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Saturday, 10 April 2010 (dropping the bone) 10:52pm This had best be the worst of it. I was beginning to wonder today if I'd have to skip my Mom's birthday dinner tonight at Max's Bistro, what with my sneezing and runniness, but I was up for it. Up for enough even to have a glass of wine with dinner and an Espresso Martini afterward. Figured I was already dopey, so why not? Though I didn't get hammered or anything, since I have great difficulty drinking to excess when I'm healthy, let alone when I'm not-so-healthy. Which is surely for the best. For my mom's (seventieth) birthday, me and Barefoot chipped in with Jonco to get my mom an iPod Touch. She's very happy with it. I can only hope I'm as current with technology in thirty-three years. She also dug up a bunch of geneaology stuff that her brother put together some years back, since I've been seriously considering writing a book about my maternal grandfather and the general history on my mom's side of the family, but especially as regards my grandfather. I feel like there's a strong narrative in there, though I haven't yet figured out what it is. This picture of him stationed in Shanghai sometime in the late Twenties is pretty great, though. I wonder what the distressed fellow behind him is looking at. | ||
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Friday, 9 April 2010 (implied from the start) 11:10pm Pleh. I was beginning to feel it yesterday afternoon, and now I know it for sure: I'm getting sick. I've decided it's allergies, actually. Sniffling and sneezing and the like. Not pleasant, but not necessarily dehibiltating, either. Just annoying. All the same, I had a one-margarita lunch with my Dad at El Toro Tambien, and then went thrifting at Amvets. Bought twenty-five dollars worth of clothes, and I'm pretty sure some of it will even fit me. After a quest to find Valentina's hot sauce in Fresno (Tower Market, unsurprisingly) I figured I was in for the evening when I got back to my mom's place. But she suggested going out to DiCicco's for dinner, so of course I said yes, especiall since my Dad and I didn't got there today as we often will. And now, as always, I'm watching Rifftrax Shorts in bed. I don't know what it is about being at my Mom's that makes me want to watch them, but there it is. | ||
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Thursday, 8 April 2010 (subsuming whatever is left) 10:11am Marta left a little while ago, and I'm heading out soon to meet my friends Orin and Lynae at Star Trek: The Exhibition at The Tech Museum in San Jose. I'm far more excited about than I should be, but I've never stopped being a Star Trek fan, so there you go. Afterward, I'm Fresno-bound. 10:51pm The exhibit was, like so many things Trek, a great idea poorly executed. It's been a touring for a couple years now, which probably accounts for the shoddy condition of some of the material, but wow. For example, a number of the buttons were missing from the replica of the Enterprise bridge. I don't know if they had been damaged during transport or were stolen, but either way, it was incredibly distracting. On the other hand, there was a replica of the bridge of the Enterprise, which is inherently awesome, even if so many of the tiny details were wrong. It's nitpicking, of course, but they must have realized that the majority of the customers would be nitpickers, which is what makes Trek fans who they are. Not that things like shape of the viewscreen being wrong (it was the Pike-era screen in what was otherwise the Kirk-era bridge) didn't stop me from having Orin take a few surreptitious pictues of me in the Captain's chair, of course. "Official" pictures were available from one of the incredibly bored-looking employees, but they cost twenty bucks, and the employee in question had disappeared anyway. For me, what summed up the lack of care put into it all was the fact that there was a smallish screen (really, guys, a twenty-two inch LCD was the best you could manage), showing the episode "Errand of Mercy" on a loop. Not only is that just an odd choice, but the aspect ratio was all wrong, a 4:3 image stretched to fit a 16:9 screen. How do you not notice these things? Not getting paid enough, I suppose. The way last year's movie was shoehorned into the exhibit was pretty haphazard, too. My k'vetching aside, I'm glad I went, as the corporate owners knew I would. (Which is why I have no guilt about having downloaded .mkv rips of the Blu-rays of the original series. Kinda evens things out.) (Stealing is fun!) Afterward, we had late lunch slash early dinner at Tengu Sushi, and then I headed into rush hour traffic to drive to Fresno. Which is exactly what I'd hoped to avoid, truth be told, but it was worth to get to spend more time with friends. | ||
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Tuesday, 6 April 2010 (grudgingly admitting the possibility) 3:27pm Had dinner and much snorgling with Marta last night, then went solo to Pete and Sarah's to watch this first episode of the new season of Breaking Bad. Marta didn't join us, not being caught up yet. My supervisor said he'll talk to the money people, and then have a meeting with me next Monday. That's something resembling progress. Another book rejection, this time from the publisher whose intern had liked the manuscript so much last year. Oh well. | ||
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Monday, 5 April 2010 (horror of horrors) 2:13pm I've asked about getting hired for real. And now, the waiting. | ||
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Sunday, 4 April 2010 (a line of reflection) sometime after midnight Of course, the day I don't leave the house it's bright and sunny, and on the day I finally emerge it's rainy. I suppose it was even worse for the people doing outdoor stuff. Anyway, I left around six to go to The Dark Room for Bad Movie. A rather disappointing turnout, especially after last week, but I'm sure it being a rainy Easter didn't help. (The movie was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which sold out the last two times I showed it. But maybe I went to that particular well too often. Who knows?) Afterward, I went to the airport to pick up Marta and drive her back to her place. Seeing her was the best part of the weekend. | ||
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Saturday, 3 April 2010 (mystique d'une femme) 12:01pm Beautiful day outside, as near as I can tell through my window. Still inside, working. I had a breakthrough regarding Landing on Water last night. I've figured out how it ends, and I can see it from here. This may require a second cup of coffee. People do that, right? | ||
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Friday, 2 April 2010 (all mine enemys whispers) 1:12pm Missed St. Stupid's Day yesterday. Again, the whole "writing" thingm, which is a terribly convenient excuse. Ran some errands this morning (including buying a new toner cartridge, ouch!), hung out with Erin at The Dark Room and got a handful of Starbucks Via Brew packets from her, and I'm now back home, ready to get to work. I have, for better or worse, graduated to straight coffee when writing. Keeps the calories down (right?), and it's a lot cheaper than shelling out three to four bucks for a mocha or latte or whatever. Not to mention all the attendant stress of parking and going to a cafe and getting a good table with an outlet and no direct sunlight and that whole craps game. And the best part of working at home is having Perdita right next to me. | ||
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Thursday, 1 April 2010 (reverting to a mirror-gazer) 2:46pm A German artist (or an artist living in Germany, at least) has asked me to contribute text to his new erotica book, a limited-edition collection of illustrations done in the style of etchings, modeled after a book of hours. I'm incredibly honored to be asked—especially since other people who have already contributed include Michael Manning and Annie Sprinkle—and of course I said yes. Y'know, I think I can reasonably assume that I won't be in the National Queer Arts Festival at all this year, for the first time since 2004. Usually people have put together their shows by now, and if nobody's asked me to be in theirs by now, it ain't gonna happen. And that's okay. Hell, I made it into the catalog last year with my picture and everything, so in some ways I feel like I've gone as far as I can go in that direction. I'd always figured 2010 would be much more about getting actual work done, getting words on paper. I love performing, but it's not my main focus. Writing is. (Which isn't to say that if someone asked me tomorrow to be in their NQAF show in June, I'd decline. I'd be all over that action.) | ||
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