such indelicacies. So it goes.

Anyway.

Spyder is about as cool as a person should be allowed to be, which isn't exactly surprising, but is very nice nonetheless. I wound up having one of those days where you walk around having to remind yourself that you actually haven't known who you're hanging out with for years and years. Easily already one of my favorite people, and fun in that easy way that I value highly in a friend; we spent all day doing ... not much of anything except going to cafes and comic book stores and walking the streets of the city, and I had such an amazingly good time that the day just flew. All of which more or less goes to show that my theory that smart, talented tough-chick artists are not a thing my life can have too much of has not been disproven.

(And while I'm on a roll counting my blessings, a side note is due my lovely wife, not just for being a smart cool tough chick herself, but also for being the kind of person who doesn't blink at the thought of me gallivanting around a city many miles away with another one. And for being the sort of spouse who, when I come home and she asks me, "Is she cute?" I get to say "Yes," and there are no Consequences. I mention this mostly because the memory is still all too vivid, despite the intervening years, of previous circumstances with an ex who shall be protected by anonymity, wherein there would have been a number of Consequences, one of which probably would have been my never ever going to New York alone in the first place. And that would've been the reasonable part. Ah, something too much of this. In any case, thank you, sweetheart. Being trusted is a beautiful and loving thing, and don't think I value it lightly.)

I got back on the bus at Port Authority last night at 11, realizing that about twenty-four hours had gone by bookended by bus stations and that I'd been awake for most of them. I listened to the last handful of tracks on Disc Alpha of All Dolled Up Like Christ and promptly fell asleep (and let me tell you, "Lucifer Over London" is damned surreal as lullabies go, and not for the faint of heart), waking up just in time to arrive at Union Station a handful of hours later. I came home at almost exactly four, to the reassuring sight of Matt's enormous shoes under the coffee table - Stacy's always happier to not have to sleep in the apartment alone - and my body, which I had pummeled into submission all day by making it walk more than it had in a very, very long time, scored a final and decisive victory. I slept long and well.

And I later saw the other side of 41K on the novel. Making it a kind of banner couple of days all around.

Three-day week up ahead, which always makes Sundays feel less depressing somehow. On the other hand, it's nearly Thanksgiving already, and that just feels wrong. Somewhere in there, I had a November. I'm going to have to request some written reports of it afterwards, just to find out what the hell happened.

MS Word tells me I busted through 39K a little while back. It very nearly makes the back pain and the bruises on the forehead feel worth it.

So - Part Two is done. Onto Part Three.

It's odd - sometime back in September or October while I was contemplating this project and doing outlines and such, I had that clever idea of using King Crimson songs for the part-titles, and went through all my Crim CDs looking for ones that seemed to suggest the kind of story I wanted to tell, and framed my (very vague) outline that way. And the part-titles stayed, but the plot has become very different than the one I kinda-sorta first had in mind. And I think the changes have been for the better. Weird, what certain things end up saying to you the longer you hang around them. Thanks, Mr. Fripp!

Anywhoo, I've had some moments in this I'm very proud of. I look forward to seeing the shape of it when all's over. (Going to be a LOT bigger than 50K, though. I wonder if, at close-to-40, I'm even halfway to the end.)

I think one of the benefits of a project like this (and there are many) is the way you end up surprising yoursefl by letting go as much as you can. It's a feeling I've had with my work before, and one of the things I like best about writing, but never this frequently on the same project.

Some of my surprising moments have been tertiary characters I grew to be very unexpectedly fond of. I really, really like Fra Myron, who's in all of two brief scenes, and he just eats up the scenery in both of them - entirely deadpan, with a truly great bit-part actor's complete professionalism. He really knew exactly what he was there for, and he did it consummately well - every time he'd dictate one of his lines to me, I'd get a big old grin on my face out of it.

And I loved discovering last night that Jenny Haniver's idea of a soppy romantic goodbye is "Goddammit, you come back to me, Branleigh, or I'll never fucking forgive you, do you hear?"

