Words Written: CSF brainstorming; critiquing

Aw! Ken sent me flowers! (We will not discuss the fact that he sent me flowers because I’m sick and weepy and pathetic, no. We will just appreciate the flowers.) Dark red roses and purple things and several types of greenery in a really pretty purple urn.

Let’s see. Monday was a holiday. Tuesday I called in sick. I thought I could work from home, but none of the files I was expecting showed up, so all I did was catch up on a few e-mails. It’s kinda nifty that I can access all my files from home, I have to admit. Yesterday I came to work, but by the end of the day my throat and ears were really hurting, and I was wondering if I had an infection and should go to the doctor’s. But today I’m back to coughing and congestion, and even though I’m tired and a little woozy, I’m at work. All of those files came in yesterday and today, so I have lots of reading to do. (Chapters for Hip Hop Culture, World Population, and Human Rights Worldwide. An interesting mix.)

Other than that, what’s left of my life is consumed with writing-related stuff. I’m blazing through Phae’s ms because it’s written in a fast pace, and I’m going to be disappointed to get to the end of it. Teresa and I have approached the planning of our erotica novel (now titled Cat Scratch Fever, which means every time I look at it, I get the song stuck in my head—but Uncle Teddly’s an inspiration, right?) by different methods, but I think we’re finally circling closer to the middle and meeting in the middle. She has more time and energy to work on it right now, so our usual back-and-forth brainstorming has become quite lopsided. Still, we’re close to figuring out, at the very least, what happens in the next few chapters, so we can get started on the writing again. I have Saturday free to finish Phae’s critique and write a chunk of a CSF chapter, because…

…Ken’s coming home Saturday night! He’ll be here all day Sunday, and leaves Monday morning (from the Santa Barbara airport, so I can drop him off on my way to work, and still get to work at a reasonable hour). We have no plans for the day other than spending it together and probably watching the last few episodes of “Lost”.

Other than the cold, the most annoying thing in my life right now is that the earbud cord for my phone died. It looks like it was almost sliced through, and yet I can’t imagine how that happened. Anyway. Should probably put a trip to a T-Mobile store on my to-do list for Saturday.

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So, the con. I had an absolute blast, even if I didn’t get to talk to the one person I really wanted to. No matter. It was a long shot, anyway. The organizers decided rather late to even do a con, so it wasn’t the best organized of events, but given the last-minute nature of it, I was impressed with how relatively smoothly everything did go. Lynn and I got there early, and wandered the pretty campus (lots of squirrels, and some interesting architecture), and eventually found a coffee shop where we had caffeine and bagels. The room they’d intended for the Green Room wasn’t available yet, so I ended up in the temporary Green Room, where I got my program and name badge (with my name spelled wrong. Sigh. I made a new one.) and ran into Meala’s husband Scott, whom I totally didn’t expect to see. He walked in, we stared at each other (…processing…), and then laughed and hugged. Very silly.

I also got to meet Rachel Heslin, a lovely woman whose journal I read, and her adorable baby Hunter, who I’ve read much about. It was another amusing moment: she introduced herself as Rachel, and a moment later I was looking at her name badge and wondering why the hell her name sounded so familiar and why she looked vaguely familiar… It was great to meet her in the flesh! Also fun was that I kept running into people I know from Gillian’s many parties. I meet them all by first name and never entirely get to know what they do (usually because we spend too much time playing games or watching “Young Blades” or carving Hallowe’en pumpkins or eating than we do asking each other “and what do you do?”), so now I was able to flip through the program book and say “ohhhh…” [g]

I met up two of the other speakers on my panel, and given that things were running late, I led them to the aforementioned coffee shop so they could get coffee on the way to the room where our panel was. On our way, we passed the long registration line—registration hadn’t even opened yet. Ack.

