Dwelling in Probabilities - C. Lundoff's Journal

So yesterday the female kitten, currently going by (but not responding to) Ma'at vanished into the basement for longer than I thought was a good idea. An expedition was mounted and we found her stuck behind some of Jana's flat files. Wacky hijinx ensued while we dug her out from under many layers of book board. I carried her upstairs and put her down. Whereupon she promptly raced behind the stove where our intrepid kitchen remodelers (us) had neglected to replace a heating grate. You see where this is going, right? Yep, kitty in heating duct. We made sure she couldn't get into the furnace and tried the usual things to get her out, to no avail.

An hour or so later, we gave up and sat around and petted her brother in the living room while we waited for her to emerge. He is very much digging the only visible kitty thing so he couldn't be persuaded to go look for her until we got up to go to bed. Then he sauntered into the kitchen and chirped and suddenly it was safe to emerge. Tonight, she's vanished again. I think this time we'll let her come forth on her own schedule, though I'm still a bit anxious. Sigh.

Gratuitous cute photo of Day 1 when they used the bathmat to make a kitty burrito:

Way back in the misty regions of 1985, a playwright named Elaine Lee worked with comic book artist Mike Kaluta to put out a comic book based on Lee's off-Broadway play, Starstruck. I stumbled across it somewhere around that time, fell madly in love with it, read it until it vanished and mourned its passing. I just found out that IDW Publishing has brought it back, along with some of the not previously published material (here's a history of the whole cycle - http://tymstevens.blogspot.com/2009/09/starstruck-strikes-back.html). Apparently the play is also back, at least if you live on the West Coast. Starstruck is beautifully drawn, insanely complicated to follow and a completely worthwhile to acquire taste. It is also, along with Colleen Doran's A Distant Soil, one of my all time favorites comic books. What's about? Well, clones and revolution and corrupt corporations and some of the most kickass women characters to grace a comic book and sex and explosions and scary pleasure droids and the Galactic Girl Guides, who...well, never mind, you should just read it.

hell were we thinking? Almost no sleep last night because while we are terrifying if we're up and wandering around, we're the coolest jungle gym in the world the moment we lay down. The chirping and mewing didn't help much either. I'd forgotten what this was like.

They sure are cute though. And kind of sweet when not keeping us up between 2 and 5:30AM when I get up to go to work. Allergy qualities are still holding - for some reason, dancing around on Jana's pillow last night was totally awesome but she's not wheezing.

I trotted over to Hamline U. for the monthly Queer Voices reading Series event with poet Jim Cihlar and deaf essayist/poet/editor Ray Luczak. I've met Ray before and I'd been wanting to check out the space since I'll be reading there in April, hence the motivation for stopping by after yet another long day of day job kerfuffle.

Jim did a fine job and I liked some of his imagery but he got largely upstaged by Ray (but was very gracious about - big plus points for that). Over half the audience was deaf or hard of hearing or an ASL interpreter or training to be an interpreter so it had a very different feel from the usual reading. The ASL interpreter who signed for the event was amazingly good, at least for those of us who don't understand much or any ASL - she was very expressive and emotive. She got lots of compliments from the audience though, so I'm guessing it worked for everyone.

In addition, a couple of the audience members brought their own interpreters who were using signed English instead of ASL. It turned out that no one else knew they were coming so they had to do all their signing on the fly, which was pretty impressive. It also meant that those of us outside the deaf community got to see two different forms of signing at the same time. I can see why ASL is more popular. It seems to more useful for encompassing a range of emotions and context that signed English doesn't seem to get to.

To make things even more interesting, Ray opted to sign his reading in ASL while the interpreter narrated it from the audience for those of who are sign-impaired. He chose a section from his memoir, Assembly Required: Notes from a Gay, Deaf Life, but he's also got numerous plays, two edited collections (Eyes of Desire Vol.1 and Vol. 2) and a forthcoming novel out. The section that he signed from/read dealt with growing up in a small town in the U.P. (say "da"!) and dealing with the isolation of being deaf and gay. It was quite moving and I picked up the book to add the myriad stacks around the house. In short, really interesting guy and well worth checking out. Glad I dragged myself out for the event.