And it ain't over yet. I'm just over 20% from the finish line still. The last mad rush commences.

Twenty-four hours from now, or a smidge less, I'll be on my way to be on my way to NYC - "on the road that goes to the road," as my sainted grandfather says. Prepare the coffee I.V.

But first - network training tomorrow. Soon I shall be a guru too. And as my geek factor increaseth, so may my fortunes. Given a sufficient amount of caffeine and scones, anyway.

And before that, a few more words for the night, and bed. Mmmmm - bed. Wooch.

It's a hard life, all this Art, but one does what one must.

At some point last night, after typing out a trio of scene-break asterisks, I stopped to look up a name, and found myself ten minutes later asleep at my desk.

Somehow, this makes me feel like a Real Writer now. I couldn't tell you why.

Mostly, I think it means I should lay off the after-work Yuenglings until, say, December. If I just kept enough cold soft drinks around, this kind of thing would NEVER happen.

Anyway.

Looking forward to NY on Saturday (though, as Stacy pointed out, it's a "day trip" thay actually spans three days, counting my insane hours to and from), and stocked up on emergency gear last night at the Tar-jay - hate to be caught dead halfway to Port Authority with dead batteries in my CD player, you know. Food and sleep I can do without, and probably shelter, but without my White Willow I might just spontaneously combust.

Especially looking forward to a visit to the famous Jim Hanley's, which acclaimed ubercool game-writer Gareth-Michael Skarka says very nice things about in his weblog of late; Spydey old girl, it seems you've got your foot in the door at the best. Wooch, indeed!

I learned a coupla days ago that I get to go to a big training session on Friday, which is in Silver Spring and thus closer to home, and that I don't have to go in to work afterwards. Huzzah! Which means that my Friday will officially end at 1, and I can go right home and catch up on my word count.

Sleep, I mean. Of course I meant sleep. Gaaaaah.

The Last Dark Art looks like a late-runner this month - of course, I just learned this morning that I was scheduled to run this week, and not next week like I'd convinced myself. But those guys at RPGnet are very nice, and are letting me get my shit together on this ("the New York Times this ain't," quoth Aeon). I guess if anyone understands geek-time, it's such as they.

Current word count: Um, 34 and a bit
Current mood: Hungry. Lean Pockets beckon.
Current soundtrack: Cocteau Twins, "Sea, Swallow Me"

At the halfway mark, a damn good week all 'round.

The Seven Seals are Revealed at the End of Time as Pages and Pages of Vaguely Coherent Prose

Sometime in the bleary quiet darkness of the witching hour last night, I reached 32k.

I might make it. Probably. Maybe. Gaaaah.

I have, more or less, a week and a half. This is factoring in Thanksgiving, and my trip to New York, and random unscheduled slacking. It may be close. But my hopes are high.

... The Drunkprose, the Shitprose, the Pornprose, the Caffeineprose, the Deafprose, the Angstprose and the OhSoSoprose

I had to fight with it a bit, for a while there, especially on Saturday. But some good developments found their way into the text, and I'm liking the shape the story is taking. And at least one thing is going to happen to Jenny Haniver this time around that I had no idea was coming when I started. It's a capricious art.

"And all shall be well. Or not."

I'm told that if I don't try and publish it when I'm done, such efforts will be made without my consent. Gaaaah. Somehow, at the thought of trucking my big old manuscript around, the words "Look out, Charles de Lint" spectacularly failed to cross my mind. But we shall see.

In other news: saw Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Friday, following a big ol' eating orgy at Fuddrucker's ("Most Amusingly Named Restaurant for People Whose Sense of Humor Didn't Make it Much Past Thirteen") and some odd-and-end shopping in Rockville. Went into Tower and they were playing the new Porcupine Tree, which made me feel all gooey inside. (Oh yes, it shall be mine.) And the movie was damn fine too; good old Ken Branagh was kind enough to only eat up the scenery he was supposed to, and the Basilisk was truly, truly kickass. And I sat there in my big scarf among all those excited young people and felt very wizardy indeed.

