Getting away from it all

I'm a notoriously cranky packer but a great traveler. The second I walk through the doors into Sea-Tac, all thoughts of garden-watering schedules, feline demands, last-minute clothing repairs, and my clients' supposed emergencies vaporize.

I'm on vacation!

I don't know if it's this mindset that makes magical things happen, or if it's just that the mindset makes a lot of what happens seem magical, but travel is fun. (And it helps that I'm traveling with The Scholarly Gentleman.)

The plane to Minneapolis got cancelled, but miraculously replaced, so the four-hour delay was only 40 minutes, and we got to Minneapolis roughly on time. Delta's avaricious baggage checking fees meant that TSG took a roll-aboard suitcase (filled more with books and flyers than clothes) and wore his brown Victorian top hat.

It got some looks, but none more startled that the look from the slim young woman in Arrivals at Minneapolis who was also wearing a brown Victorian top hat. Hers was theatrically outsized, and had an orange wig attached. That, and her Steampunk clothing, indicated she was for some reason channeling Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter from the recent Alice in Wonderland film.

I read Kim Newman's Anno Dracula on the plane, a clever, name-dropping Victorian vampire/Ripper/mystery novel (it mentioned Dodgson aka Lewis Caroll) that seemed to me like a novella that got bundled up in a lot of back and forth extra details. But, then, I think that almost all Ripper books are better at novella length. The ending, however, was great.

Fourth Street doesn't officially start until today, but we got off to a grand start last night with 30 or so of the early birds doing the premiere reading of Jo Walton's comedy "Three Shouts on a Hill." I got to play King Lugh, which involved a lot of stern bellowing.

This morning got off to a very slow start. I sat down at the hotel room desk and wrote a customer profile (as a result of finally chasing down the interview subject, by phone, yesterday evening). It felt great to get that sent off.

The Clarion West Write-a-thon is underway, and I just saw the list of last week's donors to my Write-a-thon page. I was touched, surprised, charmed, mystified — you name it — by the folks who donated to support my work and the Clarion West Writers Workshop. More than 70 of us — Clarion West graduates, board members, and friends of Clarion West — have created Write-a-thon pages with excerpts from our fiction writing and descriptions of our writing goals for the six weeks of the Write-a-thon. (It runs in parallel with the summer workshop, at which the students, many of them able to attend Clarion West only through our scholarship support, are having the writing experiences of their lives.)

In my case, the Write-a-thon is a "submit-a-thon." I've got three or four finished pieces that need me to stop polishing them and send them out to editors of magazines. I was greatly encouraged last week by an award-winning speculative fiction writer who said the reason a story doesn't have to be perfect is that editors like to find some flaw in it that they can analyze and tell you to fix. I'm not sure that's true, but it is encouraging.

Please donate. If my page has brought in $250 in total donations by the end of July, I've promised to match my supporters' gifts with an additional $250 — which about the amount I'll make if one of the stories I submit gets purchased.

Positively 4th Street

We're off to the 4th Street Fantasy Convention this weekend. It's a science fiction literary convention that emphasizes contemporary fantasy (Neil Gaiman, Steven Brust, Jo Walton, etc.) and draws a number of editors from the New York publishing world. It also attracts the sort of folks who are interested in gourmet chocolates, arcane teas, folk music jams, and late-night discussions.

It's held at a convention hotel that didn't do much for me last year, but which is now adjoined by a fabulous new mall with ethnic restaurants and high-end shops. And it's near a couple of Vinyasa yoga studios.

I am expecting to like the trip.

As usual, it's extremely difficult to get out of town. We're coordinating the professional cat sitter who comes in the evenings with the neighbors who come in to feed the cats in the morning and the other neighbors who are leaving Saturday and whose cats I'll be caring for as soon as we return on Monday. (That meant I had to tell our cat sitter about the cats I'm responsible for Monday in case something awful happens and I don't come back from Minneapolis — she knows where the key is so those cats won't starve.)

To complicate it all, Mabel, our black cat, decided this morning to teach the striped cats how to catch a mouse. I removed the mouse from the house, but the stupid thing kept coming back and sitting on the back porch. I thought it had finally gone, but the cats got it again, and it had to be delivered to a large field a block away before things came to a fatal conclusion. The cats are still skulking around the back yard looking for it.

Weird things in the garden

Every time I look out in the garden, I see something else strange.