As mentioned earlier, it's Give to the Max day out at GiveMN.org. All donations to the listed nonprofits will get matched up to some huge sum. Among the groups fundraising TODAY: District 202 (local queer youth center and support), Outfront MN (LGBT advocacy, help lines, etc.), several of the area shelters - domestic violence as well as homeless, food banks, arts organizations like Intermedia Arts, Heart of the Beast Puppet Theater and Minnesota Center for Book Arts and Intermedia Arts. In short, all sorts of the organizations that make living here a fine and good thing. Check it out and have your donations go further. Please spread the word.

And: we went and took a class at Minneapolis Community Education to get our Living Wills filled out. Notarized even. Have you?
I'm insisting that everyone wear silly hats at my funeral. :-)

At least as of Thursday night - we wanted a few days to prep the house and get ready.
These beauties are listed as Egyptian Mau mixes. Guessing it was aways back since their littermate is a perfect little black and white tuxedo kitty. Their fur has a completely different texture from his though - it doesn't feel like ordinary cat fur and best of all, we sat and played with them for an hour plus and Jana didn't sneeze. Huzzah! They're cautiously friendly but quite playful, once you pass inspection.
And they come with a tale of great drama, having been found with their mother inside a tree as it was being cut down. Yay for Feline Rescue for finding them and taking them in. BTW, if you're smitten with them, their mother, Louisa, who has the same markings and personality, will be available soon too.

This is Mica (we're probably not keeping the names) in his Feline Rescue photo -



And Mica's sister, Mysty

Well we lost out on our first choice kitties, but that's because someone else adopted them faster so it's hard to see that as bad news. We're going to meet our second choice ones in a hour or so here so hopefully he/she/they'll be a good fit.

Odds and ends:
The Loft Literary Center has asked me to offer "Inflagranti Delicto: Writing Good Sex Scenes" again in Summer 2010 so if you wanted to take it last year and couldn't, it will once again be available. I'm currently filling out the paperwork and hoping to make it a five hour class so it feels less rushed at the end.

Send in my bio stuff for A-Kon 2010. Still in that "Really?" state of mind, both about me being invited and the sheer size of the thing. :-)

Watched the first 2 episodes of Blood Ties on Friday. Bit clumsy on the pacing and the scripting but good campy fun otherwise.

Went to a pretty awful play last night, which was disappointing. It was meant to be a reinterpretation of "Jekyll and Hyde" but they tried for slapstick and missed by several miles. :-((( Oh well. We're holding out hope for Hardcover Theater's version of She, which we'll be checking out later on this week.

Before I forget, Tuesday, Nov. 17th is Give to the Max day out at GiveMN.org. All donations to the listed nonprofits will get matched. Among the groups fundraising that day: District 202 (local queer youth center and support), Outfront MN (LGBT advocacy, help lines, etc.), several of the area shelters - domestic violence as well as homeless, food banks, arts organizations like Intermedia Arts, Heart of the Beast Puppet Theater and Minnesota Center for Book Arts. In short, all sorts of the organizations that make living here a fine and good thing. Check it out and have your donations go further. Please spread the word.

This weekend, we start "interviewing" kitties to see if we can find one or two that don't set Jana's allergies off. Fingers crossed that it's the first one or two we fall madly in love with.

we shouldn't play with iTunes when we're very tired unless we really want to listen to Emilie Autumn's version of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." On the harpsichord. We think we do now, but will we still think that tomorrow when we're no longer using the royal or editorial "we"? Probably. :-)

So, Atlanta. Friday night - After dire warnings about the state of the neighborhood, I was standing around at the bus stop by myself watching people gather and the bus not come. There continued to be no bus, but lots of gathering. I asked the woman next to me what the schedule was and it turned out she was going to the event too so we got ourselves a cab and took off. Spent some time in amiable conversation with my new friend, then headed inside for the festivities. Pearl Cleage was absolutely amazing and very, very moving. The Indigos were terrific and Alice Walker was fascinating. The church that was hosting the event sent a fair number of their congregation to the event and it was a jolly time all around. I got to chat with Pearl Cleage briefly and tell her how much her work meant to me. She is every bit as gracious and charming off stage as on, which is a fine thing to be. :-) Afterward, my friend from the bus stop and I hitched a ride with one of the women from Charis Books, who was kind enough to drop us near our respective places for the evening.

