As if I don't have enough going on ...

I spend two hours each day picking up and driving my gimpy husband in work transit, and now our neighbor just backed into our newly fixed car, which was parked on the street!! I called the auto place to get an estimate and have spent the last 90 min talking to her, calling around to different places, picking up plastic off the macadam ... Good grief.

GenCon was really good and all went well. (Except the flight out, which tossed everyone out of their seats for a time. Ugh.) The hotel staff was great. Goodman Games people were exceptionally sweet, asking about me and Rick, how we were doing, keeping watch over us while being very busy. The Rock Bottom Brewery was again our favorite, although eating dessert at Champs while Michael Phelps won his 8th and everyone was screaming and cheering was very cool. The convention seemed be a grand success.

Ken has a very good post about what all went on with all of us, the convention, and the Goodman Games gang.

Here are a few shots:



Yes, dice again. I love photographing the dice!!




Speaking of dice ... whoa.

The Goodman Games gang at their seminar "How to Write an Adventure That Doesn't Suck"

Yes, this is the GenCon ladies' room. I took a picture of this because after two years, I have decided that GenCon is the one of the best places to go to the bathroom in the United States. There are hardly any women in there EVER, and it's sparkling clean. It's cool and quiet, and if you need to get away from the hustle and bustle of the convention floor (and you are a woman), this is the place to do it. So great.

If I may be allowed to bitch for a minute ...

* My work email somehow got linked to spam in the last week, so now I am getting 5 to 10 spam messages a day there. &*%$# It happened right after I listed that address on a freelance site, so I bet someone picked it up there.

* Our family health issues are eating away all my time as we have dr. appts, I drive everywhere, etc. Consequently I have a ton of overdue work and more work on the way.

* I am so freaking tired I can hardly stay awake at night to do the regular things I should be doing.

* We have no time to even think about going out to look at houses again for who knows how long.

* My husband being home on a nice 4-day Labor Day weekend will consist of me in front of my computer and him in front of his computer. Blech.

* The house is a dirty, disgusting wreck and I have not been back to organizing or clearing out in weeks.

* The cat just threw up again in the dining room. Huzzah.


On the flip side ...

* My production editors are being so understanding and sweet to me about my need for extra time. I am very lucky to have lots of good work and nice contacts.

* I am blessed in this difficult world to own enough things to be able to sort, recycle, and throw away some of them.

* We are saving money each month; we have enough to put down on a house.

* My friends and family are the best and so supportive.

* I feel really good and all is going well.

Just got back from Indianapolis, did a lot of convention stuff (more on that later), and saw the original On the Road scroll at the IMA. Finally. Missed it in NYC so I was glad we could see it while in Indy. Amazing amount of changes and marginalia on the paper. Didn't realize he edited on the scroll.

The female guard kept looking at my husband and me as if we were crazy. No one else was looking at the exhibit at the time, so he and I stood a few feet apart from each other at the glass, taking turns reading aloud our favorite passages from the different sections, then leap-frogging each other to get to another part of the scroll. Sounded like a 50s Village poetry reading, complete with appropriate cadence, echoing off the tall museum walls.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

"In June 2008, Public Broadcasting Service announced that it intends to soon change the way Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, the beloved children’s television program, is distributed to member stations.

"PBS will cease transmitting the program as part of their daily syndicated lineup beginning in September. Instead, PBS will provide member stations with a single Neighborhood episode on weekends. This unfortunate decision essentially silences the special nurturing voice of Mister Rogers in the daily lives of today’s children.

"Local public television stations, who make the final decisions about which programs to offer and when to air them, can still opt to broadcast Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood each weekday, but they are much less likely to do so without the program being included in PBS’s syndicated feed.
We’re asking PBS to please reconsider their decision, and allow Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, with its timeless expressions of care for children, to remain a part of their syndicated Monday through Friday schedule.

"In the event that PBS stands by their decision, we are urging all PBS member stations to do what it takes to ensure that the lives of children in their neighborhoods can still be enriched each weekday by the gentle, authentic, life-shaping messages of Mister Rogers.

****************************

What crappy timing. I urge everyone to write their local PBS station and keep Mister Rogers' Neighborhood on the air each day instead of scaling it back!!

Please visit the site Save Mister Rogers' Neighborhood for more information!!

I totally agree that this approach to shopping at drugstores can save you money, but holy coupons!! In the time it would take me to do all this in order to get some toothpaste and paper towels, I could make a minimum of five times what the shopping trip would cost me. I can see how some people get a charge out of the challenge of saving money, and I do use CVS the way this article discusses, but yikes. I'm lucky these days if I remember to pick up the toothpaste at the regular store.

Happy Birthday, Wargames!!

Love that movie. I saw it in a CT theater with my cousin and sister when it first came out, and when we got back to my cousin's house, we screwed around on his Commodore computer all night long, thinking we could do something like what we just saw. Kids.


-- Mr. McKittrick, after very careful consideration, sir, I've come to the conclusion that your new defense system sucks.

If Amy were a copyeditor turtle right now . . .

So here is how things have been going since Wednesday when I said I must buckle down and finish my incredible amounts of work:

* Thurs: Sit and work most of the day; get a decent amount done. Am lulled into thinking that this renewed effort and schedule can actually be maintained.

* Fri: Oh crap, forgot I have to see dr. at noon. Follow preappointment procedure, get wicked headache, get arms needled full of holes, come back home, get stomach ache, continue with wicked headache, work a few hours, then go see houses when R gets home. Too tired to keep working.

* Sat: Go shopping with mom in a.m. (mom never shops so feel too guilty to cancel for work), in last store in early afternoon and get call in mall dressing room from R, come home to take R to emergency room for foot, sit in ER for 3 hr, return home w/ gimpy R to find R's friends waiting, emergency clean of apt and relocation to living room to work, work all night on one project instead of all day and night on three.

* Sun: Set up work space in dining room again. Sitting here blogging. Resisting the urge to check the open house listings and make a call to family friends to go pick up a donated dresser. Hearing the Charlie Brown "ARGHHH" in my head.

!!Oh I hope I get a lot done today!!

A bit of a rant from Giles Coren, as pointed out by my CE Listserv. (Note that raw language is used.)

May I never experience such wrath from a client!