I just looked out the window from my office and saw a gigantic, six-foot weed in my neighbor's yard, towering over the fence. I hope I remember to get over there tomorrow and pull it out. He doesn't garden.

Friday after work I went out into the back garden and came to grips with the fact that a perfectly innocent hardy geranium that I've had for more than 10 years in a concrete pot somehow got loose and took root (via seeds) all over the back garden beds, crowding out the blue star creeper and various other things. Little yellow poppies were about to crowd out the strawberries, but I removed them.

My take on this is that the relentlessly damp spring has coddled the plants into producing shallow roots (that will be the death of them once it stops raining) and the weeds are poised to overrun everything by August. It's hard to get excited about summer at the moment.

Many cats ago...

More than 20 years ago, when I moved into the first Shady Rest, I brought with me from Greenwood a little black cat named RoyGBiv. A few years later, RoyGBiv got cancer and had to be put down. By that time, I had a big orange tabby named Bosco, a little Himalayan/Abyssinian named Betaille, and a gorgeous Russian blue named Sam. A lot of cats.

Mark Smythe was there when I put RoyGBiv down, and he helped me bury her in the back yard. After the burial, Mark drove back to Tacoma where he was in law school. He called me to report that when he arrived at his apartment building, he found a little back cat that looked much like RoyGBiv in the back alley, being menaced by some kids. Did I want the cat?

My answer was no. Sam's best friend, a little neglected neighborhood tabby named Socks, had already moved in and was in RoyGBiv's bed!

So Mark kept the black cat. He named her Melilot. She often stayed at the Shady Rest at Christmas when Mark would go back East to visit family. She liked going outdoors with our cats. One afternoon, when we got home from work, Melilot rushed up to

the porch to be let in and Zorg picked her up. Melilot didn't like that, and she batted him in the face with her little paws. She was declawed, so Zorg just laughed at her.

She leaned over and bit him on the nose.

Melilot lived most of her life in Mark's apartment in a urban part of Tacoma. She didn't get to go out much — but that might be why she lived to a very old age.

Two months ago, Mark called to say Melilot had been diagnosed with a fast-growing cancer of the jaw. Mark discovered some herbal remedies and managed to give Melilot another 10 weeks of life. He called today to say that she died last night.

Melilot, shown here on the mantelpiece at the Shady Rest, was a professional cat. She will be remembered.

Vision

I've worn glasses since I was a tiny child. I think I'm better adjusted to my hard-to-correct eyesight that just about any of my friends with comparable myopia. I enjoyed wandering around the halls in high school without glasses because it taught me to recognize people by the way they stand, or move, rather than by facial characteristics. I often remove my glasses to think in a big-picture way.

I love wearing glasses!

But last night I had an experience with my eyes that was weird. I'd had only about five hours of sleep the night before, and had headed down to Olympia at six a.m. for a three-hour meeting that turned into a nine-hour work session. Then we'd driven back. I'd taken off my glasses, taken a bath, and then gone to check my email before bed.

It was one big blur. I switched to my computer glasses. I moved the computer monitor around. Nothing helped. It was as if I had been given drops at the eye doctor's office.

I tried a few things and decided it was just my right eye that was malfunctioning. There could be only two explanations: One, this was a reaction to being exhausted. Two, something was wrong with my eye and would need to be repaired.

I have annual eye exams, have never had any serious eye problems, and had certain not had any injury to the eye. There was no pain or irritation, and the eye looked, to the outside observer, just fine.

So I voted for "reaction to being exhausted," and went to bed.

Fortunately, I was right. I got up this morning and my vision was back to normal — which is to say, mostly correctable by the progressive-lens trifocals I wear.

Whew. Losing your vision is frightening. And, yes, I am going to have my eyes checked.

My life with things

My mom's Oreck vacuum is schedule to depart the premises at 2 p.m. tomorrow. Yes, it's still all about things over here.

I got started cleaning the garage today and look forward resuming that tomorrow afternoon, the morning being devoted to going down to Seattle Center and training the volunteer greeters in advance of the Northwest Folklife Festival.

This week I was at last able to focus on work and catch up on most of it. I'm assisting three non-profits in collecting and writing client profiles, and working with two companies on articles and blog posts. There are two new projects on the horizon, one with an existing client and the other with a completely new one.

The website project in Olympia is just a few hours away from completion, but those hours involve meetings to Olympia, scheduled in the next two weeks.

