Day in the Life of an Idiot

I love living in the future. It's true that we don't hav personal jetpacks and the political landscape is some nightmare cross between 1984 and Handmaid's Tale, but I can talk to someone 7,000 miles away in real-time, via Google Hangouts.  Tell me that's not the most awesome thing!  

Yeah, so yesterday, I was able to spontaneously coordinate a chat with jiawen who is currently living in Taiwan.  It was her night time, my mid-morning.  It's really kind of amazing to think that I was able to sit on my sunporch and chat with her as though she were sitting right beside me instead of, almost literally, on the other side of the world.

I love technology.  

People who say that iThings and social media and tech are what's wrong with kids these days are full of crap.  There are downsides, of course, but I think the kinds of communities we can create vastly outweigh many of the other issues.

In completely different news, when I was making a quick grocery run with Mason after school, I got a call from my library schedule coordinator who asked if I could work at White Bear Lake today from 10 am to 2 pm. I really, really wanted to say 'no,' but, as you know, gentle reader, we're kind of strapped for cash at the moment, so I said 'yes.'  In a few minutes, I'm going to have to get up and do the dishes and get ready to go to work.  I worked last night, too, at the New Brighton branch.  I didn't mind that one so much because it was a super-short, three hour shift.  I was basically there to cover dinner breaks for people. New Brighton, when they're not being anal-retentive, can be a quiet, easy shift.  

Mason's been coming home at the usual time this past week. He's in the final push for his History Day project.  He's doing a documentary on the Kent State massacre.  It's been kind of a timely project, in a way, since he's been listening to news clips of college-age students shouting, "Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?" and I literally just heard a radio segment of the school safety walk-outs, where the high school-age kids were shouting, "Hey, hey, NRA! How many kids did you kill today?"

The more things change, eh?

Okay, well, as much as I'd like to continue to sit with the cat on my lap, I need to get up and get things in some semblance of order so that we don't all come home to a messy house.


P.S. Skipped Wednesday reading because I have finished nothing again this week, though I read a hundred pages or so of at least one non-fiction book.  

I was really hoping to catalogue our trip to Washington, DC with photos, but the picture editor/attacher mechanism over here on LJ is still busted.  Your best bet to see all the pictures is going to be to scroll through: https://www.facebook.com/lyda.morehouse, which you should be able to do without being signed-up (though I don't know that for sure.)

Many apologizes.

It was a great trip, all and all.  While Shawn was stuck in endless meetings, Mason and I were power-tourists.  Our hotel was within walking distance of the zoo, so that was one of our first stops.  We spent two days exploring the museums on the Mall (our favorite was the Natural History Museum), took in a show at the Kennedy Center, saw the Library of Congress (Mason wept to think of 35 million books), the National Archives (where we saw the Constitution, etc.,) waved to the empty White House (apparently Mr. Obama has been on vacation too), saw all the various monuments, went all the way out the National Arboretum, attempted to kayak the Potomac (we couldn't find the boat rental), went to the Spy Museum, ate out, and generally learned to navigate the Metro like pros.

All in five days.

I'm pooped now and ready to be home and back to my usual things.

While we were away my Bloggin' for Books book arrived.  I ordered a book about how to become a comic book artist called Comic Book Art: Fundamental Tools and Techniques for Sequential Artists by John Paul Lowe, which I've pawed through and it's made me feel like the worst artist in the history of art.  I've been contemplating how to blog about this visceral and emotional reaction to what is essentially a text book. I wrote something up, but I'm not sure if it's a review or a whine about my life.  The sad thing is that I can't order another book until I review this one, so I'm going to have to figure something out.

Also a check came from my agent.  I'm apparently selling like gangbusters over at Audible.com.  The entire Garnet Lacey series is there and available, and, for whatever mysterious and awesome reason, is selling REALLY well.  Here's the first one: http://www.amazon.com/Tall-Dark-and-Dead/dp/B00COIYSHW/.  You can listen to a sample for free.

On the flip side, I also got a rejection for a writing job I applied for.  It was for a game company called Choice of Games: https://www.choiceofgames.com/about-us/. They were looking for writers to write Choose Your Own Adventure style story games for them.  Technically, I failed to be good enough to pitch them, which I guess makes me even more of a doofus.  But, I blame myself.  They were looking for a 3 - 5 page sample of writing and I sent them the very first story I ever sold, "Irish Blood," because it's one of the few stories that's actually short enough for me to send them something complete.  I'm still immensely proud of that story and I thought it best to show something with a beginning, middle, and ending.  I still think the story is awesome.  It was awesome enough to be reprinted in the Best of Dreams of Decadence not that long ago, after all.  But, it's about a fairy and a vampire, and it's possible the gaming folks felt that kind of story was very 'been there, done that.'

Who knows.

It would have been an interesting gig, had I gotten it.  But, it also would have been a LOT of work.  A friend of mine who applied with me is still in the running and I'll be curious how the process goes if she makes it past this hurtle.  (Fingers crossed!)  I have to admit I'm fascinated by the directions in which writing and writer/reader interactions are headed.  I'm starting to have real fun over at WattPad, and I see this fan-fiction model as a really fascinating experiment in continuing writing outside and beyond traditional New York publishing houses.  What is writing going to be like in the future?  I suspect it's going to be much more like this, because most people look for writing on-line these days.

A blog just won a Hugo, after all.