Nattering

These days I’m hardly ever walking one of the dogs alone, because usually C’s there with the other one. So, when Mr. Charming slows down his car and yells "Put me on a leash!" to the amusement of his friends, the best I can manage is a reflexive, loud, "Ewwww."

Effective, sure, but I used to have much snappier retorts.

The dogs and kitty say, oh woe, woe, where is Christopher? And after they got a little less than 24 hours of Chris Barzak love, too. They are not happy, and are following me everywhere. But they can not get here, where everyone else is, fabulous and freshly-printed (ahem) story drafts clutched in hands.

Me? I’ve been to the post office, which was full of fun things, and have now purchased Deja Vu from the pay-per-view, which will almost certainly not be full of fun things. Yes, yes, I have lots of work to do — that dread packet — but I actually work best in the late evening (shhh, don’t tell anyone), so that’s my plan. Plus, we stayed up a bit late, drinking vino and back-yarding and chitter-chattering (Barzak and I have lived disturbingly parallel lives). I find myself in need of achieving a vegetable state for awhile as a result.

An adolescent girl is singing her fool heart out about Jesus in the street right this second, despite the 90 degree heat. Impressive.

What is the deal with this neverending Wis-Cold? I feel better, then it comes back. Yo-yo. I shouldn’t have stopped doing the zinc swabbies. And the weirdest thing of all is that I don’t feel all that bad, just like I have Tiny Men Inside My Temples Swimming in Snot Soup.*

*Possible picture book idea?

I didn’t realize I’d be even more exhausto-mundoed tonight, but I am. Christopher just caught me the first firefly of the year though, so that’s always a good omen. The overnight construction has begun for the evening, and somehow I don’t think it will bother my sleep one bit.

Real posting later. However, we can all share the relief that apparently there will be no creepy “anonymous” Wiscon report this year. (Sharyn’s my hero.)

We are back and the dogs and cat are all intact and happy-fied. I know, though, that what you really want is a garden status report, right? Especially since it didn’t rain at all while we were away. I’m happy to report that both tomato plants have THREE new tomatoes on them and Christopher’s corn is growing in an insane space-vegetable fashion.

In other words: life at Bond-Rowe HQ is intact. If suffering through overnight street construction outside the fortress.

The good thing about flying the Tuesday after Memorial Day? Less businessmen! I suppose they’re all “in-boxing” and “multi-tasking” in their cubicles.

Tomorrow, perhaps a rap-up post and some email answering? Now, a late dinner and some TV.

Miss you guys like mad already. Come visit.

Not so much with the posting from Wiscon, actually. If you’re looking for notes on panels and such, I suggest trolling here and here. Regular service to resume Wednesdayish.

The con has been fabulous as always, though I find I’m in that nice lazy Monday afternoon state of being exhausted on all fronts. I’m hiding away for a couple of hours to nap and work on the novel, and then there will be the usual decompression hang-out with those that are left tonight. Tomorrow home to dogs and cat, happily.

In the meantime, pop over and answer Scott Esposito’s questions about SF and whether (as Michael Dirda says) some literary lions have been writing it of late. I’m guessing you already know my answer.

And yay yay yay to Carolyn “Pinky” Kellogg on her debut review in the LA Times over the weekend. And congratulations to Betsy Bird, who runs one of my most favorite blogs in the universe and who’s been embraced by School Library Journal and will soon migrate her inimitable style to their cyber-shores.

Also see Melissa Moorer (whose write-orial debut with two excellent short stories — in Say… what’s the combination? and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet — took place this weekend) on Nicola Griffith’s Always. My biggest purchase of the weekend was this absolutely GORGEOUS limited edition of Nicola’s memoir And Now We Are Going to Have a Party, which comes complete with scratch-n-sniff cards and assorted goodies.

We also landed a wonderful Terri Windling piece at the auction (and were gifted with one of the Endicott anniversary prints from the lovely and sweet Terri herself) — which reminds me to point to the 20th anniversary issue of The Journal of Mythic Arts, which just went live and features a bunch of amazing fiction and poetry and miscellaneous stuff, including Karen Joy Fowler’s story “King Rat” that kills me, absolutely kills me, every time I read it.

Anything else? Nah, I think that’s it for now.

