Day in the Life of an Idiot

 A little context: a month or so ago, I decided to check in on my ancient, but still functional, Hotmail account. I would get rid of it entirely, but back in the Late Jurassic I printed my email in the author's bio portion in Archangel Protocol (and all of the subsequent AngeLINK books.) Every so often, I still get fan mail to that address.

It turns out that my webpage (until a month ago!) also directed people to that old address. (Yes, it has now been fixed to send inquiries to my gmail account.)  I found this out, of course, because buried under all the spam was a email from a former teen student of mine, asking if I might be interested in coming to speak to Beloit College's writers' club. They meet on Saturday evenings at 5 pm Central and I could come in person or via Zoom... and there would be a stipend.

A rather generous stipend.

As has been discussed.

I knew this student was in my teen class, because she mentioned it by name. "More Than the Zombie Apocalypse." I only ever use that title for my teen classes. I've never changed the title either, because I've discovered something YA authors have long known: teens talk to each other and recommend things to each other. So, that was kind of a little ego boost, particularly after the disaster which shall not be named over the summer. SOME of my teen students still remember me years later. Ha! Loft! SEE!

At any rate, there was the usual back and forth and it was decided that I would speak via Zoom on May 22, last Saturday. Despite my panicking, the potential funeral, and the rest, it went great. I did take people's advice and put together an actual PowerPoint Presentation. I feel a little silly about this, but later, when I finally saw the contract (more on that in a second) I'm glad I did. The contract stipulated a "workshop" and there's something about a PowerPoint Presentation that feels more workshop-like than me babbling incoherently for an hour and a half. 

I showed up ten minutes early, like you do, and chatted with the half dozen workshop members who'd already arrived. I thought, "Oh, this is a nice small group, maybe I can ditch the presentation and..." but, at the clock hit 5 pm, window after window after window started popping up and I was like, "Oh. Oh, DAMN." 

Not, mind you, in a bad way, but more of a "Wow, okay, they did some publicity. I'm actually going to have to PERFORM."

And so I did.

I mean, I still always feel like I am a dancing monkey, babbling like an idiot, and/or punch drunk while doing these things, but people seemed genuinely appreciative and asked good follow-up questions. So, it seems as though all is well. In fact, I heard from one the of attendees a few days later because I offered that I could answer further questions via email and it seems as though I was generally a hit. 

SO YAY.

So about that generous payment I'd been all worried about. Well, I had literally heard nothing from their finance office despite one email from someone saying "I'm connecting you with ____." Well, ____ never said boo after that. In fact, by Friday (the day before) I was kind of starting to get worried that they'd baulked at the amount they'd agreed to pay me. I did one subtle, "So... is there anything you NEED from me before my workshop tomorrow?" query that seemed to not have the desired affect, so I went with the less subtle on Sunday, the day after the event, which was, "Say, I haven't heard a peep from your financial department, should I have??" 

Forms were belatedly sent, one of which I actually have MAIL back, but whatever. The payment is being processed, your check is in the mail, yada yada.

Oh, and about the funeral that we chose not to attend.... Shawn's brother said it was the best decision we have ever made. He and his wife considered bailing in the middle of the funeral service because it was so fire and brimstone and sin, sin, SIN in a way that made his fairly centrist to lightly conservative head explode. Shawn has two brothers. One old leftie and one kind of very middle of America (which is decently to the right, as you all know). This was the middle one? And, so if he was having conniption fits, the service was BAD. 

I can only imagine it would have been worse if ACTUAL sinning lesbians had been in the family pews.

 Many of you have been following the saga of my class at the Loft in the access-only bits, but I think I can bring this story out into the light of day now, since I have mostly positive things to say about how the class went. 

I am still very thrown by how casual the Loft has been, in general.

Like, no one met me when I got to Macalester, which is kind of amazing, given that this is the first time anyone from the Loft has used this venue. Similarly, there was no reminder sent with classroom information or a campus map or guide to parking. I ended up having to find all of that on my own, which... was FINE? But, kind of goes to my general complaint here.

I will say that despite some assurances by the Loft that I might actually see the program coordinator, I never did. She did, however, change the course description as I had asked, to be clearer about how the students' day will be structured. https://loft.org/classes/summer-youth-week-one-not-just-zombie-apocalypse-more (go to the very end.) 

In fact, one of the students' parents pulled me aside and said, "It kind of looks like there are two different programs here? My son is really only interested in science fiction, can he leave halfway through?" I told this parent, "You absolutely can." Because I don't see why they couldn't? To be fair to this dad, I'm pretty sure that particular child will beg to stay because I noticed that he, in particular, seemed to be having a very good time? We will see what happened tomorrow.

