A moment of silence, please

…for Mrs. Slocombe and her pussy.

Actress Mollie Sugden dies at 86 (Daily Mail)

I fear that I’m entering that depressing stage of life where all my pop culture touchstones are dropping like flies.

Unplugged

I’m taking a page from my friend James’ (hi, Boo!) book this weekend: I’m turning off the computer, unplugging it, and putting it in the drawer until Sunday night. Yes, really. No, I mean it.

Stop laughing. I’m not above slapping you.

I’ve finished the revisions of chapter eight, so I’m diving into chapter nine this weekend. A Bitch and I are meeting for a Day of Writing® at an undisclosed location on Sunday. I’ve printed out the bits and pieces that I need to slice and dice in order to make them (hopefully) coherent. I had a couple ideas this evening while waiting for Wade Rouse’s reading to begin (which was excellent, by the way), and while I wouldn’t go so far as to say they were “Blair-Warner-I’ve-just-had-an0ther-one-of-my-brilliant-ideas” brilliant, I think they’ll work. Whatever I write (longhand) this weekend, I can type up during the week next week. But I stay tethered to this infernal machine too much as it is.

If anyone starts taking bets on whether I go into withdrawal before Sunday night, well, you can just go straight to hell. (Save me a seat? Thanks.)

If the shirt fits

Me: (As Mike keeps pulling shirts out of a Kohl’s bag) How many shirts did you buy?
Mike: I really liked them. I think this one is my favorite. I really like the color. (holds up shirt)
Me: It has a huge cross on it!
Mike: What do I care? (In Joanna Barnes as Gloria Upson voice) I think religion is awfully decorative.

A brand new bag

OK, here’s where I ask you for help.

I am tired of carrying around my backpack. It’s a great backpack, mind you, and can hold a lot of stuff, but that’s really the main problem: I carry around too much stuff. Also, I think the backpack looks a little too College Student, and I’m going to be 40 in  four months, and I am clearly not in college.

So I need a new bag.

I hate shopping, though, and this is where you might be able to help. I would like a messenger bag that is big enough to carry my laptop (when necessary), but not so big that I can carry my laptop, my notebook, my day planner, my iPod, three back issues of the New Yorker, four manuscript chapters, lunch, three highlighters, four pens, and a bottle of hand sanitizer. Oh, and a digital camera.

(You understand my problem now?)

If you have a bag you absolutely love, let me know what it is. A link to a Web page is even better. Black is always a good color for me, though my favorite color is red. Anything neon or pastel is so not going to happen.

And I work for a not-for-profit, so it can’t break the bank. (And I don’t buy leather.)

Needless to say, if you point me in the right direction, I’ll be extremely grateful, too.

Quotable

“It (the navigation system) wanted me to take one of those roads that’s always in rap songs, and I said, ‘Oh hell no.’”—Plus One

Why summer colds are the worst

All right, so technically it’s not summer yet, but the high today is going to be in the 80s and I’m going to be indoors at home all day, because I feel like crud. If it were the middle of winter, it would be cloudy and gray outside and I would be wrapping myself up like a mummy trying to sweat out whatever vile pestilence has decided to set up shop in my sinuses. I would also be drinking cup after cup of tea and bouillon trying to drown it. Every once in a while, my head might pop out from under the covers to see if the world is still here and maybe read a page or two from one of the many books on the night stand until I finally started feeling human again.

Instead, it’s almost June and drinking hot tea is far from comforting and sweating things out is just par for the course for me until September, maybe October, and it’s bright and sunny outside and there’s no way it’s going to snow today. My seasonal illness has clearly picked the wrong season.

I’m going back to bed.

The notebook

I have a terrible memory.

On top of that, also, I’m not very observant. This often comes as a surprise, since, hey, I’m a writer, and the stories we weave are made from the threads we pick up scattered around us (and if you didn’t already guess, that was me trying to be profound, and sounding more like what my mum would call a P.U. (see “Profound Utterances“). Truthfully, if I don’t write it down, I’ll forget it, and if it’s not pointed out to me with klieg lights, I won’t write it down.

This is why I carry a notebook. My friends often make fun of me when it comes out (this is another reason I like cargo pants and cargo shorts–they look dorky, but between the wallet and the keys and the notebook and often the camera, leaving the house is like packing for a safari), but after they say something particularly witty, they’ll look at me and ask, “Aren’t you going to write that down?”

But here’s the thing: even when I do write it down, sometimes I have no idea what the hell it means. Instead, I end up with phrases and snippets like “The Bizarre Butterknife Incident,” “12-Pack Weight Watchers” (OK, I remember what that one was about, but it’s only from today),”Constructive Hatefulness,” or “I knew buying the cow was a bad idea.”

Don’t ask me. I have no clue what most of it means. Still, I think I could make a pretty good story from that last one.

We band of brothers (and sisters)

Yes, we look crazy. We probably are. And maybe you can’t tell from this picture (though you probably can), but these were the nicest, smartest, funniest people you could hope to meet.

I had a fantastic time at the Saints and Sinners conference in New Orleans. I read from my short story, and then, much to my surprise and delight, I read from the novel I’m working on. People laughed in all the right places, I didn’t throw up, my fly was zipped, and they applauded when I was done. 

Even more than that, though, I wish I could take all these people pictured here (and Becky, who was behind the camera; and Greg, who was otherwise occupied, and Mark G., who was chilling back at home in NC) and arrange the world so that we all lived on the same street. I would weigh a ton and my liver would be disintegrated, but I’d die laughing and smiling.

The Big Easy

Next week, Mike and I are heading to New Orleans for the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival. I’m very excited about this, not just because we get to get the hell outta Dodge for four days and drink Hurricanes with impunity (although for me it’ll more likely be eat beignets and drink coffee with reckless abandon). No, the most exciting thing is that I’ll finally get to meet, live and in person, Tim, Becky, and FARB, see if Greg remembers me from the time I came to the festival in 2003, and meet several new people (though one person will be sadly absent—but that gives us someone to drunk dial, although if I’m hopped up on caffeine and sugar at a late hour, I guess it’s more appropriately called speed dial).

Another thing I’m very excited about: On Saturday, contributors to Fool for Love will be giving a reading from their stories, including me. I have ten minutes to try not to stutter, mumble, read so quickly that my words are a blur, and make eye contact with the audience while not throwing up.

Like being Miss Missouri instead of Miss America

But hell, I’ll take it.

I entered a story in Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction contest and just got word that it received an honorable mention. (Don’t believe me? Here’s the PDF that says so.) As my mother would say, it’s better than a sharp stick in the eye. Now all I have to do is figure out where to send it next….