The highlight of the week was the Campfire fundraising breakfast. Sherman Alexie spoke. If you have the chance to hear him in person, do it!

One unusual aspect of this week was that I went downtown three times in two days and had to wear business-type clothing. It wasn't too bad, but it was odd to come home and have to change in order to garden and do chores.

Laundry

We got up at 4:30 this morning and took my mom to the airport where she flew first class back to Florida. She called me from the plane before they took off and sounded like she was having a wonderful time.

From the airport we went to West Seattle and picked up our share of the tables and leftovers from yesterday's Foolscap yard sale. When we got home, we switched to the other car, drove up to Sky, and bought stuff for the garden. Then it was over to Mae's to have breakfast with a friend of Tom's from the Bay Area who was in town for an English dance weekend. Then back home where we unloaded the plants from one car, a table from the other, and I took off for the storage locker to get more junk to leave at Goodwill along with the yard sale dregs. (We're talking a lot of junk — it filled my Honda Fit to the ceiling and filled two of the big wheeled carts at Goodwill.)

From there, it was over to the Naked Lady brunch and clothing exchange in Greenwood. (I left several bags of dresses and tops and got a gray Banana Republic cashmere cardigan.) Then back to the house were I went upstairs and...collapsed.

No idea how long I would have napped if I hadn't been woken up by phone calls every 15 minutes. The last was from the local teenager who mows the lawn; he was on his way over, and it seemed unlikely that I'd be able to sleep through that.

Tom was off in West Seattle picking up the top of our table from the yard sale location.

I got up and started doing laundry and sorting through stuff from my mom's move: about 100 towels, some — burnt orange — that I remember from the 1970s. As soon as Tom arrived and unloaded the table, I filled the car up with more bags to take to Goodwill.

He pointed out that I still needed to get some plants in to the garden. So I started gardening at 7 and finished at 9, interrupted only by the guy who came to buy the patio chaise I had advertised on Craig's List.

Still selling a nice Oreck vacuum — an upright that doesn't work for us because we don't have any carpets.

Anyone interested?

We're tired

OK. We sold my mom's antique furniture, ran her yard sale, signed papers on her condo sale, cleaned the condo, and moved furniture and tools to storage. My mom moved in to our guest room Thursday, and today we sold her car. Sunday she flies back to Florida — which will now be her year-round home.

The friends, neighbors, and real estate agent who helped us out were great. The escrow people were unimpressive. Two sets of movers were involved, and one set (Adam's) was worth recommending.

Considering that nothing really serious was going on (no one was sick or anything), I was astonished at how much time and energy this whole project consumed.

I am officially out of the office

I'm out of the office until April 28. My mom's flying in tomorrow night to pack/store/move/sell the contents of her condo in Edmonds. She's here for three weeks, but I expect most of the organizational stress will be the first week. So that's the one I'm taking off to do whatever it is that she'll construe as assistance.

What does "out of the office" mean? I'm not sure. Except "busy."

Gardening nirvana

Not that any day I spend gardening could ever be less than wonderful, but...the garden is particularly gorgeous right now. The sky is gray, there are occasional sprinkles, but the temperature is so mild I can keep the back door open and the cats can race in and out of the house while I work. Some black clouds are overhead, so I shucked my boots and came in for a few minutes; I'm pretty sure we'll end with a nice sunset, so I can go out and clear the rest of the front side garden and put in the North Sky "ground cover" blueberry bushes.

I'm still putting a few pavers and lots of ground cover in the back yard surrounded the new vegetable garden. The plan is to get the actual vegetables in on May 9, after the whole packing/storing/moving/selling/ my mom's condo is over. I've hired a local mover and rented a storage locker, detailed my car, booked the cleaners, and scheduled a week off from work. My mom arrives Tuesday night.

She is really keyed up. This morning she woke me out of a sound sleep to ask me if I'd gotten the letter she sent to her attorney yesterday. Huh?

It turned out she meant the email she'd sent me telling me that she'd sent a letter to her attorney.

Back to sleep. Five minutes later, she called and woke me up again.

"There's something wrong with you, isn't there? You sounded very strange," she said, using her mother-knows-best tone.

I took the bait.

"Yes," I said. "I'm very upset. Someone keeps calling me on the phone and waking me out of the first decent night's sleep I've had all week. It's 8:00 a.m. out here, you know."