Next day dawned bright and early and I headed down to the library for the Atlanta Queer Lit Fest. The high points: heard some excellent poetry by a few of the local slam champions. The table from Outwrite Bookstore and Cafe was well stocked and filled with interesting books. Sat through half of a presentation on archiving your records. I took off for thirty minutes or so to get lunch for later (and coffee for the morning), then came back. By then, it was clear that attendance was quite low and likely to stay that way. In addition, due to the auditorium being unbelievably warm, events in that space were set back about 30 minutes which then became 45 minutes as the morning wore on. Sara Amis, Lara Zielinsky and I started at 12:45 rather than 12PM, each read our pieces and finished in under an hour, which might have been helpful toward rescuing the schedule except that there didn't seem to be any responsible parties around when we finished to inform of that interesting development. We hunted around for a few minutes, then I bought Staceyann Chin's new book, The Other SIde of Paradise but there was still no one around to get the schedule moving as far as we could see so Sara and I took off for lunch. I didn't get a chance to attend any of the other events so I'm hoping they went better than Saturday's. No idea what happened with the rest of Saturday afternoon or why things were the way they were.

At any rate, lunch was delightful. After sushi and sashimi, we headed over to Charis Books and More, which is an amazing bookstore. I acquired Ash by Malinda Lo, Soulless by Gail Carriger, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You by S. Bear Bergman and tea with literary quotes on the labels. There was cake and chatting. Eventually, I sat down at a table with my books and twiddled my thumbs (also known as playing on my iPhone) for a few minutes. I met author Diana Cage and we chatted briefly. Lara stopped by to chat some more. My friend from the bus stop came by to say hi. I talked to the owners and store staff and a few customers. All in all, it was the jolliest nonsigning signing I've ever done.  Well, they did have me sign their stock just before the ever charming degruy came by to whisk me off to dinner. Dinner was Latin American fusion of a sort and we had a fine time (or at least I did and he faked it well :-). Charis was kind enough to ask me back for a future reading so there was additional warm fuzzies all around.

And from there home without incident. Except for my back being sore from packing along too many books.

I just got asked to be a guest at a (mostly) anime convention in Texas that's been expanding to include writing/reading tracks and other fandoms and such. They got upwards of 16,000 attendees last year. My eyes are bulging a bit at the corners just thinking about it. More on that when I finish processing (I said "Yes," of course, seeing as it is a fab invite of the rockstar variety and I hear good things. These folks do it up right. But wow. :-).


And there'll be an Atlanta update shortly I'm seeking a diplomatic way to talk about what went awry, while burbling about what went well.

Woke up feeling under the weather and decided that I had one major expedition in me today, not two, and the Emory University events were just far enough away to be inconvenient. So I settled for gadding about Decatur. Thus far, it seems to be a nice little college town, with its own eccentricities. I stopped by McKinney's Apothecary where the gentleman helping me was determined to save me from myself. Apparently, I didn't really want the cold medication I requested, what with it having pseudoephedrine in it and all. I suppose it's the desire to tweak that comes off me in waves (this is more hilarious if you've ever actually met/seen me). I'm pretty sure that my odds of setting up a meth lab with 2 packages of pills were rather low, but I was spared that particular danger. He also managed to not include the Dayquil in my bag when I left and I didn't realize it until later.Urgh. Not so pleased with that.

 From there, I walked over to Books Again, which is a really swell used bookstore on the outskirts of downtown. There I acquired Jane Rule's Lesbian Images, Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson and Thomas Bullfinch's Legends of Charlemagne, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth. The last was not hideously expensive, seeing as the binding's a bit rough. But it's bound in signatures so it will make for excellent re-binding fun for my spouse when I get it home. Plus the pix - extraordinarily gorgeous. I also stopped by the Decatur Market (an artist's co-op) for the obligatory new earrings from place not previously visited; these are fused glass and very shiny and pretty.