The extremely-limited-edition CD-single of "One of Those Nights" made its way safely to NYC, and no one freaked the hell out any further about my following it up there at the end of this week, and so I am content. I get to spend the next few days, in between mad rushes of hammering out pages and pages of Gothy urban fantasy, deciding what handful of items are most necessary to have on my person for a day in the Even Bigger City, and forcing them all into my trusty shoulder-bag, and wishing like hell I had a Martin Backpacker. Le sigh. People talk about traveling light like it's some kind of virtue, and I just don't get it at all, at all.

I've been promised the Best Pizza in New York. If I'm not mistaken, I may have already had the Best Pizza Formerly in New York, Now in West Virginia; I'm excited to see how they measure up. If it's served up by a guy who doesn't know any English beyond "Two slice cheese," it should be pretty damn good indeed.

Updated the novel blog last night.

Damn thing's like a Fantasybits Easter-egg hunt. Wooch. So far, I think Vishal's got the best of the in-joke references, though Maija's is pretty damn cool too, if I say so m'self. Literary nods to all my friends!

Rereading the NC-17 stuff revealed it to be marginally more tasteful than I recall it while in the middle of it, which is a side effect, I suppose, of working all pumped up on pooftah coffee late at night. Despite my nervousness, it's really much less Penthouse Letters-ish than my uberselfconscious brain remembers it being, and I only used the c-word once. Still wouldn't send it to my in-laws, though. And heaven knows it may be that much further I need to claw my way up from potential-scary-dude status in the eyes of poor Spyder's mum. Aieee! Perhaps I should send someone more respectable-seeming up to New York next weekend in my place.

Oh, and I broke 25k last night too. Feel the halfway-mark love.

Stacy and Caren and I are off to the Regal Rockville tonight for Harry Potter goodness. Caren shall be converted, oh yes. See what she gets for just showing up for Ken Branagh. Not that that's a bad reason.

The last three days have had "Pavanne" going through my head like nothing else. And Harmony Central doesn't have the chords in their archive. Damn your eyes, Linda Thompson, and that no-good ex of yours too. Gaaaaah. Pavanne, Pavanne, Pavanne.

Oh, wait, Tori's "Icicle" just came up on Winamp. So now I get to think about that all day too. Eep. It's like the universe wishes me to get no actual work done today. Thanks.

Still, who am I to argue?

Gyaaaaaaah.

Despite the general hell of Week Two, and the banging-head-on-desk frustration of having fallen somewhat behind of schedule, a couple of breakthroughs:

1). As of Saturday, Part One ended. This is good. Part Two is in full swing now. This is even better. The tale barrels on.

2). As of last night, 23k. Not where I wanted to be, but there's a weekend coming up, ripe with glorious possibility. I may make it yet.

3). Likewise as of last night, my first ever semi-quasi-hot girl-on-girl love scene, which I knew was coming up long ago and was very nervous about, and which has gone pretty well all considered. Good thing, too - I followed those two home two nights ago and spent most of the intervening time (real time, not theirs, which was probably more like half an hour or so) going "Oh, for fuck's sake, get it on already."

And my sensitive-guy guilt at this last is surprisingly low considering how long I've put off doing this sort of thing in a piece of fiction (one I've actually written down, anyway). I think I stopped worrying about how un-PC it might be about the time I quit trying to please anyone except "the kind of people who like to read the kind of thing I like to write." Take that, neurotic hangup! Besides, Uncle Neil never shied away from doing, f'rinstance, mind-spinningly steamy m/m erotic interludes, and he doesn't even like boys. So there.

Haven't posted to the other journal since the weekend, which I must rectify tonight, soon as my nervously- afterglowing couple shut the fuck up and I can wrap the scene. So it goes.

And by the end of the weekend: monsters. Fuckin' cool.