I somehow managed to bang out very much a first draft of 18 pages of the next book, Cass & Bach, and get it mailed off priority for my next residency’s workshop submission (due in the office there on Friday). Whew.

And we dropped off the lovely and excellent new issue of Say… (Say… what’s the combination?) at the print shop this morning too, and will get it back tomorrow night. The cover is, once again, by the miraculous MAS, who did the last one, but the production values are a return to our old-school roots — it looks great, but I just want you to be prepared for saddle-stitching and cream card-stock cover with black print. (Our cheapie perfect binding, color cover printer went belly up last year.) Anyway, it is definitely the best issue ever, so yay! I’ll post a TOC directly and subscriber/contributor copies will go out when we get back from Madison. Tonight I’ll work up the mix CDs for the contributors, who were oh so patient with our many delays on this one.

Alas, Carmen’s is no longer Carmen’s and I don’t think there’s time to get the teeny rose sewn on the neckline of the pink tulle number, so I’m deciding on a plan B. Or I might bring it and a sewing kit along and try to find someone to do it — my grandmother’s done the exact repair so I don’t think it’s hard.

Not for the first time, I need a fairy godmother.

Or perhaps of zen. I have one and two-thirds papers to write and a 40-50 page section of fiction to pick out and polish before tomorrow night. Oh and an annotated bibliography to prepare. And I feel fine.

Shocking.

Updated: Done done, done-ity done done.

Any weekend in which I finally manage to teach Puck the down command is one of major accomplishment. Also, he and Emma both did fabulously well during their visit to Dogtown, and so that’s where they’ll be staying while we’re at Wiscon. This should lead to far less of the whining you guys all had to listen to last year about my great, enormous guilt. They’ll have their own room with couches and stuff instead of kennels at night, and be in doggy daycare all day. The place is run by a very nice straight-edge couple who started it basically because they hated the options they had for putting up their own dogs when they travel.

And now I experiment with iMovie — instead of Gavin’s requested how to walk a dog, you’ll be getting the dogs being bathed and a miscellaneous happy birthday wish to Hank Green (dogs were woefully underrepresented in that video!).

Updated: Hmmm… the video might be taking a little longer than I expected (damn you, iMovie!), so in the meantime, here’s the happy birthday portion, because you all know how seriously I take birthdaygras:

Nope, haven’t figured out the whole video "quality" thing yet.

I hope you understand the seriousness of the situation when I say that my hair stylist for the last few years — the wonderful Holly at J. Allen — is moving away next month. I adore Holly. She’s the only hairdresser I’ve had as an adult that: a)doesn’t do something weird with my hair that makes me want to wash it immediately upon leaving and b)isn’t completely batshit crazy.

For awhile there, every stylist I saw turned out to be a little too crazy for comfort. There was Joseph, a sweet small-town gay guy who was fabulous at first but then had back surgery and found religion. To be honest, he was always kind of crazy. The first time I saw him, he told me in a whisper that he was "a little bit psychic." His religious conversion came after he was able to pray away his back pain (or could it have been that the surgery was successful?). He could talk of nothing else and was a bore on the topic of my immortal soul. I stopped going there.

The next stylist had probably better remain anonymous, since his salon bears his name. Anyway, things were so far, so good — until the topic somehow came around to evolution. He was one of those "I cannot understand how people believe that we came from apes, isn’t that stupid?" types. How this is polite conversation to make with a client I still don’t understand. I believe my response was a horrified: "Oh, I don’t know. I could show you some pictures of politicians that would convince you." I stopped going there.

Anyway, the NYT has a fascinating article today on the latest insights into just how humanlike chimpanzees really are:

Chimps display a remarkable range of behavior and talent. They make and use simple tools, hunt in groups and engage in aggressive, violent acts. They are social creatures that appear to be capable of empathy, altruism, self-awareness, cooperation in problem solving and learning through example and experience. Chimps even outperform humans in some memory tasks.

I plan to bring up this article for discussion early on in the appointment with my new stylist, just in case she’s hiding some sort of anti-science proclivity. Which pretty much guarantees she’ll think of me as the crazy client who talks about chimps and evolutionary theory. Oh well.

The price of a good haircut is ever steeper.

p.s. Christopher — in this instance serving the role of guinea pig — reports that evolution was not mentioned during his haircut.