From there, it was on to Cafe Alsace for an interesting French lunch. The goat cheese quiche was to die for, in a good way. Though I managed to acquire French onion soup, which I do not like at all as a rule (this was better than most), instead of salad. Just my day for being not comprehensible, I suppose. Post lunch, I went to Mingei, which is a fab fair trade gift store. There I picked up some Arghand Soap, which smells lovely, looks like river stones and is made by a worker's co-op in Kandahar, Afghanistan, as well a lovely little box covered in surrealist art created by an artist in Mexico City. Grabbed a dinner sandwich at the Java Monkey, which is hosting various AQLF events this weekend and am resting up before heading to SW Atlanta for the Alice Walker/Pearl Cleage/Indigo Girls event tonight. More on that post concert.

So far, my first ever biz trip for a day job has gone reasonably well. Day job stuff was...interesting. The things people remember to tell you when you're right in front of them that they forget on conference calls. Yeesh. Hotel was spectacular though.

Now I am holed up at a B&B in Decatur all by my lonesome watching a weird old movie and trying to find the mental energy to edit my spouse's grant application. Brain is absolute toast - 2 days with not enough sleep, constant meetings and running around. Next up, figuring out how to get to Stacey Chin's reading tomorrow afternoon.

• Wednesday - Thursday (Nov. 4-5): work stuff at day job du jour
• Friday (Nov. 6) - messing about in Atlanta and Decatur, followed by going to Feminism, Books and Beyond: Celebrating 35 Years of Charis Community with Alice Walker, The Indigo Girls and Pearl Cleage. Also known as "Let's hear Catherine squee like a fangrrrl." :-D  Who's Pearl Cleage, you say? Drop whatever you're doing and read her essay "Mad at Miles," which is one of the best pieces ever written on domestic violence and community accountability. She's done lots of other cool things as well, of course, so I recommend checking them all out.
• Saturday (Nov. 7) - this is the big day! I'll be reading at the DeKalb County Public Library from 12-1PM with Sara Amis and Lara Zielinsky for AQLF.

And there is an awesome poster (which you can see in readable size on their website) -

• Then from 5-6PM, I'll be signing at Charis Books and More - full schedule of signings here - Charis Books and More Birthday Fest.

Followed by some socializing, then home again, home again, jiggity-jig.

For those of you celebrating Samhain in its various forms, blessed be. Hoping to get in some ritual time myself today.

Might have helped if I hadn't slept for nearly 10 solid hours last night. I NEVER do this so apparently my sense that I'm very rundown is pretty accurate. I'm amazingly groggy this morning. Atlanta is looming so it looks like I'll have to skip a few events this weekend to make sure I stay healthy. Bleah. At any rate, there are tons of fun things going on right in the Cities so I thought I'd mention a few in case others were interested.

• Cromulent Shakespeare Company's production of Pratchett's The Wyrd Sisters closes today - last show 2PM. We saw it last Monday. It's exuberant and quite fun - we particularly liked Granny Weatherwax and the King.
• Barebones Productions Puppet Theater's Annual Halloween Extravaganza - This looks like it'll be a great show - I'm still hoping to make it to this one tonight. We thoroughly enjoyed the last one of these we went attended.
• Theater Unbound is debuting their new production, "Chemical Imbalance: A Jekyll and Hyde Play," tomorrow night at the Lowry Lab in downtown St. Paul. Theater Unbound is a terrific little women's theater - we've enjoyed all of their shows that we've been to over the years and are very much looking forward to this one. And in Spring, 2010, they're doing a version of "Meda" as Noh.
• The Hennepin History Museum is hosting an exhibit called "Icons for the Bereaved: Traditions and Artifacts of Mourning." Memento mori and hair ornaments, here we come. :-)

Off to go get organized for Atlanta. And maybe straighten up the place a bit, along with other catch-up stuff.

I just sent in the story that was due at end of week. I liked it much better after revisions so that was all good. It hasn't been the best writing year for me, all things considered. I'm hoping to turn that around in the next two months. Wish me luck, please. I may need it.