But, okay, the class went pretty well. Like a lot of Loft classes, students kind of drifted in anywhere between a half hour PRIOR to class and a half hour after class had started. This is just how Loft classes are for some reason? But, that did dilute my ability to be super clear with everyone about how their day will go, but I think enough of them got it not only once, but twice. 

After that? I just did what I normally do, which is wing it. I asked everyone to do introductions and pronouns and a conversation just naturally started around the question "Why are most protagonists actually the character you like the least? Like, why are they so stupid?"  Because, narratively, there is a reason for that, right? Like, the main character is often the person who is introducing a science fictional or fantasy world to the reader and if they are an outsider or kind of dumb about their world, that's an opportunity for the readers to learn what THEY need to learn, but through the protag's eyes. I could see some lights actually going on in the room already at this point, so that was gratifying. I then played "a game" that I basically made up on the spot in which we talked about another problem that some main characters have, which is that they're kind of overpowered and how you can solve that problem in the design phase, if you consider the "cost of magic." So we listed superpowers on one half of the board and "costs" on the other and had fun matching them up in silly ways, and then I asked them to write a story either based on the prompts (or, as it happens, anything they liked.)

I floundered a bit after that because I really like the class to be self-directed and so it took us all a bit of time to figure out what else might be a fun topic to tackle. I tried talking to them about story structure, but that seemed to lose them a bit.

So, I hopped over to hooks. We came up with a bunch of different types of hooks: opening lines of dialogue, an action or an image, and a question. This was fun because some students went hyper specific and some went broad.  This one seemed to be the thing that pulled them in the deepest. So, clearly what they like is coming up with story prompted based around some part of writing (like, in this case opening hooks) and then getting a chance to write on that topic. Since they were so deep into this one, I tried one as well. (At the ends of these classes I always end up with a ton of half-started stories based on various prompts.)

I ended the class with two rousing games of sentence stories (you know the one, where you build on the previous sentence), which everyone seemed to enjoy.

As for the make-up of my class, it's mostly young women. This has been an interesting demographic shift. When I first started teaching SF/F (almost *cough* 20 years ago), I was often the only woman in the room. Now, it's the men who are in the minority. Not surprisingly, a fairly large number of students  also used they/them pronouns (though they all seemed surprisingly flexible? There were a number of she or they, for instance.) There were small number of visible POCs? At least two of the young women had Southeast Asian given and surnames and another had a typically East Asian surname. So, the Loft is diversifying a bit more than it has in the past, though it's still not doing great with only three out of twelve. 

That's the other last thing of note. As is typical, I picked up two extra students last minute. So, I have an even dozen. 

I met the other teacher at noon. I mean, she seems nice? I wasn't expecting her to be sprouting horns or anything, but, yeah, I have no idea how things are going at the end of the day here, but I'm sure it will be FINE. To be fair, one of the first questions one of my students asked me is, "Is this going to be like school?" And, I said, "Yes and no. I will try to impart some knowledge, but there are no assignments or quizzes and nothing I ask you to do is required."  It seemed to be the general consensus, too, that what they wanted was more of a summer camp vibe, but that's still easy enough for me to provide. 

The bonus of being an on-the-fly teacher who doesn't have any requirement to impart any real or lasting information is that I can just be like, "Games? Sure, let's just do games!"

We got Mason off for his robotics trip to Grand Forks, North Dakota. Alas, not without some static, when I thought I was being helpful. But, Mason is resisting ANY form of mothering me at the moment. It's like he's a toddler again with the whole, "IMA, I CAN DO IT." Even when, what I think I'm doing isn't mothering at all, but what i would do for anyone, like grabbing him a drink from the fridge.

But, I mean, we worked it out. I even got an apologetic "You do a lot for me. I'm sorry, I should appreciate you more," text. Which is huge. He is, really, as my friend Josey put it, a good lad. If I think back to my terrible teens? I was holy terror. Pretty sure I never told my mother i appreciated the things she did for me.

To be fair to everyone, this trip kind of came up suddenly, despite being on our calendar since forever.

Hell, I feel like March kind of came up suddenly, despite the natural progression of the calendar. Is it just me? How is it already the 13th?

But, it's Wednesday, so that means reading! I actually have some things to report, holy crap. I read SEMIOSIS by Sue Burke. At first I wasn't sure about it. I loved the first chapter and then felt a little dismayed when the second chapter jumped ahead a generation. I have, in my life, been very burned by time skips *cough*BLEACH*cough* *cough*HARRY POTTER*cough* But, I pushed through and discovered that EACH chapter is a different generation, which, in the end, worked out. I ended up enjoying the whole ride. So, ultimately: would recommend.

I'm now finally on to A RECORD OF A SPACE-BORN FEW by Becky Chambers, which I am likewise ambivalent about, but I'm rolling along with it because i have long been a fan of Chamber's narrative voice. There are some people who just READ well, in my head, and Chambers is one of them.

