19 January 2002

Well, we had a nice time last night, playing games with Zed and Corie and Kelly. Avi couldn't make it at the last minute, but that was all right. We'll catch up with him some other time, and this way the group didn't fragment. And I won at Catan. But, ohhh, do we have leftovers. Am I sad? I am not. Because we have this stuff. Also homemade chips (seasoned and unseasoned) and a nice bean dip and some nuts and assorted veggies. But it was the spinach and artichoke dip that captured my heart. Do you know what it has? It has adequate amounts of spinach. Wow. Most spinach dips I've run into either don't have enough spinach, or they don't chop it finely enough so that you get a good amount in every bite. It'll be one long trailing kelpy thing in a sea of cheese. Not so for ours. (We used the food processor.) I think I'll smell like cilantro for a week -- the more so because we still have a bunch of fresh cilantro that we didn't use in the beans -- but, as Zed reminded me, there are worse things.

(I would also note that we do not measure garlic in teaspoons. Garlic does not come in teaspoons. Garlic comes in cloves, of which we used four.)

Last night pointed out to me that every once in awhile, Timprov and I just need excuses to make fancy food. We don't even really need for the other people around us to eat it. They just need to be there as an excuse. Timprov did most of the cooking last night. I just helped with the grunt work. We divided up labors: I had already been doing the housecleaning before Mark got home and Timprov woke up, so I just finished that. Mark went to the grocery store (three times; among the three of us, we went five times yesterday), and Timprov did the vast majority of the cooking. Since I was going to have to do the cleaning anyway, it was nice not to have to do all of it.

Only thing was, Timprov appears to be catching Mark's cold. I wouldn't have invited people over if I'd known we were potentially contagious, but Timprov didn't start sneezing until after people showed up. (As for me, I wouldn't dream of catching that cold. I'm done with this getting sick stuff. I tried it and didn't like it. Just like I tried being bad in kindergarten. Didn't like that, either.)

Ah well. Columbine answered my vodka question in pretty much exactly the amount of detail I wanted. Wow. Definitely Morphism Reader of the Week there. Now my British characters circa 1950 can behave reasonably on their stint in Finland, which is happiest for everyone, but especially for me.

I did not, in fact, write another story yesterday. I think this is a good thing. If I'd written four stories in four days, I would have felt obligated to push through and do it for a week. This way, if I finish another story, great, and otherwise, well, I've got plenty of other stuff to do. I haven't gotten Reprogramming out yet -- I'm still waiting for Timprov's comments on the end of it before I declare myself done editing for the time being. And if I do finish another story soon, well, all for the best. I'm just not putting myself in a pressure situation.

WIHA subs have been up the last couple of days. I've also gotten a few more submissions from women. I'm running the numbers on that, too, of course (still number-short, remember). I count each person who submits only once, but I count each author in a collab once. Looks like 19% of the submitting authors are women. I have no idea how that compares to the industry standard, or what percentage of accepted stories will be by women. Gender is something I look at after the fact, unless it jumps out at me that the person is being stereotypical in one direction or the other. It was just playing with other statistics that brought this one to mind.

My plans for today involve a possible errand run south to Fry's and David's Bridal (to try on bridesmaid dress possibilities), if somebody is feeling up to doing it with me and somebody else is feeling up to being home alone. Priorities. Also I plan to watch the new Bab-5 movie on the Scifi Channel because I really am that much of a geek. I may precede it with a Hitchcock or Kurosawa movie borrowed from David. Or with reading Nekropolis. Or both. A little uncertainty is good in life, or so I'm told.

Jessie has told me the most appalling thing: Christopher Fry is still alive. Okay, so that's not appalling in itself. But he's essentially out of print, and his plays don't get put on, and that is appalling. If you haven't read his stuff, go read it. Right now. Do not pass go etc. The man can wield a sentence. No, I mean it. Stop reading this now, go to the library or used bookstore, and get yourself some Christopher Fry.

You probably aren't doing it. Ah well. I do my best. Don't blame me if you find out later that you've been missing out.