Of course, it was 11 a.m in Florida and she just can't quite believe that I'm allowed to sleep in while everyone in Florida has been up for hours.

As my dad used to say, "Oh boy."

Grand jete

Tonight my friend John Hedtke was complaining on Facebook about the women in his house glued to the TV watching "America's Next Top Model." Many comments ensued.

It reminded me of the time, 45 years ago, that my father was complaining because my mother and I were glued to the TV watching Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn dancing Swan Lake on Ed Sullivan. (Sullivan was instrumental in using TV to bring fine arts to a vaudeville audience.)

We were rapt until we heard someone running through the kitchen. We turned just in time to see my father launch himself in a grand jete and come flying into the TV room.

Well, at least he wasn't wearing tights.

(You'll see Nureyev perform some grand jetes about 2/3 of way through this video.)

And it's only Tuesday...

I got in touch with my prospective house guest who assures me she'll vouch for the extra person she's bringing along on her visit. I've tentatively upgraded her from freeloader to flake.

My Olympia website project is going into the lockdown phase, with the tasks getting increasing focused, smaller, and do-able. People are being forced to make decisions instead of ask for vague "improvements."

The timing is fortunate, because my mother arrives from Florida next Tuesday night to pack/sell/move/give away and otherwise deal with the contents of her Edmonds condo before the sale closes the first week of May. I'm taking April 21-27 off from work to be available for all of this. Many tasks she envisions taking days can be accomplished in a few minutes, so I think the first week will be the most important to work with her.

We've also scheduled a garage sale, at her condo garage, April 30 and May 1. Stay tuned.

Miffed manners

When someone asks me something I would never in a thousand years ask someone else, I just can't imagine where they're coming from. It puts me off balance, and I tend to stand there with a deer-in-the-headlights expression.

That's how I got run over today by a woman I don't know and now don't look forward to meeting.

Jennifer (we'll call her) is a friend of a good friend of mine. She lives in Olympia. She's coming to town to attend a conference in two weeks, and it was suggested that she stay at my house. I've heard a lot about her, and always wanted to meet her, so this seemed a great way to get acquainted.

It was only after we'd agreed on the dates of her visit that Jennifer mentioned she'd be bringing a woman colleague with her. Oh. Well, no problem I said. I have a fold-out sofa bed and a small futon.

Then this afternoon Jennifer called to ask if she and the other woman could bring along a fellow they'd met at an arts event who is also going to the conference.

Wait a second. This woman I've never met has just invited a man she barely knows to come live at my house for three days?

Unfortunately, she called with this request just as I was headed out the door to a meeting. It wasn't a good time to talk, and I stupidly tried to head her off with logistics. "Gee, I don't really have room..." I said.

She responded, "Oh, we'll tell him to bring a sleeping bag."

It took about three hours for me to I realize how completely pissed off I am about this. Sure, he could be a perfectly nice guy. He could also be someone who is going to steal my computer or molest my neighbors' kids. I have no idea, and neither does Jennifer.

I called our mutual friend, who was clearly unhappy to hear about this situation. She thinks Jennifer is a real sweet person, but I think Jennifer's one nervy freeloader. And I expressed that opinion. So much for wanting to meet her.

Tomorrow I'm calling Ms. Hospitality and asking her how well she knows this guy, and if she's willing to vouch for him. If she's not, he's uninvited.

And as for her...sheesh. Get some class.

A letter from the IRS

Thursday I opened up the Foolscap table at Norwescon. Be sure to stop by and visit!

I'd never been to Norwescon before. Just meeting people in the registration line was a kick. I was entertained by Dr. Oliver David Cross, who talked of opening a tea shop north of Seattle. It looks to be a fascinating weekend — but watch out for the spears. Unlike many large science fiction and fantasy conventions, Norwescon allows weaponry in the public spaces. It's part of costumes, of course, but still not something you want to run into.

I came home to find I had a letter from the IRS. Unlike their previous letters, which insisted I'd underpaid my quarterly estimated taxes, this one notified me that the issue had been resolved and they apologized for any concern this had caused. Whew!

It's not every day you get an apology from the IRS. I took a bath and went to bed early.