I haven't read much in the way of manga, which is.. I'm running out of new things to pick-up at the library, I think. I read the first two volumes of a manga that the library had about a serial killing magical blade, (Durarara!! Drrr!! Saika arc by Ryohgo Narita) but I didn't even review what I read because I just kind of went 'meh.' Which is weird, I should probably go back and do some kind of review, but I don't know. I did review From Green Kitchen by Ueda Aki (which I had read on-line), but I also read My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness finally, and I didn't review that.

I guess, I need to do a little review work and catch up.

Any-WAY, what are you all reading?

 I'm trying a new crockpot recipe  I have varying success with crockpot things, but I wanted to have something going that would not require me to heat up the kitchen too much later this evening.  I had some skin-on, bone-in chicken breasts in the freezer (they were on sale) and so I found a kind of spicy Italian recipe that would only require me to make some spaghetti later to serve this over. I have no idea if it will be any good, but it's worth a try.

Shawn is home today. She woke up not feeling great--her tummy was bothering her, but just looking at her, I suspect a migraine is coming.  Unfortunately, as she's gotten older, she's been getting new symptoms for her migraines and upset stomach is now one of them.  So much for all those reports that claimed that, as she aged, migraines might become less severe. :-(

Meanwhile, I'm waiting for Mason to wake up so that I can take him off for his second driver's lesson.  We tried out a parking lot yesterday. He did actually very well, considering it was his first real time. The first few stops were panicked and jerky, but by the time we were done, he was getting the hang of a smooth stop. Turning was still a little baffling for him, until I took the wheel for a while and realized that part of the problem was that the wheel needs a certain amount of acceleration in order to turn itself back to true.  

I think that's been the most challenging part of teaching Mason so far. I have not had to articulate the mechanics of driving... ever, and there are so many things that, after decades of driving, I do completely unconsciously.  So, it's been a struggle to use all my words, as it were. Shawn found me a lovely parent guided course on-line, which has had some good ideas for how much we should try to cover in a single day.  https://www.teendriversource.org/learning-to-drive/practice-driving-lessons

The other big thing we did for Mason yesterday was get him a teen checking account. He now has his own debit card.  He'll have the ability to check his own statements on-line, etc. Shawn found him a check register, so he can keep track of his finances the old fashioned way, too.  

We are doing our best to get our teen ready for adulting, as the kids say.

I'm really glad we're starting some of this stuff now, when he'll still have plenty of time at home to work out any kinks, as it were.  Plus, I'm hoping that it will ease some of the natural desire for independence at this age. He'll have a good deal of freedom and discretion when it comes to his own money, and, eventually, he'll have the physical freedom to take the car to places.  

Oh, that reminds me. I'd better call our insurance company and get him added to our policy.  That'll be... expensive. 

 I'll be doing light cosplay today at my Loft Class.

We made some off-hand comment about cosplay. When the students found out that I've cosplayed in the past, they were like "Do it! Bring it!" and we all know that if you agree to such a challenge, you really need to follow through to the best of your ability.

Particularly when dealing with teens.  

But, now I have arrived at class and realized that I have forgotten a critical part of my shinigmai uniform at home! The kosode!  I have a captain's haori, but gah! I'm wearing it anyway.

The other challenge of today is that it's a wrap-up day. As in, "let's talk about anything we didn't previously cover."  So, it's going to be the least prepared, by its nature.  But, I will be teaching it dressed as Aizen, so I will have all the narcissistic confidence of a GOD.

I'm at the coffee shop early trying to prep for class, but I keep getting distracted by my review blog. (A couple of comments came in while I was sitting here).

I decided to go to a movie last night with friends (Ant-Man and the Wasp) and that was fun, but now I'm feeling a little crispy around the edges because I stayed up later than I normally would. I also feel wildly unprepared for class.

I probably haven't managed to mention this earlier (see above blog about how insanely busy July has been), but I've been teaching a week-long science fiction/fantasy class at the Loft called "Not Just the Zombie Apocalypse." It's part of their teen summer program. My attendance is once-again extremely healthy. I have 16 teenagers, all of whom are willing to show up for an 9 am class, and, on top of that, all of whom have been (crossing fingers that this trend continues) enthusiastic participants.  

BUT, because of said enthusiasm, I've been tearing through material in class.

I'm ahead of my synopsis by about a day--so I'm thinking today is going to have to cover stuff I hadn't planned on doing, so that we can match back up/get back on track. I think to that end, I'm going to loop back to character design/development. We touched on it only briefly earlier, so it's time to go back to that.

This means, of course, that I don't have writing prompts ready to roll and I'm doing that last-minute scramble to find fun ideas.

Sometimes I wonder how i survive.

