We finally managed to get outdoors this weekend and went to the Gathering in Macktown. It looked like it was going to rain all day, but thankfully the rain held off until later in the evening.

Macktown overlooks the Rock and Pecatonica Rivers in Rockton, Illinois and was one of Winnebago County's earliest settlements (founded around 1829). At the Gathering, several hundred historical re-enactors camp out at the site and dress in period costume, talk about history, demonstrate crafts, and sell food and other period goods.

We had a good time there, checking out the displays, seeing musket firing, browsing the stores and eating snacks (the Kettle corn was tasty!). We were going to stay to see the skirmish re-enactment, but it didn't take place when we thought it would (they must've delayed it by an hour), so we ended up leaving early.

The overall experience was similar to the WW2 re-enactment and the Civil War re-enactment we went to last year, except on a smaller scale.

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As usual we watched a couple of movies this weekend, including Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick's classic dark comedy), Adaptation (another quirky and multi-layered effort from the pen of Charlie Kaufman), and The Scorpion King (The Rock's entertaining debut, in the style of Arnie's Conan The Barbarian). Carrie watched Alex and Emma while I was recovering from a late night writing session, but I think I'll give that one a miss ;)

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As an addendum to my last entry, I ended up buying three books in the Theodore Sturgeon collection (from ebay) : The Ultimate Egoist (Vol. 1), Microcosmic God (Vol. 2), and A Saucer of Loneliness (Vol. 7). These are all softcovers - I soon realized that the hardcovers are scarce and often fetch premium prices. I'm still annoyed I missed some bargain hardcover editions on ebay a month or so ago.

Over the weekend the remaining two DVD collections (3 and 4) of The Twilight Zone arrived (also from ebay), so I'm all set to satisfy my Twilight Zone addiction for the next couple of months at least! I've heard rumours that the 1985 series and the 2002 series might be coming out on DVD this year, so I have my fingers crossed for those. The movie still hasn't come out on DVD yet, either. Apparently there are also a bunch of TZ scripts being published in book form, but I don't think I'm that keen (yet).

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I wrote another flash fiction piece late on Saturday night, inspired by the crit group's "Weekly Word" for this week. I was quite pleased with how this one came out, so today I decided to send it out! It feels good to have a new story doing the rounds at last :) I've also been keeping busy with writing crits and doing some more writing exercises.

Since Carrie's parents are coming this weekend, I won't have as much time for writing. I'm hoping to get the crits done earlier this week and to finish off a new story by Friday (to submit for critique). It looks like another busy week!

2004 Stats:

2004 Word count:	11,090
Stories written:	4
Total submissions:	11
Total acceptances:	0
Total rejections:	9
Waiting for response:	4
Books read:	6
Fiction Mags/Chapbooks read:	11

In case you were wondering, the subject line on this post is related to the story I wrote over the weekend ;)