Vital signs

In the past 72 hours I have written:
• 1 case study on cardiac rehabilitation data management software
• 1 blog post on conscious sedation in dental offices
• 1 blog post on state laws regarding AEDs in dental offices
• 1 grant proposal to the Australia Arts Council (which included converting a three-page budget spreadsheet into AU dollars)
• 1 newsletter article on "housing first" programs for chronically homeless individuals in Seattle
• 1 newsletter article on fundraising projects for a writing program
• a series of emails exhorting people to volunteer for a marketing project

During the same period I've edited:
• several web pages about traffic safety projects
• a magazine article on making money as an entrepreneur

And I agreed to:
• write a case study on defibrillators
• edit a how-to book for music teachers
• create a series of client profiles for two social service agencies
• read and critique five fiction manuscripts

I turned down a request to write a press release, and I totally blew the deadline for a second case study on medical devices.

While all of this was going on, the Reglaze window contractors came and removed all five of the ancient double-hung dining room windows and replaced them with insulated windows, two of which are casement windows with screens.

Is it summer yet?

Four perfect hours

I love to garden. This afternoon the weather in Seattle was perfect for gardening. Not just nice, or pleasant, but perfect. It was neither hot nor cool, and there wasn't any breeze.

I laid out the 6' x 11' oval potager garden, its plastic edging, installed two 72" iron obelisks from Sky Nursery, put in a soaker hose, and lugged three bales of compost into the oval (to be opened and dug in next week). I also got two blueberry bushes planted in other areas of the garden. (The plan is to put in another four or five blueberries this year, but only if I can find the "Sunshine" variety that tastes like wild berries.)

The cats were out in the garden with me much of the day — Sheba dashing around on Paul and Gwen's roof, Mabel visiting all the neighbors, and Kaylee and Zoe chasing each other around in the rhodies. The kids across the street had on shorts and bathing suits and were spraying each other with squirt guns.

At 6 p.m. it was still in the high 60s, and sunlight was pouring through the grape arbor and onto the patio.

People always think of the best days of life as being the days when you get married, or win awards, or something like that. My best days are like this one.

Alex Chilton

Alex Chilton died Wednesday.

In 2004, when I was with the iTunes Music Store, one of the consultant DJs assembled a playlist called "one-hit wonders." I was assigned to write a blurb about it. I disagreed with some of the artists placed on this list, including Alex Chilton (for, of course, "The Letter").

The more research I did on Chilton and his post-Box Tops work with Big Star, the more fascinated I became.

A few months later, I flew to Euless, Texas, to see him make a rare appearance at the Euless Arbor Daze Festival. The festival was held in an open field filled with crafts booths, barbecue stands, and an area roped off for an evening concert of old rock and roll.

The oldies lineup included Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs and Chilton with the Box Tops. Chilton's voice was not in top form that night, but he seemed to be enjoying himself in his ironic way. I talked my way backstage after the set and got his autograph.

About 20 minutes later, a spectacular thunderstorm swept in across the plains, shutting down the rest of the evening. The parking area turned to a mudbath. I somehow got my rental car out of there and across the highway to a Denny's (next to my budget hotel). As I walked in, a fellow at a booth waved me over -- a Nashville sessions musician who was the keyboard player in the version of the "Box Tops" that had been put together for the gig. He'd seen me backstage, getting Chilton's autograph, and was curious — as I don't exactly look like a groupie.

We sat and talked for an hour or so -- mostly about the industry, but also about Chilton. A brilliant songwriter, but not an easy fellow to work with, it seemed.

Turned out the band was staying at the same hotel I was, so I gave the keyboardist a lift back in my car. It was only a block, but the whole area was knee-deep in water. I remember that it stormed relentlessly all night — pretty terrifying. The next day the weather cleared, and that night I drove to Dallas and went to Brave Combo's 25th Anniversary at Sons of Hermann Hall in Deep Ellum.

It was a weird trip — but I'm very glad I got to hear Alex Chilton live.

Gardening and taxes

After all the excitement of Potlatch, I wasn't really looking forward to another busy weekend.

But I'd set aside March 12-14 to dig up the back yard, and I was determined to stick with it. There just wasn't another weekend on the calendar that was open, and I knew if I waited into April to dig, there wouldn't be time to get most things planted.

I started to worry when Friday was rainy and cold. Then the truck scheduled to bring over the huge dumpster from the Dirt Exchange broke down. But they found another truck, and by 5 p.m. an enormous shiny orange dumpster was sitting in front of the house.

Unfortunately, Tom was now stricken with the miserable cold I'd had at Potlatch. After work, I went out into the back yard with a hand truck and removed a dozen heavy concrete pavers. I hacked at some bamboo. And I went to bed wondering if anyone would brave the predicted rain to help me dig sod during the weekend.