In this case, I survive because it really takes almost nothing to get my class talking. In fact, I intend to start to day getting them to list some favorite/memorable characters. Then, we're going to do some deep thinking about why these characters stood out: was it just their story? Was it some unusual personality trait? Was it they way they "talked" (aka the narrative voice)? Was it a special ability we all wish we had (world's greatest detective/wizard/etc.)?

I think we'll do some thinking about how do you make characters distinct from one another. We'll talk about how important (or not) physical description is, naming, dialogue quirks, etc. I think maybe I'll ask them to do an exercise where they write dialogue between two characters without ANY dialogue tags or "blocking" with the express purpose of focusing on making voices distinct enough to be recognizable without the 'he said/she said tags." (And then we'll have to discuss why huge blocks of dialogue like that are actually a TERRIBLE idea in actual fiction. :-)

Okay, I'm feeling better.  I'm going to head out so I can get there early and settle in. 

Maybe I'll also grab a second cup of coffee for the road.

Over the weekend, I went to see "Blade Runner 2049" by myself at 10:15 pm on Saturday night. I hate seeing movies by myself. I actually ended up at the wrong theater--I'd pre-purchased tickets for Inver Grove Heights, but apparently, despite living here for decades, I don't actually know the suburbs of Minneapolis/St. Paul, and I ended up in Oakdale. I guess I just thought "Oh, yeah, that nice theatre with the comfy recliners" and I drove to the wrong one on automatic pilot. "Blade Runner 2049" wasn't even showing there, so I had to decide whether to race across town to try to get to the place I'd paid for, or, to head off to somewhere closer in order to not miss any of it. I opted for not missing anything, because some months ago, I agreed to talk to the folks over at Just Enough Trope about the movie. So I ended up at a super late show, in IMAX. I'm not a big fan of the IMAX experience. I'm old, so I often find it too loud and the screen is so big that sometimes I feel like it's impossible to take everything in properly.

But, I saw it and we recorded my part of the podcast on Sunday afternoon.

I'm listening to the podcast right now, for the first time, and I don't sound too stupid. http://justenoughtrope.com/2017/10/09/237-sexbot-boobie-business/  They edited me a little, but not a lot, so you get me in my most rambling, interrupting myself glory. The podcast itself is surprisingly long. I talked to them for about an hour, and almost all of that is there. But, the conversation is interesting (at least I thought so both at the time and listening now.)  We get into some interesting things about cyberpunk and the questions of humanity that it often plays with.  If you get a chance, check it out and see what you think of it. On the Just Enough Trope page, they list the time stamp for when my interview/conversation starts, so you can just jump to that. Though I listened to the front matter, just to hear the context.

Other news is that late last night, Mason announced that he is going to homecoming with A DATE.  He won't tell us who (because he's a little sh*t), but we have some guesses.  We do know that it's a young woman, so take that for what it is. Adorably, he calls her his "lady friend."  We are going to be doing some shopping in preparation.  Mason still has a few nice dress shirts, but he'd like to get some dress pants that aren't high water (damn those growth spurts!) and check out shirts and ties, just because. We're going to re-dye his hair either tonight or tomorrow.  It's kind of exciting.  It made me remember my first high school dance.  I already think Mason will have a better time than I did at the first one, since he's actually going with someone he likes, as opposed to me, who just longed balefully in the direction of Rich Steffans.  (Kind of pathetic in retrospect. No offense to Rich, but I obsessed on him and literally NEVER talked to him, so he must have been so baffled by my odd behavior.)

I did later go to most of the dances with dates--yes, I dated boys, some I quite liked, in fact.  

Anyway, I'm excited for Mason.  

II spent yesterday doing some more fussing-because:POLTICS.  Shawn confessed over the weekend that she's always hated the bins we have for recycling in the pantry and wanted another solution to them. I suggested reducing the number (we had four) and moving one of them to the bottom of the landing, since we have alley pick up of mixed recycling now and that's on my way out to the back.  We left one in the pantry for guests, but moved it into a more out of the way place. I painted both of the ones we decided to keep. Shawn had wanted brown, and I hunted around in the basement, certain that we had a brown--only it turns out what we had was a dark brick red. They turned out really nice, actually, though when they were still wet I was pretty terrified that I'd be saying, "Um, so..... I know you wanted brown, but how do you feel about pink???"  I took the remaining bins out to the garage where they'll function as storage.  Into the spot they used to occupy we pulled down Shawn's grandfather's spool table from the attic.  It's got a bottom shelf, so we're using it as a bookshelf for our overflow cookbooks, which had been piled around Shawn's comfy chair in the living room. (Our personal home decorating aesthetic is built around this New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/style/lets-celebrate-the-art-of-clutter.html.) 

At any rate it looks nice, though it has made it starkly obvious that on my list of home improvements, we're going to have to move "repaint the pantry" further up on the list.  :-)

Maybe I should go listen to the news and see if it makes me anxious enough to tackle another project!  ;-)