25 January 2003

Okay, now, see? This is different. I just woke up from what I might venture to call a horror movie dream. It involved projectile vomiting feathers and people stealing my time and my stories from me. And by stealing, I don't mean "getting there first," I mean "removing them from my head." But this was not a nightmare. This was an unpleasant dream. I could see making some of the dialog from this dream into part of a new story. In fact, I may just open another file and do that. But I'm not crying, not shaking, and it took me only a second to verify that I have no need to projectile vomit, feathers or otherwise. Not a nightmare.

Weird dream, though.

Looks like the internet is squirrelly this morning: lots of blogs I read are down, and a few of the people who are up are saying they've lost e-mail. I have two new e-mails this morning, so I don't know that I have either problem (although I don't know that I don't, either -- it's hard to demonstrate that something hasn't shown up unless you're expecting it). Still, it's a bit alarming. (Later note: I'm clearly getting e-mail. All right then.)

Anyway, Communicate With M'rissa Week is off to a grand start, and I urge you to join the fun. Surely you have something to tell me. Even if it's that you had Grape Nuts for breakfast. Or that you didn't have Grape Nuts for breakfast. Either you've written to me before (or maybe I've even met you! Gasp!) and you should update me on life chez vous, or you've been lurking, and you should let me know who you are.

I like mail. I even write back. I'm cool like that.

So yesterday I got some really cheap books at Half Price Books. Many of them from the children's section. It's a lot easier to take a chance that something will not royally suck if it's $1 or $1.50. I also showed David "Real Genius," which he had not seen before. And no, the net result was not that the geeks brought down the entire military-industrial complex. But it was a fun movie anyway, and David agreed.

You should oughta see that movie, is what I'm saying. Put it on your list. Start a list if you have to.

It was on my list: "David -- 'Real Genius.'" It has been removed from the list. That list -- "Fun stuff to do before we leave the Bay Area" -- hasn't seen much movement in the last few months. I suppose spending three weeks in the upper Midwest will contribute to that. So will Mark working his butt off constantly (and myself the same, but I don't have naggy external forces -- well, not as many). So will feeling like crud, so it all works out. Not well, but it works out.

Yes, I still do feel like crud. Otherwise I wouldn't have had to think about the projectile vomiting thing for even a second.

Anyway, I feel marginally less cruddy this morning, bright-eyed and all that. Hopeful, maybe. We'll see how today goes.

I read the rest of The Dark Romance of Dian Fossey yesterday. It was really well-done. If there's more than one story about a particular event or time, the biographer made sure he relayed both sides of the story along with any bias information he happened to have about the parties doing the telling. Unfortunately, there were several times when there was only one side to the story, and that side was Fossey being a psycho drunk. But a gorilla-loving psycho drunk. So.

I also caught up on periodicals (two Scientific American, one Analog, one F&SF) and started reading Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, which was a gift from Michelle and Scott for Christmas. I'm still trying to figure out which of them read and liked it, or whether they said, "Hey, geek love, that's the central value in M'rissa's life!" and bought me the book without having read it. (There is nothing sweeter than the love of a really, really geeky geek. At least, nothing so far. Maybe the love of a really tiny geek will be on a par. I hope to find out.) Anyway, so far this isn't my kind of freak show, but I have hopes that it'll go somewhere. Maybe.

If not, I will console myself with many, many other books, including my own. Also, Timprov got "Akira" for Christmas, and we haven't watched it yet. Also, it's Saturday, which means that Mark is home all day. I'm trying to figure out what the optimal time is to go out on a date this weekend. I'm thinking during the Super Bowl, but only if the place we're going is guaranteed not to have any kind of television in it. And only if we can get home and lock the door before the game is over. I don't really understand the "riot after winning the game" tradition, and I'm sure that Hayward is distant enough from the heart of Oakland...but still.

Oh, and one of you noted that I hadn't given Mark's impressions of Institutions 1 and 2, how the interviews went, preferences, etc. This is true, I have not. And I'm not really going to, because this isn't Mark's journal, and he has enough pressure on him without it being a major topic of public conversation. In private conversations, I try to be optimistic and positive about both of the places he's interviewed and other potential interview places. But until we have things settled, I'm not going to talk here about the different possibilities. Sorry if you're dying of curiosity out there. You could engage in rampant speculation about developments in my writing career instead, if that would make you feel better. Distraction and all.

I'm going to write down the dialog from my dream and see what I can do for real work before I go back to Geek Love. Have a good Saturday.