I went out to get bagels Saturday morning and came back to find Bob had arrived and was ready to dig. He and I got going, and after a while Carrie showed up. Bob left to go to Portland, and Carrie and I dug until lunchtime, by which time Nina showed up. Everyone had lunch, and then Nina and I started shoveling. By 3 p.m., half of the sod was in the dumpster!

However, I then collapsed like a wet noodle. All I remember of dinner was Ibuprofen, and I was in bed by 6 p.m.

Sunday morning Tom was miraculously recovered. Hank showed up, ready to dig, and our neighbor Jerry came over. Hank grew up on a farm, and he really knows how to chop sod! Tom took over wheel barrow duty, shuttling the sod to the dumpster. By the time Janice and John showed up, they were just in time to level the lumpy dirt and help me lug a lot of bamboo out and throw that on top of the dumpster load.

And the weather was fabulous for both days!

I was so grateful to my friends. I calculated that if I'd done that project myself, it would have taken several weekends — plus we'd have had a driveway full of mud and sod all spring.

Now I can hardly wait to get out there and plant the potager garden. The garden is going to have peas, pole beans, and bush beans — including fresh string beans and scarlet runner beans that I like to dry and use in soups and pasta sauces all winter. Apparently potager gardens are supposed to be ringed with flowers and short herbs; so I'm studying up on that.

This work-week is supposed to be focused on client projects and taxes. The taxes got off to a great start tonight when I discovered a whopping error on one of the 1099s from a client. Unfortunately, they didn't really pay me $90,000.

If only.

I can has sympathy?

There's not much to LOL about it: By the time I figured out why my arm felt strange, it was 2 a.m. I drove to Group Health urgent care on Capitol Hill, skirmished with a dozen Goths toting beer out of the Safeway, and eventually convinced the doctor on duty that the little burning bumps on the inside of my right elbow were, indeed, an outbreak of shingles. Fortunately, my Group Health medical record showed that I get shingles on weird dermatomes (like my right knee). They gave me medicine, I took it, and was home and in bed by 4 a.m.

Between the middle of the night adventures and my cold, I was a real zombie at Potlatch this morning. I was surprised that I had to keep saying "you don't want to get to close to me" to people. I felt like all they had to do was look at me and they wouldn't want to get anywhere near me!

However, it was worth going to the convention. I got to hear Eileen Gunn read a hysterically funny story (a collaboration with Michael Swanwick) about an inept time traveler, and saw David Levine's presentation on his two weeks in a Mars exploration simulation in Arizona.

By 3 p.m., I was ready to come home and just -- oh, wait, there was a meeting for the bid committee for the 2011 Discworld convention in the living room at 4 p.m. When that wound up, it was time to sit down and write a blog post that a client needs for tomorrow.

I did manage to do a little more work on the rewrite of my story, "Four Lakes," that got critiqued on Friday. The critiques were clear and helpful and it's a much better story now. I'm going to let it cool for a couple of weeks before sending it for a second round of comments. If it makes it past that hurdle, it might become the first story I've ever submitted for publication.

Hallucinations are real

In form, if not in content.

I know. I had them all morning.

Yesterday I got up at the crack of dawn to send out emails for a work project, worked all morning, and then rushed off the the writer's workshop at Potlatch 19, which included critiques of my story "Day 26: Four Lakes."

From the four-hour critique session I went to a two-hour board meeting for the Clarion West Board, followed by dinner with an upset friend, followed by Clarion West's public board meeting at which I was formally named to the board.

Then the board hosted a party for the Potlatch folks, who are major fundraisers and supporters for the Clarion West writing program. I think we stayed 45 minutes at the party. I don't remember much after that.

I'd been coming down with a sore throat all day, and by the time I went to bed I had a fever and so much congestion in my head that I was hallucinating. My memories of this morning include trying to rewrite the story in my head (based on the critiques), trying to write new stories, and then getting into a bath and apparently falling asleep in the tub. When I woke up , I felt less ditzy and the water was cold.

I wanted desperately to go back to Potlatch this afternoon to see Tom do the Trivia Contest, go to the auction, and help my Foolscap concom host a party at the hospitality suite after the auction tonight. But instead I had Tom stop at the store, get a tray of stuffed grape leaves, and take that for the party on my behalf.

I'm going back to bed.