The panel started about 20 minutes late, and almost immediately veered away from the direction we’d been suggested to go in, so my notes were mostly useless. But that was fine. The fact that I had them had made me much less stressed and feeling prepared, and so everything went fine. Ron Moore arrived 20 minutes after we started, and brought things sort of back in the right direction by talking about religion on the new “Battlestar Galactica” and on “Star Trek”. ‘Cause he was a producer on “Trek” and is producing “BG”. (I was amused by the fact that several of you suggested “BG” and “Trek” as things for me to talk about. I thought, you know, maybe I’ll let Ron handle those… [vbg])

One of the other people on the panel was George Clayton Johnson, a writer for the original “Twilight Zone” series. He was so sweet—he gave each of us a copy of his book of “Twilight Zone” scripts and stories, and I later got him to autograph it for me.

I hooked back up with Lynn (who’d come to the panel with her friend Mary, or Marie, or Maria—I can never seem to remember, even though I asked several times), and we all trooped back to the Green Room. In hindsight, I really should’ve gone to the “Trek” panel, but I was a little brain dead, having just survived my first-ever panel.

Lynn had been joking that she was my retinue, but I pointed out that her job that day was to be Harlan Ellison’s retinue (they’re friends, and indeed she was already scheduled to be helping him during his various duties throughout the day). Harlan was in the Green Room when we arrived, which added to the amusement of the whole “retinue” routine.

Mary/ie/ia and I went to the food court and grabbed pizza for lunch, although when I got back to the Green Room, they’d brought in pizza for the guests. Oh well! The rest of the afternoon was back-and-forth between the Green Room and panels. I started chatting with Nancy Holder, author of many books including “Buffy” novels, and Loni Peristere, F/X and assistant director to Joss Whedon. (That’s me: start talking about “Buffy” &tc. and I can’t stop myself from sidling over and listening in!) Eventually the third person on the Whedonverse panel showed up (one of the slayers-in-training from the last season) and I wandered over to the panel itself with them, because I’d wanted to sit in on it. Fantastic stories about being on the set, about working with Joss, about Serenity… I also attended a panel on turning your fantasy of working in media into a reality (more Hollywood-related, but still interesting, especially the woman who’d gotten to know Jim Henson) and one on horror (which Nancy Holder was also on). I picked up Nancy’s latest “Buffy” book, which relates the events that take place after the final episode (and including the tie-ins to the final season of “Angel”, such as Angel and Spike going to Rome to find Buffy and The Immortal), but didn’t get the chance to have her sign it, alas.

Lynn and I drove to a mall near her house and met up with her husband, Bill, and we all stuffed ourselves full of sushi (and they were terribly sweet and wouldn’t let me pay. Sheez.). Then the sun was setting, which meant I needed to get on the road. Twenty or so minutes later I was at Meg & Matt’s. Meg and I stayed up late-ish chatting, and then I collapsed in an exhausted heap, only to wake up in the middle of the night with cold chills and a horribly sore throat. Which was, as we know, the start of the lurgy. (Five lurgies! Two we’ve never— Oh, never mind.) As a result, I didn’t stay for sushi lunch on Sunday, but managed to get myself home through annoying traffic, whereupon I mostly collapsed again, and that gets you caught up on all of the weekend stuff.

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Mint! There is mint in my flower arrangement! How cool is that?

We have some mint growing by the garage, but it’s getting nibbled by nasty bugs, so hopefully I can plant some of this mint and keep it inside in pots. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have an ongoing reminder that my beloved sent me flowers?

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Well, I wrote part of today’s journal during my lunch break, but forgot to forward it home to myself. And because of where I saved it, I can’t access it when I log into my work computer from home. Ah well. You’re reading it now, aren’t you? (I hope it’s worth the wait.)

Slow tonight. I’m not feeling quite as draggy, just tired. I think my body is suggesting an evening of as much rest as possible. I can live with that, if it means I’ll finally beat this cold off with a big stick. Or even a small stick. Whatever it takes.

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Currently Reading: untitled Zoë Martinique manuscript, Phaedra M. Weldon; Always a Bridegroom, Tesni Morgan
Lately Listened To: me hacking up a lung
Recently Watched: “That 70s Show”