Next up, Time Well Bent: Queer Alternative Histories is unleashed upon the world this week, courtesy of Lethe Press. This was a Haworth orphan and it includes one of my favorite of my own stories, "Great Reckonings, Little Rooms" so I'm very happy to see it out and about.
"Great Reckonings" is my Shakespeare/Marlowe story (and no, they're not an item). One of my sources of inspiration: "Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say. " Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own. :-D



 

Well, more of a singe, really. The final draft of the story I have to get done this week is taking for bloody ever. I wish I loved it, but I just don't. Poor little thing. I simply want to put its limbs on, get it all dressed up and shove it out the door into the cold cruel world so I can write other things, shinier, prettier things. Every year about this time, I swear off invite-only anthos with themes that don't speak to me. Yet here I am again. Oh well, almost done...

Scholastic (the folks who bring you Harry Potter, among other things) has decided that children of lesbian couples are a wee bit too controversial for their school book fairs. Author Lauren Myracle was asked to rewrite her novel Luv Ya Bunches so that the character with two moms would magically acquire a mommy and daddy instead, something the author refused to do. Refusing to cave in means that her book won't get the extra exposure and readership that would come from having it included in the bookfairs. Go Lauren Myracle for saying no!
Read the full article at The School Library Journal,  send a note to Scholastic at Change.org and buy the book at your local indie bookseller.


Update 10/29/09 - After hearing from thousands of people, Scholastic has resdiscovered its "commitment to diversity" and the book will be included in the book fairs this year. Full text here - http://onourmindsatscholastic.blogspot.com/2009/10/news-regarding-lauren-myracles-luv-ya.html 

with patterns and stuff! :-)
Plus 6 bags of raked leaves, 600 or so more words on story that needs to be completed, 3 loads of wash done and some minimal sorting and straightening out of stuff. And there was dimsum brunch. Life is good.

Last night's reading went pretty well - a number of wonderful folks actually braved the cold rain/snizzle to attend, which I greatly appreciate. We retired afterward to Merlin's Rest and chatted a lot, which made for a swell time.

Today, I'm looking at the gigantic piles of laundry, leaves (we have three trees in the yard), cleaning and oh yeah, the story that's due in a week and wondering how I will get it all done. Plus Atlanta prep. Urgh.

Snippets from earlier in the week:

• Arcana. Pleasant small con. Got to spend some time hanging out with assorted friends new and old, and grabbed dinner with Lois McMaster Bujold before ferrying her back to the con to receive her Minnesota Fantasy Award. I did not know, prior to this, that there was a Minnesota Fantasy Award but can now vouch for it being a nicely done framed certificate. Go, Lois!
• Monday and Tuesday - intestinal disasters, headache and very long days. Need I say more?
• Wednesday through Thursday - more long days, punctuated with heated arguments and ugly politics (does not pertain to my home or writing lives, for the record). High points of Thursday - "Of course we have to reboot the server every few days, like when it eats data for no particular reason and then stops actually performing. It's just like your computer at home." Ummm. No. If my computer at home did that and the issue remained undiagnosable, I might borrow a concealed handgun (this being Pawlenty's Minnesota) and shoot it to put it out of its misery though. Actual highpoint - random guy telling me story about editing a manual for airline pilots back in the day, including the chapter heading "Unexpected Encounters with the Ground." :-D

Now back to the grindstone for a bit.

And happy 40th to her creation, The Left Hand of Darkness.
Le Guin is the first science fiction writer to get me thinking about gender and feminism and a number of other things. She continues to be an inspiration (plus we quoted her at our wedding :-).

And in an unrelated to birthdays note, Jana and I once met her on an elevator at WisCon. We chatted for a bit, then she got off at her floor. Jana (in all fairness, not a fan, and only aware of those sf  writers and editors who I've introduced her to or whose works I've read to her) said, "Who's the nice elderly lady everyone's getting all silly about?" :-D
Who indeed. At any rate, she was favorably impressed and allowed as Le Guin seemed quite cool.